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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

STRIKE - Scab bastards

  • Thread starter Thread starter JB
  • Start date Start date
Thats exactly what they say to do, attach a seperate peice of paper with the application requesting you'd like to backdate.
 
I'll phone them this weekend to see if they've got it yet and make it known I'd like to backdate.
 
Surprised you wern't clued up on the working tax credits spade - if there's some free money floating around it's best claimed. I think it's the governments way of helping business's to keep paying slave wages.
 
Got a letter from my union today. "ALL OUT 30 NOVEMBER" lol.

One bit of it that confuses me though, I know it's likely just their spin but surely if I'm understanding things correctly they shouldn't be trying to spin things this much...

"Higher contributions will go straight to the Treasury to pay off the deficit caused by the bankers".

"The bankers" (that term is starting to fucking annoy me) didn't cause the deficit, did they? Is the deficit not just the fact that the country spends more than it earns, basically it runs at a loss? That wasn't caused by "the bankers", that's just the way the country runs (& the way a lot of countries run as far as I understand it).

Also (again, if my understanding is correct), you can't "pay off" a deficit. It's not a debt. You spend £500 every year, yet you only earn £400, therefore you have an annual deficit of £100. You can reduce that, you can get rid of it completely, but you can't "pay it off". Am I missing something? Or have I just got this completely wrong?
 
"Higher contributions will go straight to the Treasury to pay off the deficit caused by the bankers".

"The bankers" (that term is starting to fucking annoy me) didn't cause the deficit, did they? Is the deficit not just the fact that the country spends more than it earns, basically it runs at a loss? That wasn't caused by "the bankers", that's just the way the country runs (& the way a lot of countries run as far as I understand it).

Also (again, if my understanding is correct), you can't "pay off" a deficit. It's not a debt. You spend £500 every year, yet you only earn £400, therefore you have an annual deficit of £100. You can reduce that, you can get rid of it completely, but you can't "pay it off". Am I missing something? Or have I just got this completely wrong?

I don't have any deep insight into this really but first on the deficit: if you spend more than you earn then you have to borrow unless you have cash reserves. So yes, in that case deficit means (or rather implies) debt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_debt

Second, think about a country running at a loss. It must therefore have bought more than it's sold. The two remaining options are that it sold more than it bought, or that it sold and bought in equal quantity.

At any time all countries are either breaking even or there is one set of countries gaining and another set of countries losing.

Because countries are not all made equal, and due to accident or natural forces of whatever kind, the situation where all countries break even never happens. Between countries there are always winners and losers. Winners are in a position to leverage their wealth by exploiting the losers. This is what Britain, or more accurately the British ruling class, did to it's Empire. It took a while but the Empire collapsed, we lost our wealth and other parts of the world are now making gains. They will do so at our expense.

The end result of this competition between nations is that real people suffer, in fact let's be clear: they die. It's probably coming to us*. Nations and nationalism along with empires and imperialism are evil!

Edit: Sorry forgot to actually answer your first question about bankers, to which the above does relate. It's not the bankers which have fucked us it's nations and nationalism, empires and imperialism and fundamentally capital and capitalism.

Final edit: Just as a final thought on the whole thing, the entire spectacle is a murderous nonsense which if a child were to see it would be immediately obvious to them. The sum of all human labour is clearly more than sufficient to keep us all housed, warm, fed and happy without crisis after crisis, war upon war - if we spent our working time providing for each other as communities. But most of us don't, not that we really have a choice. I have worked hard for 20 years doing what? Essentially, helping to take wealth from one large set of people and putting it into the pockets of a much smaller set of people. The first set didn't magic that wealth into being, they worked hard for it too. As diplomacy is war by other means, so capitalism is theft by other means. Theft of your time - I hesitate to call it slavery, as have many others hesitated, so it's lucky we have a less loaded term for it, wage-slavery.


Footnotes
======
* Of course it already has to earlier generations, and to a much smaller extent to the current generation, what I mean is it is probably coming wholesale to this generation.
 
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Debt effects deficit. Our bailout of the banks increased the deficit. Our continued writing off of private equity debt stagnates the deficit.

You can also draw conclusion that the deficit is caused by the bankers. They may not be responsible for the Government spending (outside of initial bailout as above) but they've certainly killed any demand for trade over the past 3 years which is hitting harder than an increasing debt. National debt is relatively low compared to what it's been like since WW2.
 
