Day 3830: Either Or-ery

Monday:


Over the weekend Mr Mark Reckons wrote a piece I'd recommend reading on "Whataboutery", which is the way to play politics dirty so that you can attack someone who's proposing a policy you actually agree with.

This is the FALLACY of the RED HERRING: introducing an irrelevant case into an argument.

I'd like to give you a companion to Mr Mark's piece with one on another FALLACY, the fallacy of the FALSE DICHOTOMY.

Most famously presented by the former-Monkey-in-Chief, President Dubbya, as "you're either with us or against us", we've been seeing a LOT of this at the moment.

The most common occurrence is the "NHS fallacy": any reform is to be opposed with cries that the "only choice" is between the status quo and "privatisation", usually "privatisation by the back door" (to get around the fact that whatever it is clearly ISN'T going to be an actual privatisation). In fact, of course, the Hard Labour government oversaw the genuine privatisation of great swathes of our NHS through their Public Finance Initiative, which saw hospitals bought up by private companies and leased back to the public at often excessive rents (which is one of the things leading to the embuggerance of the NHS in spite of above inflation increases in government spending).

Topical this week, the public sector unions are going to go on strike over pensions because the "only choice" is between their current arrangements and "absolute daylight robbery".

Although SOME people might say that it's the UNIONS' position that is: "your money or your life public services"! I mean, just WHO is holding the "gun" saying "don't make me hurt the children" here?

Actually, the double standards employed by the Unions in this "debate" are outrageous. First, the Unions announce that they are going to go on strike. Then Mr Danny sets out the government's position. Now I call that being open and honest with the public, but the Unions call it "deeply inflammatory". They call it deeply inflammatory AFTER they've already announced that – regardless of the ongoing negotiations – they've decided to call a strike. Check the dates on the last two quotes: "Public sector workers back mass strike": 15th June; Danny Alexander's speech: 17th June. Deeply inflammatory. Right.

And now we have Ms Mary Bousted, leader of the ATL teachers' union, accusing the government of a "doing a Robert Maxwell on our pensions". So that would be saying that the government is illegally taking money OUT of the teacher's pension funds and using it to prop up, what, the rest of government spending?

Well, at the moment there is NOT ENOUGH money in those pension funds to meet the expected needs of the teachers (and other workers) who are paying in. So the government has to top that up from general taxation (that's ON TOP OF the employers contributions that we make).

So that would basically be the EXACT OPPOSITE of "doing a Robert Maxwell". That would be keeping the pension fund afloat at the expense of everyone else.

They tell LIES and they call us NAMES and then they have the CHEEK to try and distract your attention from it by saying that WE'RE traducing THEM!

I'd call Ms Mary a Bousted Flush!

Meanwhile, here is another example, this time from the Labour Conspiracy website:

"Our choice is to treat people with dignity or go back to the 1930s"

Is it actually USEFUL to polarise a very difficult debate about benefits and disability into "basic dignity" versus "1930s work programmes, institutions and eugenics" (and that's really not sufficiently coded to avoid cries of Godwin's Law, now is it)?

Could we not start from a basic recognition that the government isn't TRYING to be evil?

The aim of Mr Drunken-Swerve's reforms is SUPPOSED to be to enable people who want to work to be better off if they go to work, not - as the quote implies - to euthanase the disabled.

For the last thirty years, governments have been hiding unemployment among the genuinely long-term ill. It seems to me that one thing that could actively harm the interests of those who are ill is having to support the long-term unemployed out of the same pot of benefits. So, I have to ask: would a benefit system that undid that be better able to provide basic dignity for those in genuine need?

(You COULD reasonably argue "no"; e.g. you might argue that a sort of quasi-universal provision might be more effective, but you would need to justify that as a position, rather than just start from the assertion "any reform must be bad for the long-term ill".)

And if you are going to undo that hiding of unemployment, how are you to do it?

Again, it seems that either you let anyone claim disability-related benefits and accept that the benefit will be spread so thin that it helps no one, or you accept that at some point there's going to be some kind of medical testing involved.

At which point we're down to a question of degree.

