A problem with any kind of "representation"

I am, by and large, unconvinced by the concept of collective bargaining. It inevitably implies that most of the people who are represented by the union don't get the exact deal that they want. More importantly, I am equally convinced that, as with our parliamentary "representatives", once you hand over your interests to them, they become secondary to the interests and the motivations of the "representative".

Here is a case in point:

For every £10 given to The Labour Party £4 comes from #Unite. Not one Labour spokesperson supports their strike #learnthelesson #TUSC
- Nancy Taaffe on twitter

Now, I don't know who Nancy Taaffe is and I don't know if her statement is factually correct, but it does point out that given her beliefs and views, her "representatives", both within Unite (who continue to give money to Labour despite the lack of support) and Labour (who also refuse to support her) clearly aren't representing her and people who feel like her.

But the bigger problem is actually with Nancy Taaffe herself, and anyone else who believes in concepts like social and collective action and welfare to the exclusion of the value of the individual. Because I'm sure that this time next year, Nancy Taaffe and her ilk will still be contributing their union dues and will still be moaning that Labour doesn't represent her as she makes her cross next to the Labour candidate at the next election.

And the blind, tribal loyalties of Nancy and people like Nancy are exactly why there is a disconnect between people and their representatives. The representatives know they can count on a certain number of blind adherents and therefore they only have to tailor their policies enough to appeal to a relatively small number of "swing" voters (in parliament) or can carry on regardless (unions).

So, Nancy, perhaps you'll think about withdrawing your support from the union and from the Labour Party now?

No, I didn't think so.

Mother TUCers

I've been building up to a gentle eruption about these motherfuckers.

But I see Nick's done it for me.

Too bloody true!

From the comments:

As for striking public sector unions; they play a dangerous game - the danger that no one will notice their strike and conclude, rightly, that many of them aren't needed.

Sack the fucking lot and start again.

Il Postino

Well, isn't this another monstrous pile of cunt?

Under the terms of a new three year Royal Mail pay deal, which has been criticised for allowing postmen to get paid more for working less, letters and parcels will be delivered one hour later - 3pm in towns and cities and 4pm in the countryside.

Customers? Who gives a fuck about them, eh? And it gets better:

Separately, householders could also be deluged by a blizzard of junk mail after the two sides agreed plans to expand the amount of junk mail which postmen can deliver.

Listen you fucking mongs, why don't you drop the pretence and just wipe your lazy, smelly, fat arses on our post before you shove through the wrong fucking door. Oh, hang on, that's what you do now.

Useless cunts.

I AM Mystic Meg, Bob

Christ, you can smell the testosterone in the union camp, can't you? They've got the Labour party hog-tied spread-eagled over a barrel, a ball-gag in the mouth and the gimp is locked in the other room:

Bob Crow said he wasn't Mystic Meg but he wouldn't book rail travel for Easter.

No, you bald-headed fucking blubbery cunt, you're not Mystic Meg. She doesn't look like a fucking badly-packed kebab and you do.

Easter rail travel is under threat from three industrial disputes which could halt trains in the first national rail strike for 16 years.

Signalmen, maintenance staff and supervisors are all poised to strike in disputes over job losses, pay and changes to working practices.

I wouldn't travel anywhere by train over Easter anyway, Bob, because that's when Notwork Rail cunts up the entire railway network by digging the fuck out of it.

But happy striking, you cunts. It will be no fucking loss if the train operating companies go tits up and you fuckers all lose your jobs, you stinking cunts.

And Bob, I genuinely do hope you die an agonizing death. Face cancer would be first prize, but a wrecked train full of RMT "members" would be a fucking delight of irony.

Crystallisation of allowances?

What a load of old cunt:

Postal workers who staged a series of strikes in the run-up to Christmas have won a 6.9 per cent pay rise over the next three years.

At a time when both public and private sector workers are braced for little or no increase in forthcoming pay rounds, Royal Mail employees have also won lump sum payments, a shorter working week, the crystallisation of allowances into basic pay and better maternity and paternity terms.

