Not too long ago, the very idea of talking union politics with some of my pals would have seemed about as on-trend’as a shopping spree in Bhs’ bargain bin.
Today, with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference the talk of Manchester, I can’t concentrate for their Tweeting, blogging and Facebook feeds. Strike action is the subject du jour among the social media generation – and about time too.
Funny, I remember a time when some of my mates said they’d opted out of their own professional unions, saying: "What’s the point – they never do anything?" It prompted me to hurtle my head against a brick wall on many an occasion.
Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started sporting T-shirts with TUC general secretary Brendan Barber’s face emblazoned Che Guevara-like across their chests.
So why the change?
Well, reality bites. And for my generation – who grew up enjoying the fruits of the booming New Labour years – it’s starting to show its teeth, big time.
After years of comfortable credit-card living, jobs-aplenty to choose from, and the safety net of a well-funded welfare system to support us should it all go belly-up, many of today’s 20 and thirtysomethings never really got the point of belonging to a union.
Now – as that dastardly Tory double act, George Osborne and David Cameron, sharpen their silver scissors to slash public spending – the political penny is finally dropping.
And nowhere more so than here in Greater Manchester, where it seems, true to Tory previous form, we will feel the full force of cuts to jobs and services in the area. How many of our homes, jobs and health services will survive the impending cull?
So, the news that all but one of the 700 TUC delegates backed a massive programme of joint industrial action opposing said cuts – potentially including large scale co-ordinated strikes – is suddenly hotter gossip than Wayne and Coleen’s marriage crisis talks.
While older generations worry about a return to the Winter Of Discontent and a country crippled by strike action, there’s a new-found frisson of excitement to all this fighting union talk for the Twitter generation.
Suddenly, those who thought they had safe jobs in schools and the health service are facing the grim reality that the coalition kids could really be turning Britain into what Brendan Barber calls a "dark, brutish and more frightening place". And they want to do something about it. Unions, kids, it’s like social networking but, you know, in the real world.
Now, I was brought up on tales of a great-grandad who was sacked from one factory after another for his union activities – for having the cheek to hand out pamphlets demanding equal pay. So, I’ve always seen our country’s illustrious heritage of standing up for workers’ rights as something to be proud of. Unfortunately, so many of my generation were never given that history lesson.
Yes, it’s tragic that we’re facing a period of dire and drastic cuts, which will affect the poorest 10 per cent of the population.
Yes, it’s criminal that the coalition are using the deficit as an excuse to wipe out years of progressive welfare policy.
But if it rekindles that common sense of purpose and determination to stand up for ordinary people and their rights, that lies at the very heart of the union movement, then at least that’s one outcome worth Tweeting home about.
Posh thinks she’s just like you and me
THAT’S what has always struck me about skeletal millionaire Victoria Beckham – she’s just so down with the ordinary woman about town.
Whose heart didn’t go out to the poor former popstrel when she and hubby David recently let some of their staff go? Ah, it’s a problem for us all in this recession, love. I don’t know how I’d cope without my 14 underlings to clean my golden bath taps either.
This week, Queen Vic set out to prove she’s every woman’s friend with the launch of her latest collection at New York Fashion Week – by putting a ban on size-zero models on her catwalk and insisting the girls had to be at least a size six.
"What’s alluring for me are the curves of a woman’s figure," pouts the Posh one.
Thing is, the emaciated models who paraded her figure-hugging and uninspired creations were about as curvaceous as a breadstick.
Has the star just latched onto the whole size issue as a handy way of getting her frumpy fashion wares some press?
If not, then, why else is it a case of do as I say, not as I do.
Why Ramsbottom is simply the place to be
IT’S no wonder to me that New York party girls were among the hundreds who turned out to witness Ramsbottom’s annual World Black Pudding Throwing Championship at the weekend.
I too squeezed my way through the throngs to try my hand at hurling one of the Lancashire delicacies at a scaffold piled with Yorkshire puddings. It’s just one of the completely crazy things – alongside the chocolate fest and annual bike ride up the Rake – that make Rammy, and so many of our towns and villages, so brilliantly unique.
No surprise, then, that the BBC has been ferrying its London staff out by coach to sample the delights of Ramsbottom as a potential place to live, come the big move.
While some of the southern Beeb migrants I’ve spoken to can’t wait to up sticks and make a new life up north, one surlier southerner I recently met after one such guided tour sniffed in derision at the former mill town, with its steam train and rows of terraces. It filled me with an urge to throw black pudding missiles in his direction instead.