So, the proposed tests sound to be too intrusive and too impersonal. And they sound like they are FRIGHTENING people (which I have to say language of "eugenics" exacerbates, which if you think about it puts you on the same side as the scary people - even though the LabCon author is clearly also one of the ones who are scared). Surely the useful question then is: "how do we conduct any testing that we have to in the most sympathetic and dignified manner?"

Clearly there ARE problems on the Coalition side here, almost certainly stemming from a terror at the department of benefits of seeing a huge spike in unemployment claims. So clearly they want to do the undoing by not jumping people from disability benefits to unemployment benefits, but by jumping them straight from disability to work, and that's just impractical. Equally, this is clearly a terrible time to be doing any forward thinking reform because the overriding need for spending cuts will at best muddle your thinking. Like, WHICH target is your main aim? Making sure that sickness benefits go to the sick? Making sure that work actually rewards the worker? Or cutting the overall benefits bill? (And your opponents are ALWAYS going to come back at you with "it's about the cuts" "it's ideological" (yawn)!)

Wouldn't it be better to think about OUTCOMES rather than INTENTIONS? The road to the toasty place being notoriously paved with the latter (as anyone who experienced the last government can testify), saying that a policy is wrong because it does this, or because it fails to do that is both more PRACTICAL and more HONEST than saying that it is just "evil".


The biggest false dichotomies, of course, are on the ECONOMY. And BOTH SIDES are guilty of using 'em.

"We must do this or the economy will fall over!"/"We must not do this or the economy will never recover!" is the now too-familiar battleline between the Coalition and Opposition, and this obfusticates the fact that the policies of both sides are REALLY VERY SIMILAR.

"It was the fault of the last Labour government"/"it was the fault of the bankers", is another.

OF COURSE it is in the Coalition's political interest to portray the Labour Party as credit-crazed spendthrifts, ruinous wastrels who would have us in penury and our children in hock forever. We, after all, are the ones who have to be in power while the agonisingly painful policies of deficit reduction are enacted.

But equally, the Coalition has to have an answer to Hard Labour's naked political opportunism when they seek to pin every scintilla of economic agony to Master Gideon's incompetence at the reins (a "bad news" policy by the Shadow Pocket Money Thief that leads to some frankly bizarre doublethink: for example, when there is a fall in unemployment, apparently, it's because unemployment is a "lagging indicator" when it goes down but "evidence of why we need a plan B" when it goes up).

(This of course was Mr Balls recent interview with Mr Marrmite, the one where he said that "the trade unions must not walk into the trap of giving George Osborne the confrontation he wants" because he spotted that choosing between supporting strikes or supporting the government was a trap for HIM!)

Any half-way decent economist (I do NOT include Mr Bully Balls in that category) will tell you that the cuts have neither begun to bite nor had nearly enough time to change the direction of the economy. The two main things affecting the economy are that MASSIVE RECESSION that happened in 2008 (in case you somehow missed it) and the fact that the government printed like a GAZILLION POUNDS leading to inflation and devaluation. (Though neither of these things are NECESSARILY as bad as they are painted either – another false dichotomy. E.g. inflation reduces the national debt as a share of GDP – as any property owner who survived the Seventies will tell you, it didn't half make their mortgages a doddle; though, flipside again, long term it started the inexorable house price inflation that leaves us now so overburdened.)


The truth is, the policies of Labour and Conservatories (and Liberal Democrats!) are not that different – in fact, given for example the discovery that Mr Alistair Dalek was secretly planning a VAT rise, you can bet your bottom dollar (which may be the only one you have left by now) that had they been returned to power, Hard Labour would have conducted a swift spending review and said "oops, it's worse than we thought, guys, have you SEEN what's happed in Greece? We have to cut faster and deeper!", and done EXACTLY what the Coalition is doing.

The MYTH of Labour's "pain free" cuts… their airy assertion that they would cut 80% of the deficit that we would but their tactical oppositionalism against every single £ reduction in spending… their repeated false dichotomy of "our way or the evil, ideological inflicting of pain on the poor"… it makes it VERY DIFFICULT to have anything approaching a RATIONAL DEBATE.

"We'd like to cut this."

"EVIL!"

"Well, maybe if we only cut it by half."

"INFINITE EVIL!"

I'm sure it plays well to the Labour Chorus, but it gets the country nowhere.