Jesus fucking Christ. People all around the country are losing their fucking jobs, even the fucking public sector is talking about redundancies and these cunts are getting a raise. And how's this for a fucking slap in the face:

Staff will receive a lump sum payment of £400 on ratification of the agreement and another £1,000 linked to delivery of workplace changes.

While these useless cocktards are fucking binning our post or stealing the contents thereof, we're getting worse and worse levels of service, more mis-directed fucking mail, more cunting junk mail and fucking paying more for their shoddy workmanship.

In the unlikely event of your seeing an actual postie doing some actual delivery, feel fucking free to ride over the actual cunt.

Actually.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Gosh, what's next? Kipper ties and flares?

Unions or electricity? Electricity or unions? I wonder what we will decide. How very different the 21st C is going to be.

Jack Dromey: Lunatic

I suppose being married to that useless flap of skin around a vagina called Harriet Harman would be enough to make anyone start to unhinge from reality, but I caught this cock-weasel on morning telly wittering on about how it wasn't good enough for Kraft to guarantee no job losses at Cadbury, he was going to get the government to act as a guarantor for those guarantees.

Yeah, you fucking cunt, the government will just bend over it's money tree, shove it's fist up our collective arse and take some more of our fucking hard earned, so that you can fucking talk tough on TV.

I hope you die a screaming, lingering, painful death, preferably involving electricity and your flaccid half-inch penis.

Cunt.

Quite simply ...

... I cannot add anything to this:

From the BBC:

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has announced two nationwide strikes.

It said earlier on Thursday that the 24-hour strikes will begin on 22 October. On the first day, mail centre staff and drivers will strike. The next day it will be delivery and collection staff.

Is it wrong to say that I can't wait until these fuckers bankrupt the Royal Mail and are all on the dole queue? Is it really wrong to say that? Because that is what I am thinking. And that is what I'm thinking they deserve. But I'll stop short of calling them work-shy, money hungry wankers. Again, they might deserve such a comment, but I wouldn't dignify them with that level of burning rage.

It's just a jump to the left

And so it begins. Labour has finally relinquished any hope of winning the election. They have fucked Murdoch off and the sight of a union fuckwit tearing up a copy of the Sun (that he presumably paid for, the fucking spaztastic cuntwafter) live on the idiot lantern will have pleased Rupert no end. Me, I'm not so sure I'd be going after someone who controls the Scum, the News of the Screws, the Thunderer and a fucking influential and well-regarded TV news channel, but that's just me.

I'm not a fucking moron.

Unlike the fucking has-Bean Prime Mentalist who picked a fight with Adam Boulton.

So, having thoroughly fucked the special relationship between Labour and News International, the Snot-Gobblin' King then proceeded to storm out of a BBC interview as well. Nice going, doc, on those pills, but I think you may need to up the dose just a teensy-weensy bit.

And now the union cuntflaps are starting to flex their muscle as they are the only thing standing between the Labour Party and complete financial oblivion:

More evidence today that the TUC is dictating government policy on public services. Nick Timmins in the FT notes that Andy Burnham’s new guidance to health authorities requires them to treat NHS organisations as the “preferred providers” of care, reversing the Blair/Milburn reforms which opened up health care to private suppliers. By insisting that NHS providers have ‘at least two chances to improve’ before failing services are put out to tender, and that NHS staff should have the opportunity to bid not just once but twice for any new service contracts, Burnham is effectively excluding private providers from the process. It’s no surprise that Unison welcomes the move as a ‘significant policy shift.’

Yep. The unions are starting to shape fin de siècle Labour direction. And while I would love to see a genuine reversion to type on the part of both parties, I can't see the ultra-slippery iDave doing anything as desirable on his watch. So, British politics will be a centrist dance of democratic death between the SocDems and Blue Labour, while Labour harps on from the distant left.

Ugh.

I didn't think things could get worse, but I fear I was wrong.

