The Two Extremes

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Two things at yesterday’s TUC Annual Conference grabbed my attention.

The first occurred as the Governor of the Bank of England rose to speak. This prompted the RMT delegation to walk out of the room and, instead of listening to what he might or might not have had to say, they went off to watch, or so it is reported, children’s television.

The second was the speech given by Merseyside’s Chief Fire Officer who pointed out that the public services were riddled with ‘bone idle people’ and that bosses needed to show ‘muscle, sack some people’.

There you have it in a nutshell. Common sense at one extreme and pointless childishness at the other.
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The Dinosaurs Posturing

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The dinosaurs of the trades union movements were out and about yesterday at the start of the TUC Conference posturing about fighting spending cuts and protecting their members’ jobs by means of what one of them called a campaign of civil disobedience. And this before anyone knows where the cuts will fall.

We will hear much about workers’ pay and conditions in the next few days, but nothing at all about those of the union leaders themselves. A report by the Taxpayers Alliance showed that 38 trade union General Secretaries and Chief Executives receive pay and benefits in excess of £100,000 per year. The top six men earn between £106,000 and £127,000.

What do these overpaid people know about the pay and conditions of their members?
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