Regrettably, Mr Millipede's response to talk of a leadership crisis is a power grab for control of Shadow Cabinet appointments showing that Hard Labour are turning more INWARDS than looking outwards. While Mr Bully Balls, apparently, no longer even sees the need to run policies by the Shadow Cabinet before launching them. And sofa government worked so WELL for Lord Blairimort, after all.

In an equation where it is EITHER the Coalition OR the Labour Party, Labour seem intent on making themselves IRRELEVANT.

But even THAT is a false dichotomy. The Coalition of course consists of TWO Parties, and the true clash of ideas is now between Conservatories and LIBERAL DEMOCRATS.

You see, the ULTIMATE "either/or" is the MEEJA's HEADS WE WIN-TAILS YOU LOSE game of EITHER "on message" OR "gaffe". If you're "on message" you're a ROBOT, no to be trusted, only lying when your lips move, enemy of the people. If you" gaffe" it's even worse. Hence all this recent fuss over "U-Turns", as though LISTENING to people, DEBATING policy even, shock, CHANGING YOUR MIND were BAD THINGS for a government in what we still LAUGHINGLY describe as a DEMOCRACY (leading to the UTTERLY INSANE suggestion from a Questionable Time panellist that governments should do what is in their manifesto and only what is in their manifesto and the people should shut up for five years and only judge them at election time). DEBATING policy – in CABINET as well as in PARLIAMENT rather than at intimate tête-a-têtes with Fleet Street Editors – reduces the meeja's POWER to dictate the agenda. That's why, for them, a thinking government is a "weak" government and one that does what it's told (by a Prime Monster who does what she or he is told) is a "strong" one.

Obviously the REAL truth is the reverse, and that is why the Liberal Democrats bring real STRENGTH to this Coalition.

We are used to having Government and Opposition. In the Coalition, the Liberal Democrats are BOTH.

And how LIBERAL is that? Liberalism has NEVER been an EITHER/OR; it's always been BOTH: one and many; individual and community; local and global.

That is how I can write a big old self-important diary about "great big, important-y things" like the ECONOMY and SPACE and STUFF, and Auntie Caron, bless her heart, can read it and bring it right down to the REALLY important and PERSONAL with a post about the need for a real Liberal Voice. And they are BOTH what Liberalism is ABOUT.
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Day 3544: The Unions Don't Have to be Our Enemies – part two, a World of Pain

Tuesday:


Why do middle-class teenage "rebels" and Union Barons (not to mention psychopaths like Uncl' Jo Stalin) all love Mr Marx (Karl, not Groucho; you know, the comedian not the philosopher)?

I'll tell you: it's that GINORMOUS loophole "the dictatorship of the proletariat" where the "intellectual" elite get to patronise the "ignorant" workers into doing their old jobs but for their new masters.

It's GREAT if you like lots of personal privilege and bunch of saps to enforce it for you.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, whyever would a Union leader like Mr Mark Swarovski be deceitful about cuts?



One after the other we've had the Unions (or equivalent), the representatives of their VESTED INTERESTS lining up to unsubtly warn us of the dangers of cutting THEIR particular carriage on the gravy train.

First we've had the Heads of the Armed Forces (yes, THEY'RE a UNION too) with dire predictions of unpredictable threats unless the navy gets its two aircraft carriers (HMS Tony and HMS Cherie, I believe they used to be called), and the airforce gets a hundred million pounds worth of joint strike fighters to fly off them so that they can cover the army wherever we happen to invade be defending next. Or in twenty-five years.

Now we get the unions threatening civil disobedience and poll-tax riots. Are they REALLY expecting the mob to fill Trafalgar Square demanding to pay MORE taxes?

Mr Bob "Scare" Crow of the RMS (Really Mean Service) Union has already been out on a "one day" tube strike (I say "one day" because somehow the disruption manages to cover the day either side as well) allegedly "justified" on the grounds of safety (I say "justified" because somehow I don't see public safety being compromised by ticket sellers being asked to come out from behind the glass windows and help people on the platforms), but there was a sinister WHIFF of MUSCLE FLEXING about it, as though Mr "Scare" Crow wanted to be the first to plant a punch on the Coalition.

(And forgive me, but I'm pretty sure that Mr Gandhi didn't take a hundred thousand pound salary to lead the civil rights movement. On the other fluffy foot, no one wants to see Mr "Scare" Crow in a LOIN CLOTH!)

