I have just come back from France on Eurostar and was mightily relieved that there were no breakdowns. I only relax once the train has gone through the tunnel. I had read that there were to be disruptions due to a dispute about who waves the train off from Paris, but it all went smoothly. Now however we face a tube strike on 7 September, and I do not know how I am going to get across London, given the chaos that these strikes cause. It is also likely that there is to be BA strike at Xmas time, when I am due to travel with them; and a strike is looming at the BBC. I can well understand this one, as it is hard for staff to find that their pensions are being frozen while “talent” and some executives are paid very large salaries. I have no sympathy for or understanding of the transport strikes. First, they harm commuters, who already pay a fortune for their tickets and often travel in extreme discomfort. Second, they damage the very existence of the enterprise, so that the strikers may eventually find they are out of a job. Third, there are budget cuts all round. What can they achieve? Should the law be tightened still further?
“A stitch in time saves nine”.
———–
The Law should be reformed in this way:
1. A new condition should be introduced, genericly across the participatorily-cooperative board, as first and second resorts, firstly for all Woerkplaces n Britain and secondly for every level of Lifestyle (off-duty from the workplace) in Britain;
and that newly legislatedMethodology-sequence should be (in short) that:
The first resort for recognising Needs and Hows and their Affordable-effectiveness-costs shall be voluntarily the Win-Win-Win Method III guided-steps, and the same voluntarily entered into Method III shall also be the first resort for Problem Solving.
Within the same first-resort legal framework shall be the use of the Six Thinking Modes, the principles of effective two-way communication and team-work, and such other skills, micro-skills or abilities/enablements as shall be thought desirable, advisable or necessary. (see “Leader Effectiveness Training” by Thomas Gordon).
The second resort will be contingent upon failure of the first resort to reach an adequately win-win-win agreement; and shall consist of voluntary win-win-win participatorily-cooperative Conflict-Resolution. (see “Every-One Can Win” by Cornelius & Faire).
The third resort would be contingent upon failure of voluntary resorts 1 and 2, and should be the already well-known but compulsory but competitive mediation and thereafter negotiation meetings.
The fourth resort would be contingent upon failure of resorts 1, 2, and 3 and would be be compulsory Arbitration (also already well known).
============
Since friendly participatorily-cooperative win-win-win Method III procedures take a long time to learn and propagate, Time becomes of a double-essence in agreeing needs and problems, namely regular timeslots on (say) a weekly basis for practising Method III, in legislated timeframes of (say) five years, to both practice and propagate Method III for resort 1 and resort 2;
whilst retaining, and possibly considerably tightening, the existing compulsory stages of mediation, negotiation, and arbitration.
===============
“A stitch in time saves nine”.
===============
JSDM0355F03Sep10)
If there’s a tube strike then I’ll offer a piece of advice once given by Lord Tebbit: On Your Bike!
Not in London I wouldn’t – many drivers don’t even seem to notice cyclists!
like, ‘invest in (buy) a trike with a large-ish luggage-trailer behind’ ?
Seriously, the Baroness has a right, quite apart from a natural and modern-civilisational Need, to perform what the original author of “Six Thinking Hats” English doctor Edward de Bono defines as ‘Red hat thinking’ meaning allowing full emotional expression of the situation without having to rationally-justify one’s words.
(( Baroness, your emotional ‘snapshot’ of British commuters often travelling “in extreme discomfort” is existentially somewhat exaggerative, wouldn’t you think (except of course had it been under an agreed ’round’ of Red-hat thinking) ? )).
As for strikes for more money to be handed-out to ordinary workers from the Common Purse being (“)understandable in the brazen face of grossly overpaid “talent” and “indispensable management” (“), where has the survival-equation gone that says thrift-wise “we must labour to earn our living and must live within our means ” ?