You know what, chuck, if you don’t like the look of our way of life, don’t move. There’s plenty more people lining up for those plum jobs at MediaCity.
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My god what utter drivel. Well done MEN, I once thought Diane Cooke wrote mindless tosh, but this woman really is the limit. Bring back Diane.
I particularly like comments such as “Suddenly, those who thought they had safe jobs in schools and the health service”, “Yes, it’s tragic that we’re facing a period of dire and drastic cuts, which will affect the poorest 10 per cent of the population” and the best one “Yes, it’s criminal that the coalition are using the deficit as an excuse to wipe out years of progressive welfare policy”
Safe jobs breed apathy and inefficiencies, why should there be "safe jobs"? .
So its only the poorest 10 percent who are feeling the affects of the recession?? REALLY.
However the best for last, "years of progressive welfare policy", so that’s code for ballooning the cost of the welfare state, without a plan to pay for it.
Justified True Belief - you are absolutely spot on. With the greatest respect to Ms. Tither, she does not have the slightest idea what she is talking about.
The public sector now employs 1 million more people than when New Labour (surely the most dreadful Government since the Second World War) came to power in 1997. The "progressive welfare reforms" Ms. Tither harps on about have brought minor improvement to some parts of the NHS but in every other area of public spending, untold billions have been frittered away. Waste and inefficiency is an inevitable consequence of throwing public money at problems (real or perceived) with no control or management of how that money is spent. Are education, transport, welfare reform or social provision for the genuinely vulnerable any better than they were 13 years ago? Of course not!
Meanwhile, the nation has spiralled into such monumental debt that close on £10 billion (yes, TEN BILLION) of taxpayers' money is spent simply on meeting interest payments.
The public sector and their Unions will forever bury their heads in the sand when it comes to cuts because they have always considered that economic downturns are only for the private sector (i.e. their paymasters) to suffer. However, whether they like it or not, the fact is that we live in a global economy and if we are to compete in that economy we MUST get our finances underc control.
It is the private sector that creates a nation's wealth; the public sector only spends it.The UK can never hope to prosper whilst more than 1 in 4 of its working population has its salary paid for by the private sector.
We probably face the best part of a decade of really tough times ahead. However it is only by tackling the debt head on, right now, that we can build for a better future for all.
Get rid of this woman she is utter bobbins.
Perhaps Ms. Tither should consider the endless streams of bureaucrats, regulators, quangos, co-ordinators, focus groups and other non-jobs that Labour dreamt up toward fulfilling its dream of using the nanny state to control virtually every aspect of our lives. Not to mention the burgeoning welfare dependency culture and population explosion through uncontrolled immigration. Have you ever stopped to consider how these "progressive" policies are actually PAID FOR Ms. Tither? The country can't afford it anymore, Ms. Tither. Something's got to give and that "something" is public expenditure. There really is no other way.
The age of buy-now-pay-later (for individuals as well as Governments) is well and truly over. Everyone who bought into Gordon Brown's "no more boom and bust" nonsense is simply going to have to get used to it.
We should sack any public sector worker who goes on strike. That'll save their employer, the public,lots of redundancy pay.
In an age of austerity the public don't see why they should continue to employ millions of people on better pay, pensions and holiday entitlements than they get themselves, especially when the near million extra of these employees hired since 1997 have not improved the public services to any noticeable degree.
I can imagine there are some people not wise enough to understand that the only reason conservative governments have such a reputation for cost cutting is that they always end up having to clear up the mess from a profligate labour government. As has been said many times labour goverments always come to an end when they run out of money. That is what happened on this occasion in big style.
The amusing thing is Ed Balls, with the swivelling eyes, is still slavering at the chops and straining at the leash to carry on with the party. I guess because they never had the IMF in this time they think the job wasn't finished properly.
The ambition of the labour party was to make themselves the permanent party of government by using immigration and welfare bribes. The immigration card backfired since it caused so many inner city dwellers and so called bigots ( in the eyes of Gordon Brown) to vote against Labour.
The Labour party dummed down schools to such a level that one in three pupils leaving are illiterate. Hospitals are so dirty you have a good chance of catching MRSA. They took us into two illegal wars using troops with insufficient equipment.
Law and order in this country is laughable, where murderers and rapists sentences are a joke. They managed to perform all these great feats while creating a deficit of approx £800 billion quid.