Next up, ooh scary, the BBC coverage of Mr Balloon's first big speech to the Conservatory conference as Prime Monster is threatened by a "dispute over pensions". No, that one's just PETTY.

(Auntie Beeb is doing an admirable job holding the ring so far: I know that because I'M annoyed that they're uncritically reporting the Unions anti-Coalition propaganda… about the cuts hitting people on benefits hardest…or as I'd put it, the cuts in government services hitting the people who USE government services more than the people who don't… or cuts in government jobs affecting more women than men for the wholly outrageous reason that the government EMPLOYS more women than men… and THEY are annoyed that the BBC is uncritically reporting the Coalition propaganda that the cuts are necessary, as opposed to their entirely legitimate magic money tree point of view. Some bias may have been shown in the last sentences.)

But it's almost like EXTORTION, really: "do as we say or else…"

Or, as a spokesperson for the Policepeople's Union might have said: ain't it terrible all these protection rackets wot these Unions is running. You might want some protection from that, know wot I mean, guv. You see us right and we'll make sure that no… harm comes to you, alright, squire, evenin' all.

Ms Charlotte, aka the new Lady GoreGore, fears that the Coalition will not be strong enough to take the heat when the Unions start to hold the public hostage. Their demands may be selfish, their analysis a denial fantasy, but they have the power to really badword things up for the innocent working person.

I think, perhaps I just hope, that the Coalition is stronger than that. And I think that people might be surprised to see that the STEEL comes from the Liberal Democrats more than the Conservatories.

It is very clear that the Unions the Left and the BBC think of the Liberal Democrats as the "weakest link" in the Coalition. They want to break the Government so they are concentrating their fire on us. I think that's a MISTAKE. Steel just gets STRONGER when it is tempered. And I think that they might find Captain Clegg and Mr Danny, not to mention Saint Vince, are tougher badwords than Mr Balloon and the whole of the Bullingdon Club put together.

Look, if it's TRUE what they claim, and we HAVE lost half our voters to Hard Labour and another half our voters to the Greens and another half our voters to the Alliance of Concerned Mothers and the League of Chastity…

(Okay, three halves is a mathematical JOKE, but hilariously all these exaggerated claims of Lib Dems "defecting to Labour (or wherever)" ARE spiralling out of all credibility: they're pretty close to saying that more members have defected than were in the Lib Dems to start with!)

…but if it's true that we've crashed in the polls, then REALLY SERIOUSLY what's in it for us if we break the Coalition?

We see this through until it works or it doesn't. Or as superannuated muppet Yoda would put it:

"Do or do not, there is no try"

What I'm saying is IF the Unions pick a fight with us, then we're going to have to stand up to them because we're DEAD if this fails and we're dead if we give up part way.

Sun Tsu in the Art of War warns that you should always give your opponent a way to escape, because if trapped they will fight like TIGERS.

But read the constitution people: we HAVE to stand up to the Unions because more than anything else in the World standing up to bullies is what the Liberal Democrats are FOR.

Mr Balloon might not have the stomach for this, but Liberal Democrats have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant… and the BRAINS of a FLUFFY ONE!

But it DOES NOT have to be like that.

The Liberal Democrats could be the BEST THING for the Unions in this Coalition: people who will LISTEN to you, people who are NOT dogmatic about the cuts but actually willing to be persuaded and change our minds.

Why not try a bit of reason and argument rather than strutting up and down outside Transport House waving your willies at us! Frankly, we'd rather see you in the LOIN CLOTH!


Mr Ben Mathis Tweets pithily: I'm appalled at the idea of strike action over deficit reduction. Public sector strikes will hit the poorest hardest!

Which is superficially very funny, but then rather less so when you think how TRUE it also is.

Regrettably, there's a chance that the people suffering WILL blame "the Government" or "the Cuts" rather than the Union for taking a vindictive and selfish approach to negotiation.

It is so easy for people who are scared of losing their jobs to be persuaded that SOMEONE ELSE is to BLAME and that SOMEONE ELSE should PAY. There's a LOT of "the recession/deficit/cuts are ALL the fault of the BANKERS" about. The banks do bear SOME of the blame – they leant a lot of money to people who couldn't afford it, backed by property that wasn't worth it – but they don't bear ALL the blame.

