FUNNY OLD WORLD

Well, would you ever believe it?

Of course you would. I mean on a day when it turns out that:

700,000 children have being diagnosed as having learning difficulties, when they don't, presumably so that schools can access extra money regardless of the effect on the children and hide low sandards of teaching;

The police tell us that less money for policing will result in fewer police and that this will be dangerous at a time when social unrest is on the rise (not that they are trying to protect their own salaries or anything!!!);

Having told us only a few weeks ago that house prices were on the up, sellers have been told to drop their prices by 10%;

That inflation is 150% of what was forecast...close eh? I mean why do we pay the economists at the Bank of England and the Treasury? Are all their forecasts out by this kind of margin?

And that Nick Clegg, in the midst of the financial (and soon to be social) crisis, is wittering on about improving the lot of women in the third world..... (Why do we always have to be leading the way in poking our inexpert noses into other people's affairs? Why do we not do something about the horrors at home?)..........
It should come as no particular shock that Tony Blair has been awarded the Philadelphia Liberty Medal in recognition of his “steadfast commitment to conflict resolution”.

I can’t think of much to say about that... except don’t you think that it plays into the hands of people all over the Muslim world who think that they are simply second of third class citizens of the world?

Here’s a guy who in collaboration with Bush showed a ''steadfast commitment'' to killing innocent people and causing untold, and to us unimaginable, suffering and all kinds of hell in Afghanistan (legally) and Iraq (illegally) ... and they award him the Liberty Medal.

Funny old world?

... Still, unto those who have, etc....there are and have always been some people who could fall off the tenth floor into a pile of manure, bounce up onto their feet and walk home smelling of Yves St Laurent!

I just hope Blair can see the irony.

And it was on the Monday Morning that the Gas Man FAILED to Call!

It never rains but it pours for Gordon. First the civil servants, then the BA staff, then the railways and now the gas men.

The British Gas dispute is over working conditions of engineers, boilers fitters and general electrical repairers. The union (GMB) also claims the company has a "bullying culture".

British Gas wants to make the engineers work longer hours. Many of the engineers apparently get away with working a four-day week, even though they are paid for a full week's work, which seems like a weird situation to me. Of course you might ask how the management (so called) allowed this situation to come about in the first place.

The GMB claim their members are subject to bullying and that engineers are pressured to sell extra services to customers whilst mending or fitting a boiler. According to the union the average amount of time an engineer is allowed to fix a boiler or other appliance had been cut by 22 per cent, in an effort to ensure workers completed more jobs in a given week. So.... they only work four days a week, but they have to do 5 days work in the four days..... Hello, is there anyone in?

Of course British Gas denies all of this. According to them they are model employers and no pressure or bullying is ever exerted on anyone at any time ever....

A whole article can be read here, and various people may analyse it the way that they will. However, I suggest that this is just the start of a lot of action over the next months and possibly years, regardless of who wins the election.

This recession was caused by greedy and incompetent people at the top. Banks and Financial organizations wanted more and more money; governments failed to regulate companies who were behaving outrageously madly. Even financial illiterates like me could see that if incomes rose at 2-4% on average and house prices rose at 10 12%, there would shortly come a time when no one could afford to buy a house except the Queen (and maybe Lard Ashcroft).

Inevitably it all crashed... just because it was bound to sometime... and one day someone started a whisper that it had started, and so people started calling in debts upon which the world depended for its very existence, and ....BANG! It was over. (Of course it started in America and spread around the world.... tra la)

Even in Britian where the Wizard of Arse had abolished Boom and Bust, the bottom fell out of the economy. (Obviously it was everyone else’s fault)

Now we have to pay. But it’s not the people who caused all this strife who are paying. Oh no. It is BA cabin staff; it’s engineers; it’s transport workers, and civil servant. It’s soldiers and pensioners, and it will be all manner of other people.

Amazingly the bonuses for the morons in the banks go on, because if they don’t get big bonuses they will throw their toys out of the pram and go somewhere else. It’s not Ministers and it’s not MPs who have just pocketed £1,000 a year increase, as pensioners are getting a decrease.

British Gas have mismanaged their way into this, and because “everyone” has to tighten their belts they are trying to force their fitters to do more for less. (Despite the fact that British Gas have been coining it in!)

So, if anyone thinks that these strikes are anything other than the beginning of unrest ...then they should probably think again. It seems like Brits have may grown a back bone.