Moet et Chandon Marxists

The union leader ordered by Wislon to remove his tanks was of course Hugh Hughie Scanlon, the Marxist president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union from 1968 until 1978. "For most of his career he was the wild man of the Far Left, bogeyman of the Right and a vociferous critic of ermine-clad politicians, particularly the Socialist variety. Indeed, he had called the Upper House a "bastion of privilege". Naturally enough, on his retirement Callaghan offered him a peerage - for services to a grateful nation. And naturally enough, he accepted. Just like our old friend my Lord Kinnockio. Why do we put up with this again?

Who fucking knows? But when I see cunts like BevaniteEllie on twatter, I know that those exact same fucking cunt archetypes are still here today.

So, what do you do when the money runs out?

Eh, brethren?

One of Britain’s biggest unions — which has campaigned fiercely against government cutbacks to public sector pensions — is to cut back its scheme for its own staff, The Times has learnt.

Unison, which represents 1.3 million local government and NHS workers, can no longer afford its final-salary scheme for employees and has set out initial proposals to cut costs.

So now it's starting to become apparent to even the unions that there is no such thing as a money tree. I wonder how it feels to union employees to taste the bitter hypocrisy of working for an organisation that calls for benefits for other people that it won't even grant to its own staff. And I wonder how people who have to deal with these cunts are going to enjoy, savour and probably masturbate over calling them to account over their fucking hypocrisy.

And perhaps, when union members reflect on the death of their final salary pension schemes, I wonder whether they will draw any conclusions about Gorgon's raiding of pension schemes to fund his "progressive agenda" of "social justice" and wonder if it was really worth it.

Tip of the clown wig to Timmy.

Compare and contrast

Thunder from the unions:

Unite tells BMW heads, you have treated your workforce with contempt - but there will be no further sackings next week

What the workers say:

Anger boils over at union’s complicity in sacking of 850 BMW workers

Anyone care to guess which union is complicit?

More news from Animal Farm

Continuing a great tradition of some trough-snuffling pigs being more equal than others, we have this gem in the Gaariund:

The joint leader of the country's biggest trade union is expected to face questioning today by his national executive over demands he has made for nearly £100,000 to vacate a heavily subsidised London flat which was purchased by a personal acquaintance in a deal worth £1m.

Tony Woodley, the joint general secretary of Unite, which represents some of the lowest paid workers in the United Kingdom and is now bankrolling the Labour party, is to be asked to explain his role in the deal, which was originally a sale between another union and a commercial company.

Hmmm. So, let me get this straight: he was living in a heavily subsidised flat and when they wanted to chuck him out, he didn't say "Thanks for letting me stay there for fuck all for the last 15 years", he said "Give me £100,000 and I'll move"???

And I do mean for fuck all:

Woodley has been living there for 15 years at a fixed rent of £200 a month with all his electricity and heating bills included

Jesus. Even in Elephant and Castle, that's a fucking sweet deal. And it's described as "a historic building", so it's probably not just two up and two down terrace in a slum, either.

• The flat has never been registered as a residential dwelling so Woodley has never paid any council tax on it.
• It was granted to him as an inter-union favour by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU).
• The CSEU was negotiating to sell the commercial offices and the flat to a Scottish property company, Unicorn Developments, and offered him £15,000 to quit it.
• After much negotiating they later raised this to £55,000 but suddenly, to the company's solicitors' surprise, the Transport and General Workers Union – as part of Unite – made an identical offer for the same building.
• Then a private company in Woodley's home town in Merseyside, Purple Apple, which also has a contract to manage the TGWU properties, made a higher offer. Documents show that the sale was made personally to the late Gerry White, then director of the firm and who the union confirm was a long standing acquaintance of Woodley's. The commercial firm pulled out.

Go read the whole thing.

Brothers.

What really fucked the "Big Three"

Christ on a trike!!!

Just remind me again about how hard-done-by union members are?

I yearn for social justice, you fancy a pay-rise, he is greedy

The Croydonian in fine form!