Just as some people who borrow too much are victims but also willing participants, so the public services and Government-sponsored departments, bodies and schemes are at least a little COMPLICIT in the ever-expanding state sector. It's hard to pin the blame on the managers when money was being waved in their faces by Whitehall, but somewhere at the back of their heads – you would have hoped – they must have KNOWN this was being fuelled by "money from nowhere". They ought to have at least CONSIDERED what might happen if the Golden Goose got croaked.

The real people to blame, of course, are the last Hard Labour Government. They promised people jobs that they couldn't really afford to pay for and then borrowed money to cover up the shortfall, leaving it for the Coalition to sort out afterwards.

That's really HARSH on the people whose job was paid for on a lie.

To Mr Swarovski's assertion: There is an alternative to public spending cuts.

Daddy Alex has a rather more… SUCCINCT response: Yes. Bankruptcy.

But that way you get dragged into a flame war with a Labour troll with nothing better to do with their time than spout angry aggressive dishonest bilge.

Which is a shame because there is WAY too much anger about already – I remain profoundly taken aback by how Hard Labour would much, much rather spend time hurling the word "traitor" at Liberal Democrats than sitting down and sorting out why they lost and what they need to change about themselves to win next time.

(And before the predictable shouts of "you came third; you lost more than we did", I'll pre-empt that with saying that the Liberal Democrats put on a MILLION votes at the election and only the PERVERSITY of the voting system meant that more votes gave us fewer seats! Which only proves our point about how BROKEN the voting system is.)

What Labour and the Unions are doing with their frankly-opportunist opposition for opposition's sake, is to SQUANDER the BEST EVER opportunity to control spending in a public-service friendly way.

If you could just see past your own WRETCHED temper-tantrum at losing power, and realise that you lost power because you threw it away, not because a different party with their own principles and agenda failed to roll over and do as you demanded when you demanded… then you might, MIGHT be able to work out that you should be SUPPORTING the Liberal Democrats, not trying to break them.

I mean THROW US A BONE, why don't you – we're shackled to this bunch of hard-right wingnuts now, have you any IDEA what it's like trying to get them to tack leftwards? Oh yeah, you had Blair…

The Government likes to talk about how it is doing GROWN UP politics now. If you did the same, treated people as ADULTS – accept that you lost the election; understand that the voters chose to believe that the cuts were necessary; don't just flat out deny that the Government has a point of view that is different because they see thing differently and NOT because they are "evil" – if you talk to ministers with a view to balancing the cuts that they are committed to with some amelioration for the most vulnerable, then you could actually do some GOOD for your member (remember them?).

If you bring options to the table then we can WORK with you and present those to the Coalition, if we HAVE an alternative then we can have something to negotiate with Master Gideon. If you give us nothing we have nowhere to go.

Issuing threats, closing the tube, cancelling the Prime Monster's TV appearances… all this posing and performing might make you feel you are big and important, but you are ACTIVELY HARMING the interests of the people who you claim to represent and, to put it bluntly, are compelled to pay you a big fat wage.

On the whole, you OWE those people, so GROW UP!

And one last thing: it's possible that there are union members, union leaders even, who are already thinking this way, who "get" what the electorate – including their members – were saying at the General Election, and who realise that working together is NOT collaboration but a funny old thing we call democracy.

You guys, you need to SAY SOMETHING.

At the moment, the "back to the Winter of Discontent" crew are getting all the air time and the meeja are just lapping it up, salivating at the thought of a good FIGHT. They are – probably – distorting every part of what you want to say and what we want to say in order to make this black and white, black VERSUS white. You provide the pictures There's no news like BAAAAAD news, after all.

I know, I know… you don't want to risk the Union movement looking split. Well the alternative is that you look like the BADDIES.

Which is just FINE if you want the Coalition in power FOREVER. But you know, I thought that just maybe you don't.
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Day 3543: The Unions Don't Have to be Our Enemies – part one, a Land of Denial

Monday:


Seriously, there are TWO ways this can go.