The blame for the coming period of austerity lies squarely at the door of the Labour Party who did there best to bankrupt the country. Gordon Browns Economic miracle of abolishing boom and boost was simply a absurd notion that you can borrow endless amounts of money.
Blimey! Shouldn't you lot be reading the Daily Mail? Such small-minded criticism and so lacking in compassion, never mind forgetting a global economic crisis brought about by greedy bankers not the Labour government. I am continually stunned by the stupidity of people who blindly accept history being rewritten before their very eyes - and by those who care little for fellow human beings - indeed fellow workers - but probably get worked up about a new fitted kitchen. Justified True Belief and Something, something Darkside ... why don't you consider the poorest Helen Tither speaks of instead of yourselves once in a while. You'll be more interesting for it!
Funny; my response to Diane Cooke (below) and her criticism of my comments, seems to have got lost. So I will re-submit, as I am sure she is big enough to take criticism!!
Hah Classic!! I am going to cut and paste your reply Diane Cooke (and keep it on my wall) – It is an ALL TIME CLASSIC.
Do you need me to point out the irony of the fact that you told me to use a spellcheck (SPELL CHECK) and I am sure you are feelling (FEELING) rather foolish right now? Apparently you did not even cut and paste my reply, is the technology beyond you?
BTW my SPELL CHECKER does not pick up the difference between EFFECTS and AFFECTS.
If you are going to criticise a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Manager about his English, please have the foresight to be beyond criticism yourself. Obviously the only reason I put my trade and status in, is because of your pompous assertion that only people with zero defect spelling can criticise journalists. So I thought I would be equally pompous about criticising an Engineer.
Ha – Its get’s better, in between my not having the above posted. Diane you have the temerity to misspell FEELING (feelling - your version) and then point it out, as if it were my mistake. PLEASE READ MY ORIGINAL COMMENT, I did not misspell FEELING, you did, in the reply. LOL.
In future can I respectfully suggest you use the technology provided (cut and paste)
What a load of entitlement-mentality tripe.
The welfare state hasn't advanced, if you applied the wonderful New Labour era education of yours and did a bit of research maybe you wouldn't come across as quite the Polly Filler type?
As as one of those 'ordinary people', how about our right to not have out wages garnished to provide X-boxes, Sky TV and a life of leisure to the generational jobdodgers who blight our towns? You know, the ones who've been comprehensively failed by Labour during their tenure? You are aware of the statistics of just where most of the jobs New Labour created went to aren't you? And the percentages of state-dependent employees across the nation? And how the public sector is funded?
Instead of taking the Tories to task, maybe you'd be better off wagging your delicate little finger at the idiots who got us here. Brown and Blair. Or would that require you engaging in a little thinking?
Sam V - indeed the GLOBAL economic crisis did happen on Labour's watch - and the watch of every other nation in the world. I am not a Labour supporter but cannot comprehend the tedious British habit of blaming Labour or Tory rather than recognising the break down of the GLOBAL financial system in which we live.
Indeed - 15 years of economic boom and what are we left with? - we're left with bankers earning a fortune as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer GLOBALLY.
There are millionaires not paying taxes and this seems to culturally accepted while the poor get blasted for supposedly fiddling the dole.
There are 2.47 million people out of work because there are GLOBAL job losses and yet the Tories think this is the time for a welfare shake-up and to force people back into work. What work? If the Tories stop plans to build schools, plans that will boost the economy by providing jobs, wher on earth are this unemployed people - many who have been unemployed for a while and some who are new to it - supposed to go?
The welfare system is progressive because to do without it and to banish people into poverty is uncivilised - and the actions of a money-grabbing, selfish government only interested in ensuring the rich remain so.
I despair at the "blame the last government" mentality of this small-minded nation and it's nasty NIMBY attitude - all encouraged of course by the Tories.
Show some compassion for others for crying out loud.
What a load of supercilious tosh, as usual. Ms Tither attempts to write in the style of her publishing stable mate, Comrade Toynbee. She obviously thinks her way up the greasy pole at Guardian Media is to toe the political line and hope to attract the attention of one of the guardianista gauleiters.
The tone of the analysis is totally revisionist. The economic and political history of the past 13 years has been erased by Ms. Tither and her denier ilk. It’s as if the cuts are a plot dreamt up by Tories to wage some kind of civil war rather than a desperate attempt by the rest of the parliamentary parties in coalition to address the usual damage caused by the student revolutionaries from the left.