HSBC bank board has today joined last year’s RBS board – (( whose thinly-veiled “strike threat” was that if their obscenely-gross self-handouts (including for failing to protect and, criminally worse, for embezzlingly gambling-away depositors’ and investors’, savings and lifesupports-monies) were in any way curtailed, they the entire-boardroom and upper-management would emigrate en bloc to some distant overseas ‘tax-haven’, taking both their personal-billions and the trillions of their rich and upper-class clientele accomplices’ goodwill as well)) – joined the old RBS board not simply with a with a threat to “jump ship” but the whole of the British Banking Sector would join in and “desert” Britain.
Little is understandable about workers, who are already being paid comfortably in excess of one-human-living each per week, forewarning that they will “stop work” and strike for more money;
and there is far less understandable about grossly self-over-remunerated “key management” and “irreplaceable talent” in boardrooms, upper-management, and freelance-expertise (including in the BBC) threatening to “desert” or to emigrate lock-stock-and barrel to an alien country.
————-
Many parliamentarians believe that any money you can accrue within the law, and similarly spend within the law, is a totally private matter and none of anybody else’s business.
Wrong: every penny given or taken from the Common Purse represents and in that sense is, a ‘life’; and we do not need anyone to be over-consuming and extincting Earth-Lifesupports.
Both income and expenditure is a matter-in-common that should be publicly-accountable and auditable. Where the taking of life and the exploitation of lifesupports is concerned. nothing needs to be hidden nor “private”.
————
As far as “immobility” goes, both over-payment of and over-consumption by the “indispensable rich” and under-payment of and under-consumption by the “dispensable poor” become causes of different kinds of immobility.
The wildly-extensive forms of “striking” or “deserting”, from top-to-bottom of our civilisation, are signs and symptoms of a complexity of insidious corruptions, of body, mind, spirit, and of civilised-structures over-all.
As such, we see them arising in other Posts by Peers, currently such as in “Stephen Hawking”, “The Demon Drink”, “Home Education”, and “The Drugs Debate”.
————–
We really do need much more to “Be Prepared”, and to have already-learned how “if it ain’t broke, to fix it so that it don’t ever become broke”.
==============
(JSDM 2359F03Sep2010).
Infrastructure is different from any other industry. A non-exhaustive list included: water; trains; electricity; major social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter; Google; email provider; internet service providers; fire; police; gas and hospitals.
There are two key characteristics to infrastructure. Firstly, it’s a natural monopoly. In some cases it’s for legal reasons (the police) but in most cases it’s physical (why would I build a train line from Hull to London if one already exists?). Secondly, that the provision of these services are vital on a day-to-day basis for most people, or that to lose them would cause very intense disruption to some people (e.g. trains).
So, when dealing with infrastructure we must change our mindset. We are no longer dealing with a standard client/worker/company relationship – because the customer is tied to that one company, so no free market can exist. Instead a different model must be used for determining how these services are provided. In the case of the tube I believe this should result in nationalisation, and a tripartite form of governance: workers, tube users (determined by ownership of a registered Oyster card) and the Mayor of London. As part of this unique form of governance, it’s reasonable to ban strike action, or strike-break if wildcat strikes do occur.
This may sound like a deeply right-wing policy. I completely disagree. This is a policy that takes power away from two powerful and privileged* elites: the RMT and the tube companies, and gives it to all commuting Londoners.
*In the sense that the RMT have unique powers, not that they are especially rich or powerful outside of their ability to shut down London.
“I do not know how I am going to get across London, given the chaos that these strikes cause.” agreed with Dave H. By bike.
But how NOT to interact with vehicles would be an impossible task for somebody so intimately concerned with the Laws of the Land, Croft. It can be done ,but some pedestrians get stroppy.
I had a trike for the disabled which I used once in the West end/Westminster, and it was hopeless. Since it was a wheelchair trike it at least had the sympathy of the pedestrian who recognized it as a wheelchair bona fide pavement/sidewalk user. I ran a further risk of losing it to the enthusiast bike/trike thief, which is not so much a concern with an £80 push bike.
But I’m coming from 60 miles away with a suitcase . . .
“But I’m coming from 60 miles away with a suitcase . . .”
I’ll send you the pannier bags for the bike!
Or do you have a tandem partner to do all the pedalling?
