Affluence for influence

Chris lancashire

Unite is the modern day NUM and Crow of the RMT an absolute ringer for Scargill. Both will ultimately be defeated but at a considerable cost.
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.

Derek Green

The most disgraceful aspect of the Trades Unions funding the Labour party is the £10 million of taxpayer's money given to them for "modernisation". This is then re-cycled back to the Labour party to keep it solvent. If the unions used their own money for modernisation, they would have £10 million less to hand back to Labour. Does the BBC mention this - of course it doesn't!

John Adlington

The more strikes the better. Excellent timing.

Stevie

And how much of my money, and every other tax payers money has Nulabour funnelled into the coffers of these self same unions? This is a scandal waiting to happen.

Ed P

And some of the donations the unions make to NuLab come effectively from DfID grants (i.e., taxpayers). Cosy, isn't it?

andrew

I agree with John Adlington, hopefully the whole country will grind to a halt, and the election will once again become a choice of progress or regress, instead of who can tell the biggest lies. Then we'll see how Labour does!!!

Andy Leeds

The Unions have 'taken over' the Labour Party and are busy buying the general election. We need Union reform to break up these overmighty groups which are acting like monopolies and cartels to the detriment of the majority of the people. Far more people are not members of unions than are.

pete-s

When will the public wakeup and remember the union/Labour bond and that now Liebour have been bought lock, stock and barrel by the unions. Why have Liebour not tacked the HUGE public sector pay and pension problems?P

Bert

Reminds me of the militant infiltration of Labour in the early eighties. This needs to be given serious airtime, it is scary and much worse than Ashcroft.

Ian Walker

Would be an interesting tactic for the Tories to wind up bignouths like Crow - you can just bet he'd be unable to keep schtum for the good of the brotherhood.

Obviously don't taint Cameron with this, and Boris is too precious an asset as well, but there must be some union-hating thunderer who could do the job. In fact Ken, as Shadow Business, might be a good choice.

Nothing like a few months of strikes on the Tube to create a few extra marginals in London.

yarnesfromhorsham

Whelan - is he related to Blinkie?

Vulture

Bob Crow is a meatheaded Stalinist mugwump whose political ideas froze solid in about 1950. But I don't think his union is tied to Liebour or bankrolls it.

Indeed, I heard him on Any Questions abt a month ago denouncing Liebour and declaring that his party - I assume his soulmate Scargill's Socialist Party - will be putting up candidates at the General Election, which presumably would hurt Liebour. Does anyone know anything about this?

strapworld

Chris Lancashire is spot on. During the Fire Brigade strike during which the Green Goddess's were used by the military. In London the police had their transit vans filled with fire extinguishers!!! Out on patrol 24/7.

This arrangement proved highly successful and they wanted to bring in small mobile fire units in each area. Guess who blocked it?

The union could not allow efficiency to take over from old fashioned and outdated practices.

Cameron should announce that he will curtail the power of trades unions, with a bill to reduce the amount of money they be allowed to take in subscriptions to 5p a month from all workers who wish to belong to a trades union.

All monies raised by trades unions will not be allowed to be used to assist any political party, in anyway whatsoever. Powers be given to the Courts to seize all monies and properties owned by any union breaching this restriction.

All elections for officials will be by ballot supervised by an independent body.

No official can be appointed if less than 80% of the membership participate in that election.

The time to finish the job Thatcher started is upon us.

But is Cameron the man to do it? Of course not!

Glen Green

Let's face it - Liebour need the £10,000,000 "modernising" fund from government (via the unions), because without it they would go bust. Sounds like a good idea until you realise that we would then be left with a Chinese democracy (a case of voting for whoever you want, so long as it is the Conservatives).

Yes, I know that there will still be a whole raft of smaller parties to vote for, but between them they will poll no more then 15% of the votes. And don't think that the Lib-Dems will fill the void because they won't garner enough votes to compete.
No....we need the unions to bankroll Liebour because if Liebour didn't exist as a viable alternative to the Conservatives then our democracy would probably end!

What we need is a stronger Lib-Dem party; a party with proper ideals, not just a party who's sole purpose is to remain in power and collect a wage for as long as possible.

Wight Tory

affluence x influence = effluence

The New Libour project in one simple sum....

Owen Morgan

strapworld said: "No official can be appointed if less than 80% of the membership participate in that election."

I'm afraid that that isn't something any government could realistically impose, since the turn-out at a general election is never anything like eighty per cent.