Interesting interview on Jeremy Vine today - nurse on 40 grand, retiring on two-thirds final salary was talking to a woman in the private sector on 14 grand and no pension whatsoever apart from the state pension. Pretty incredible divide that exists between public and private.
 
Interesting interview on Jeremy Vine today - nurse on 40 grand, retiring on two-thirds final salary was talking to a woman in the private sector on 14 grand and no pension whatsoever apart from the state pension. Pretty incredible divide that exists between public and private.

Bit difficult to make a judgement based on that and for some reason iPlayer won't let me listen to the two hour long Vine programme, but the point of the industrial action is not some battle between private sector and public sector, it's people having their conditions destroyed generally standing up against those who are imposing those conditions. I have worked in the private sector for years, with a higher salary than both of those but have very poor pension provision. So what?

And yeah, what the woman in the private sector should be doing is organising with her fellow workers to fight for their own conditions, not moaning that some other workers have actually stood up for themselves.
 
but the point of the industrial action is not some battle between private sector and public sector

It's hard for the private sector to have much sympathy tho - it's like going over to a camp full of starving people in Africa and driving past eating a full roast dinner while complaining that you don't have enough food. What you already have we'd give our right arms for.

And yeah, what the woman in the private sector should be doing is organising with her fellow workers to fight for their own conditions

Nah man, it was hard enough forming unions in an era of full employment. Trying to form a union and go on strike when there are two and a half million unemployed plus several million east europeans desperate for your job is..well...lets just say...difficult.

not moaning that some other workers have actually stood up for themselves.

I don't think you stood up for yourselves particularly - the government simply decided not to destroy your unions like the private sector destroyed them. I think it was luck more than anything else and that you're in a profession where if you strike it affects the country.
 
It's hard for the private sector to have much sympathy tho - it's like going over to a camp full of starving people in Africa and driving past eating a full roast dinner while complaining that you don't have enough food. What you already have we'd give our right arms for.

You're mistaken, I don't work in the public sector (at the moment). I wasn't on strike today. I have worked in the public sector, twenty years ago. Since then I've worked in the private sector. But in any case, I don't identify with a "sector", that just seems silly! I'm a human being, and someone who has to work for a boss in order to live, a member of the working class. That class membership is worth mentioning because it completely defines my economic relationship with the rest of the world, for ever. The sector membership is ephemeral and merely a matter of which things have been put under state management rather than private management.

Yes I agree it's hard because the picture painted by the government and the media is that it's "taxpayer's money" that's being spent. It's convenient, for the state and the interests of the rich, to have this distinction between private and public sector because it divides the working class, as you demonstrate so clearly. It sets us against each other.

To examine the issue neutrally it's necessary to depersonalise it, i.e. put to one side for a moment your (quite rightful) unhappiness at your own conditions and see that the strike is a group of workers fighting for their conditions. It's something we should have solidarity with.

Ismene said:
knockando said:
And yeah, what the woman in the private sector should be doing is organising with her fellow workers to fight for their own conditions

Nah man, it was hard enough forming unions in an era of full employment. Trying to form a union and go on strike when there are two and a half million unemployed plus several million east europeans desperate for your job is..well...lets just say...difficult.


I'm not specifically promoting unions and strikes, these are just the most obvious, historically widespread and recognisable forms of workers fighting back against their exploitation. I am just promoting the notion that in order to achieve better conditions we have to fight back against those who impose the conditions. That might take the form of striking, but it could take other forms. I am impressed by the work of SolFed, who, though not a traditional "trades union", have helped workers take direct action themselves against bosses who have treated them unfairly, and supplemented the workers action with pickets by their members. This is quite an interesting kind of solidarity, which doesn't restrict itself to the bounds of sector, industry and workplace, and operates outside the state-approved Trades Union machinery.

Yes of course it's difficult to fight back, but that's not a reason for not doing it! That's why it's a fight and not some kind of dinner party.

Ismene said:
knockando said:
not moaning that some other workers have actually stood up for themselves.

I don't think you stood up for yourselves particularly - the government simply decided not to destroy your unions like the private sector destroyed them. I think it was luck more than anything else and that you're in a profession where if you strike it affects the country.

As mentioned earlier it wisnae me!
 
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