I can well understand this one, as it is hard for staff to find that their pensions are being frozen while “talent” and some executives are paid very large salaries.
===============
Lets look at the bit you’re responsible for, government and their pension schemes.
Raising the state retirement age. Every year that goes up, its 5,000 pounds you’ve stolen from a future pensioner.
Why is this happening? Because you’ve spent the money. All the money people have been forced to give for their state pension, you as a politician have spent.
Investment? What’s the return? How much has the cash grown to? Answer. It hasn’t. The assets are zero.
So if you think the BBC employees are p****d off, just wait til the electorate cotton on what you’ve been doing with their money
Time to get creative – you can still use a bike, probably only three or four hours cycling, and ship your suitcase the day before via a courier company on overnight delivery 🙂
“I support industrial action as long as it doesn’t personally inconvenience me”.
The whole point of striking is to cripple the infrastructure. If you strike nicely and politely you’ve kind of missed the point. Worried about transportation across the capital, are you? Well, perhaps, as a member of the Lords in good standing, you could use a little of your political standing to enquire as to how the distribution of the “necessary cuts in spending” impacts that.
You get what you pay for. This is not just a description of the way things are but the way they should be. If you aren’t prepared to pay for staff to run a decent public transport system then you shouldn’t have one.
So McDuff, a monopoly provider is justified in crippling everyone else’s business to press for more money? It’s an interesting notion that we get what we pay for; if only we did. Pay bargaining is’t like that is it? When one union decides to set its own terms and conditions by force it’s as immoral as one employer forcing his/her terms on employees.
The distribution of public spending cuts is bound to focus on those who are the beneficiaries of the state’s largesse. It is clear that the UK public has largely lost sympathy with the ‘unworthy wastrels’, welfare reform is long overdue, it does nobody any good to receive benefits sufficient to maintain a comfortable life style without very good reason. Mental health patients are not helped by long term handouts, they are disadvantaged by them. Why would we have sympathy for a strike of relatively well paid workers whose leaders are intent in making political capital but little else?
Here’s how to reform welfare:
make the recipients repay the ‘loan’ once they are in employment.
Bonkers, isn’t it?
A monopoly provider? A union is a monopoly provider? Man, I thought that the Tory “Big Society” insanity was the best example I’d heard of someone in government not actually comprehending the history of the 20th century on any level, but that might just beat it.
The British public has indeed lost its tolerance for the media-created fantasy dole recipient. It’s just a crying and bitter shame that the few examples that have been discovered of cases where the welfare system can be described as “largesse” are exceptions to a distinctly stingy rulebook. (and invariably all in Tory councils, too. The old “incompetent or evil” dichotomy strikes again). The cuts will, of course, as expected, mainly therefore fall on the least amongst us and will be justified by pretending that the Daily Express has ever been capable of telling the truth.
Heaven forfend, of course, that we should do something like raise taxes on the wealthy. No no. “We’re in it together” means “you lot down the bottom get to fight amongst yourself for the scraps again”.
I believe the term in use at the moment is, for example “disproportionate impact on disabled people”. But then, kicking cripples is one of those fun rich people hobbies I never understood, a bit like fox hunting really. Still, I suppose that it’s not as if I can blame the ConDems in totality, they’re just keeping the pattern going from the old Labour government. After all, if you can’t lie about scroungers and fakers and people who should just pull their socks up and learn some self-reliance, how else are you going to distract people from your self-interested incompetence?
As far as what the leaders of a given union are after, I don’t share your skills for telepathy, I only read their press releases. I don’t know if anyone has bothered to address specific complaints, but I do know that we have a history in the UK of believing ourselves to be spending far more tax on things than we actually do, and of thus complaining when we get the second-rank service we pay for rather than the first-rank service we think we should get for free because we’re, like, the greatest country in the world, innit? Cutting transportation budgets and using the budgets we do have to engage in crazy theoretical spending experiments based on transparently ludicrous economic ideas is a fine British tradition, and we have the infrastructure to prove it.
