In the news today I noticed so many things that make living in Britain today what it is...a pain in the ass.
First story to catch my eye was about the committee of MPs who have looked at government plans for the railways, which will, at least in part, affect Scotland (not that we have that many trains). The findings are that trains will become more crowded, more expensive and that there will be fewer of them. Just what we wanted to encourage us out of our cars and on to the public transport.
An early day motion from MPs has noted that the cuts to funding the railways will "worsen passenger services through the loss of thousands of frontline workers from trains, stations, ticket offices, safety-critical infrastructure and operational roles", and "will result in higher fares, cuts in services and more crowded trains". So good news for us then!
Then I noticed that while the rest of the country's workers are getting rises of around 1%, the FTSE chief executives, most of whose companies have lost a vast amount in the past few years, are hauling in rises of around 11%. With inflation at around 4-5% (at least officially), they seem to do rather well out of their failure.
The next story that I read won't affect me personally, but it will affect friends of mine. It is that the cabinet of the UK government, operating as the English government (and therefore I hope that Scottish MPs didn't vote), have decided that they will NOT publish the risk assessments involved in their semi-privatization plans for the English Health Service.
Lansley's excuse for the veto, after a 19 month campaign by the public to be told, is something to do with allowing officials to give ministers candid opinions, but of course the real reason is that in making vast amounts of money for the companies that will bid for this business, there are going to be huge risks to people's health. When cutting a corner can result in turning in a bit better profit, let's not be in much doubt as to which the private sector will chose. God help the poor English under the Tories. Still, I imagine it will cut the number of people making it to pension age. So that should please them.
It was depressing reading about the incompetence and insensitivity of the DWP writing to families with disabled children warning them that their benefit would be reduced, when it won't.... and I was about to give up on the news when I saw a few cracking good laugh stories...
It seems that Dave and Nick decided to relaunch the coalition today. And they chose as their theme, the economy... you know...creating more jobs and that sort of stuff... unfortunately they chose to do it in a company which is outsourcing jobs to China, from whence executives had to rush in order to meet up with the prime ministers. Nobs or what?
And then there was yet another community leader saying that the good old Big Society, better known by most of us as BS, was a complete shambles. And this was reportedly the reason that Cameron came into politics. Struth, don't you wish he'd not bothered.
So it wasn't all doom and gloom after all.
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.