Please stick to celebrity tittle tattle because you are not adding anything to the current debate bar hackneyed, old, 20th century, class warfare platitudes. What about ‘capitalist running dogs’ you missed that one.
But actually I enjoyed the pieces on Victoria Beckham and Ramsbottom. Maybe if we pronounced it Rams Both Arm it would have more appeal to our metropolitan friends?
Progressive welfare policy etc etc blah blah blah.
Nasty tory cuts etc etc etc.
Helen Tither - since you seem to have lost the ability to add up and make simple conclusions I will spell it out for you..... the labour government spent £460million more EACH DAY than it raised in revenue. If we don't cut spending the country will be bankrupt within 2 years.
I really despair for this country when people as clueless as yourself are afforded the opportunity to spout nonsensical tosh in the media.
CharlieCat 19.58 - the "economic boom of the last 15 years" never happened. It was just a mirage created by Labour's uncontrolled borrow-and-spend pollcies. In line with their passion for spending untold millions of taxpayers' money telling us how we should live our lives (and haven't all those "don't do drugs, alcohol, fags", etc. campaigns made such a HUGE difference?) they were constantly warning us of the dangers of overborrowing on mortgages, loans and credit cards, whilst at the same time doing exactly that - and on a scale unprecedented in the nation's history.
It wouldn't have been so bad if we had anything to show for it but, as documented by many others on this thread, social inequality and welfare dependency have skyrocketed, the education system is on its knees, we have a tragic lack of affordable housing, a judicial system that positively encourages crime, a transport system that is decades behind those in mainland Europe and a massively bloated public sector that seems to believe it has the right to expect the taxes of those in the private sector to maintain its vastly superior employment levels, retirement and pension provisions.
For goodness sake, take your head out of the sand and enter into the real world!
If this was written by a lower 6th student studying politics it would be C+ see me after class. Poorly constructed, badly reseached and immaturely written on all levels based on lame rhetoric and without foundation of the underlying facts.
Sort of piece I would expect to be written by Rik from the Young One's...
Unbelievably mawkish drivel.
(PS I didn't read the bits on Rammy or Posh)...
Did you not hear Mervyn King? Even the bankers blame the bankers! He knows the blame for financial mess we're in -which is now being put on the backs of workers like me and YOU. So, loveinthebanter, the way to reduce the gap between rich and poor would be to make the rich cotribute more not bully the poor and disabled. It would be to stop the huge bonuses enjoyed by the bankers who put us into tis mess and to ensure the rest of the uber rich pay thir taxes and close down their off-shore accounts. Why should only the poor pay for this mess?
Who are these jobdodgers? And, if they exist, what jobs are they going to go to? How can a government create job losses AND force people back into work? I'm all for people being encouraged to work - it is beneficial in many more ways than financially - but if there are no jobs what can we do? Hard-working, qualified, mortgaged, careerists have also been put out of work after many, many years of dedication - is that fair?
It is okay as a Tory to listen to other people's opinions and question the actions of your government, you know. You don't have to worship Cameron the way a toddler would worship Elmo.
One final thing: For those of you who are envious that Ms Tither is a qualified, experienced journalist while you tap away at blogs and comment boards - look at what a debate her article has started. Success indeed.
As Esther Rantzen discovered in the 70's... it's the public who provide the real entertainment......but this would be before Ms.Tither's "time".
The new teacher would indeed seem to have stimulated a debate, not, I suspect, by way of her intellect but by the fact that most of her pupils had already graduated from or been kicked out of the university of life but unfortunately for both parties, had not just dropped out of the proverbial tree.
So whilst they had all begun to amuse themselves in a paper aeroplane-like fashion,in the way that bored pupils would, in walked the headmistress Ms.Cook, to see what all the noise was about.
Staff-room issue, methinks.
You talk of 'Union Movements' and equality Helen. How much does Bob Crow earn, is it the same as one of his drivers or ticket staff?
I guess the answer would be no! This is the so called equality they fight for in action. The famous extract from Animal farm should have read: "All animals are equal, but all union members are not as equal as their leaders"!
Andanotherthing..Mcr.... wrote:
"Ms.Cook with an E"
Or even "Cookie" for those who would like to thnk of themselves on more familiar terms...... perhaps it's Amotherthing.