Perhaps if we had a bit more of a French tradition of striking all the time we’d have worked out that if you want a decent system you have to pay for it. Here’s hoping we’ll work that out.
In the meantime, sort of sucks to be in London, I guess. My sympathy for the members of the ruling class who might be inconvenienced by uppity strikers, however, is pretty much non-existent.
In showing my resonsnce with McDuff’s quite soberly advocative submission, there has to be included a clarificational-snippet upon
(“) we have a history in the UK of believing ourselves to be spending far more ‘Tax’ on things than ‘we’ actually do, and of complaining when we get the second-rate service we pay for rather than the fist-rate service we think we should get… (“).
(Often) Tax-contributions are spent majorly upon the Governmental costs of legislating, executing (through the Judiciary and the Civil Service) and ‘delivering’ (through either the Civil Service, Qango, or ‘Private@ contractual-sector) infrastructure or a service to the Needy.
Instantially
(( apart from the 20th century insance of a Chinese Government department billing the parents, of killed peaceful student demonstrators, for the Army’s ‘live’-bullets that shot them down (reportedly in Tianjenmin Square) ))
another truly sore-thumb instance but from a British Commonwealth country not long after that Chinese debacle, shows the hugely-hidden ‘malfeasance’ of shall-we-say “first-rate tax-contributions” being paid to the Government, only to have them gobbled-up on their way back down to the Needy-Poor by the “second-rate governmental-middle-men”, such that “worst-rate”, “nil-“, or “negativising-” service actually arrived in the hands of the Needy.
A large very-disadvantaged Minority was in need of Housing and other lifesupports; so the Government passed the Legislation for the Cost of that infrastructure and services.
The money was soon spent; but none of it arrived where it was needed, neither as Housing and lifesupports nor as Money.
Furthermore, the first the Public heard of it was in a Protestant church service where a ‘senior moderator’ (‘from the upper priesthood’) detailed the Case from the pulpit, that most of that Tax fund had gone in Payments to Consultants, Government. and Qango departments, and so much of the remainder had been spent on printing-equipment and paper and ink and mailing-costs to inform the Disadvantaged they had been awarded Housing and lifesupports, that there was totally insufficient money left available for the Housing and lifesupports themselves to be paid-for.
==================
So, Yes McDuff; you advocate in the right “balls-up park”.
(JSDM0937F10Sep10)
“it does nobody any good to receive benefits sufficient to maintain a comfortable life style without very good reason.”
It depends on whether you are importing a susbstitute working class from abroad, along with your fruit and vegetables, to do the work instead. If you are they might just as well be comfortable.
“Mental health patients are not helped by long term handouts, they are disadvantaged by them.”
It all depends on how they use the long term handouts.
The problem with political statements is that they apply to everybody! How can it possibly be known how the mental patient spends his handouts, and whether he spends them wisely?
(like all/any of the other unemployed!)
As long as they are claiming for their previous/perceived affliction, it scarcely matters.
McDuff, it is possible to be aware of 20th century history, indeed to recognise what a positive force the unions have been for some employed working people in the 19th/20th century (but not all) without espousing a sentimental notion of what they are mostly about today. So few people now belong to a union; they understandably but unattractively defend their own pay and conditions, sometimes to the detriment of the industry that employs them,and expect the Labour Party to dance to their tune. I have watched the impact, almost wholly negative on patients, of the public sector unions on the NHS and local government.
The fantasy dole recipient you talk about is alive and well in every town, living on housing benefit for the families created specially for the purpose, raking in invalidity benefit for a back problem that was resolved many years ago and working in the black economy for cash. Fruit picking, it’s beneath them, photocopying or cleaning cars or waitressing, leave it to the Albanians. I take your point that there are many thousands of people who need support through a bad period and a lot of help to get back into work habits, or through disability are never going to be able to work but there are many others who will waste away years doing nothing because the State is willing to support them comfortably. I do not deny that many people are shabbily treated by employment advisors and others don’t get what they are entitled to or need but we must have a realistic approach to minimising the time people spend dependent on welfare.