Moraymint

"Britain is emerging from the deepest recession since 1929 ..."

David, you're wrong on that one. Britain is about to enter into the deepest recession (let's call it a depression) from the second half of 2010 onwards.

"Whelan, Crow, Simpson and Woodley are fixated on disruption ..."

Yes, and these guys and others like them will ensure that the next 5 years, and quite possibly longer, will see the UK grappling with unprecedented socio-economic upheaval.

Why "unprecedented" you ask? Well, the answer lies in these links:

http://tinyurl.com/y92k5pr

http://tinyurl.com/yzm4f89

Go figure.

Moraymint

Bert
March 12th, 2010 9:37am

"This needs to be given serious airtime ..."

What, by the BBC do you think? Altogether now, "Whoarhahahahaha .... ", until we all fall down.

Chris lancashire

Moraymint: you are dead right - we haven't seen the recession yet. Unicredit, the Italian-German bank warns today that the UK Bond market is ready to take fright and expect an accompanying run on Sterling (which has already depreciated 25% in 12 months). The only thing stopping this is an international expectation that the Tories will win a clear majority and begin the long, hard job of restoring the nation's finances.

So whatever happens, post-election we are in for trouble: Brown win = immediate and sharp downturn for the length of his premiership.
Tory win: long hard 3 year slog back to where we were 4 years ago.

Moraymint

Chris lancashire
March 12th, 2010 11:15am

Yes, you're right up to a point.

However, most "experts" and other hanger-on commentators fail to factor in the near-critical situation regarding the world's energy resources (by that I mean "cheap energy resources").

Sure, there's billions of barrels of oil stuck in the earth. The problem is that when it costs damned near a barrel of oil to extract and refine a barrel of oil, the way the world works changes dramatically.

We've pretty much reached the point now where, over the next 5 years (and certainly beyond), we're going to have make our economy work with oil at never less than $100 per barrel.

This isn't cranky stuff. It's just that the real impact hasn't hit home yet; this "black swan" will start start flying overhead during the next 24 months.

Here's some more reading to follow my earlier links:

http://tinyurl.com/ydtxxy8

http://tinyurl.com/yjbltfj

I say again: go figure.

Nicholas

Glen Green, what an odd perspective. All of the things you write about the Conservatives are probably more applicable to New Labour. It was Blair who said that New Labour aspired to be the "political wing of the British people" and the sub-text of recent New Labour ideology has been to construct the basis for a one-party state.

Personally, I would like to see a parliament where the moderates, Conservative and Lib-Dems, debate across the chamber as the largest parties, and the extremists, Labour old or new, are relegated to being the fringe, minority party they deserve to be with no hope of ever holding power over us again. Without the Unions support and their Union-contrived hold over the public sector (which ought to be strictly apolitical) this would undoubtedly be the case.

The Labour record of governing in the last 65 years has been overwhelmingly disastrous for Britain and the Lib Dem breakaway should have pointed the way. Blair managed to restore the fortunes of the Labour Party on the basis of an extravagant lie, but his "moderate" victory heralded a bandwagon full of leftist extremists who have spent 13 protected, sponsored and encouraged years burrowing into the fabric of our society and seizing the narrative in most fields.

The tribalism of the Left means that even those centre-left or moderates feel obliged to pursue politics on the basis of their antipathy towards the Tories rather than taking a long hard look at how badly the mutant remains of New Labour represents them. Somehow they manage to accommodate the dichotemy of their genuinely held left of centre values with New Labour's fascist track record (and it now looks as though the old communists and the new fascists are collaborating to take the party forward to further ideological extremes). So the over-arching leftist campaign narrative becomes one of keeping the Tories out at all costs, even if this means supporting a fairly repugnant and ineffective regime kept solvent by extremists and led by extremists.

It has been very strange to watch a discredited government actually try to govern through constantly attacking the opposition in a kind of weird party political campaign played out as policy. This ideological imperative - pursuing the goals of the party rather than what is right for the country - clearly goes back a long way, as evidenced by Neathergate and other secret New Labour projects which abandoned electoral mandate for ideology - an ideology mainly directed at discomforting the perceived "enemy".

Colin

CCHQ should go to work and remind everyone just exactly what these fat cat union barons stand for and how they stand close comparison to the fat cat's and cold war traitors who led the unions in the sixties and 70's.

Another open goal...

Bert

Moraymint

I do realise that its a forlorne hope.

Oldsilverfox

Where are the thoughts of Milord Mandelson, our esteemed (though unelected) Business Secretary about these strikes, which are designed to wreck what is left of Britain's faltering economy ???
A deafening silence.

djw2009

What are you talking about David Blackburn? You assumed the left was dead, did you? You ARE the left. You wrote recently that conservatism is "obsolete" -- it is true that the left is going with the tide of history, as the changing demographic realities make it harder and harder for our nation to be restored. So to that extent, conservatism is being made obsolete. But don't kid yourself in your embrace of every strand of egalitarianism going that you are anything else but a leftie. The left is not just the unions--it is multiculturalism, gay rights, feminism, ecolunacy, quangocracy, the EU--in fact, David Blackburn, all your causes! When Hasan says the left is triumphant, he is merely saying the same thing as you when you say conservatism is obsolete.

Moraymint

Nicholas
March 12th, 2010 11:43am

Outstanding post, sir.

The Laughing Cavalier

Who's the frog -eyed loony in the photo?

oldtimer

That can be summed up as 100 seats for £25 million, or £250,000 per seat.

As I recall, that sounds cheaper than the peerages that My Blair used to sell. Can we conclude that the unions have driven a hard bargain for their undoubted influence? Members will be impressed.

General Zod

From Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun via conservativehome:

59 Labour candidates are members of Unite*, whilst there are eight further PPCs who are current or former Unite staff. Unite has given Labour £11 million in the last three years;
26 candidates belong to the GMB, which has given £6.3 million to Labour since 2005;

18 candidates belong to Unison, which has contributed £8.3 million to Labour coffers.

Come on Tories, tell the electorate: Labour is owned and run by the unions. Labour causes strikes. Labour talks about controlling public spending, but is run by people who push for payrises above the inflation rate.

PayDirt

The focus now is on the forthcoming election, this is short-term. There have been previous comments here, sometime ago, about the wisdom of Conservatives taking power just when the plug is about to be pulled, and I’m thinking all the forthcoming social unrest, strikes, ever higher unemployment until the economy is put back into some sort of order. There is a high probability that Cameron will form a Govt which will end up like Heath in the 1970’s recession and we’ll be seeing things like a three-day week. And that means a return to power in short order by a disgruntled electorate of some form of New Labour socialists (not Brown). A better long-term strategy for Conservatives would be to let Brown carry on for a year or two more, wage war on the forces of discontent and then ride to the rescue. As it is I fear it will be a reborn Labour Govt which provides the “solution” and stays the longer course.

terence patrick hewett

We are certainly at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, and after the coming general election there is going to be a bloody fight between the union movement grass roots and the Fabian socialists for the soul of Labour. The grass roots are concerned with family and mutuality as well as toleration and respect for people. The Fabians are fascists intent on state control and suppression of individual rights as well as the creation of a client state through radical social engineering. The unions will be out to wreak revenge on those who have done such terrible damage to the country and to the Labour Party. I wish them well.

The debate is not only in the nature of the Labour Party but the nature of the political voting system and the nature of governance itself and applies to all political parties. In the light of recent parliamentary history I believe that the top down scenario will be difficult to sustain; if only for the reason that in the age of the internet everybody knows what everybody else is thinking. Certainly the unions are going to be a major part of the debate; they after all have all the money.

This debate is not likely to be resolved in the short term for the simple reason that the unions themselves will undergo an evolutionary change, albeit kicking and screaming, due to changes in the global matrix of technology, whose influence they will finally use when they find that they cannot resist it. The billions wasted on state IT projects is a failure of governance not of technology.

Unions will face the fact that their representation in the public services is likely to be reduced in the medium and long term due to advances in computing, quantum computing, materials, nanotechnology, biotechnology and cognitive science; the world will change in ways we cannot hope to predict. But I believe that unionism will rise to the challenge and become the overriding ethos of left wing politics and also become more representative in the private sector, providing services that people value and need.

Marcher Baron

Now is the summer of our discontent, made vile by these sons of Union. Back to the 70s it is!

King Prawn

For those people who want Brown to stay in power for another couple of years to destroy the Labour Party just remember that he will change the electoral system which will bias against the Tories even more.

Even a Labour supporter such as myself wants Brown out now, followed by a split in the Labour Party within a couple of years.

Archie

Who's that bloke in the photo? Looks like a paid-up member of the KGB or WTF it's calling itself these days!