The Unions can represent their members' INTERESTS by working WITH the Government to pilot through the cuts that EVEN LABOUR said were unavoidable, with the maximum amount of attention paid to minimising the harm done to the most vulnerable, keeping the job losses to natural wastage where possible, freezing pay, showing restraint and keeping more workers IN work…

…or they can throw a tantrum, cause fuss and bother to the public whose jobs and taxes actually go to PAY public sector wages and we'll end up sacking a quarter of them.


It is all too obvious that the Unions and the more vocal knucklebrains in Hard Labour have been SPOILING for a FIGHT with the Coalition all summer.

Not a week, barely a DAY has gone by without some new pronouncement of how the Coalition Cuts are going to bring about the apocalypse: the poor will suffer ten times what the rich will; women will be hit harder; race relations will be set back a thousand years; young people will become a lost generation; old people will be rounded up in detention camps with a single winter fuel allowance between them; the North East will be targeted for extermination; cats and dogs living together; human sacrifice… hang on, that's Gozer the Gozerian…

Anyway.

What's REALLY impressive is that the cuts HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN ANNOUNCED YET.

Golly, if only the Left had had such foresight when they were – you know – RUNNING THE DARN COUNTRY for the last thirteen years. Why they might have seen the end of the Housing Bubble and the Credit Crunch coming.

Tragically, no such PRESCIENCE is shown by Mr Mark Swarovski, writing in the Grauniad, who claims that there is no need to cut public spending by a single penny, because he's found a hundred and twenty billion pounds in unpaid taxes down the back of the sofa.

Even if you IGNORE that he doesn't know the difference between tax AVOIDANCE and tax EVASION… £25billion of his total comes from totally legal tax avoidance – i.e people not paying tax that that they DON'T HAVE TO PAY. Basically he's saying you should pay tax on your ISA… or when you sell your house. Fancy paying 40% of the profits when you move home? No?

Even if you ignore that, the figures are just plucked out of his hat…

According to the National Fraud Authority, the Government loses FIFTEEN billion to tax evasion, not the SEVENTY billion Mr Swarovski claims. Fifteen billion IS a lot of money and, as we've discussed before, ought to be a much more promising target, fifteen times more promising, in fact, for the Government than benefit fraud. But you can't just randomly multiply the figures by five in order to fill the gap in the Budget.

Actually, come to think of it that IS what Hard Labour Chancellors do to fill the gaps in their Budgets…

But even if you ignore ALL that… where does he think that that money is going to come FROM?

Extracting an extra hundred and twenty billion quid from the productive part of the economy… that really WOULD be: "taking money out of the economy just as it's struggling to get back on its feet".

Mr Alistair Dalek, former Hard Labour Chancer and Mr Frown's Sooty-puppet, has said that some of the recovery should come from private sector growth.

I couldn't disagree with him more: ALL of the recovery will have to come from private sector growth!

The Government does not produce any wealth. It doesn't grow food or fish the seas or mine anything from the ground, nor does it take raw materials and add value by manufacturing them into something else. The Government ensures the provision of essential infrastructure – transport, power, water, sewerage, peace (at least that's the theory behind having an army) – and can improve opportunities for citizens – through education, health provision and the welfare state. But these are support services. Government does not produce any wealth.

That is why the Coalition is actually CUTTING the tax on business. It's not just for FUN you know – and not, whatever the Trots tell you, to "make our class rich at the expense of the poor"! We're cutting Corporation Tax so that businesses will have more money to invest in jobs and in equipment, and so that foreign companies will move here or stay here.

In Ireland, the Irish Government RAISED its corporation tax rates… and all the corporations just LEFT. That is why the former Celtic Tiger is now a Celtic HEARTHRUG!

You CAN make a case for supporting construction workers through the recession by having the Government borrow to invest in infrastructure projects, new housing and school repairs (and no, Mr Bully Balls, we didn't ACTUALLY cancel the ones that were being worked on), but ADDING people to the Government payroll does NOT cause economic growth. Quite the reverse!

Every extra wage is one that has to be found by taking more tax from the private workers. More tax now or, if you borrow, more tax later.

Worse still, in areas where there is super-high state sector employment, the Government is actively sucking the best workers out of the system, undermining attempts to persuade new business to set up in areas where all the people with drive and initiative and brains are already in Government offices, leaving these areas a jobs wilderness.


So why is Mr Swarovski saying that we can avoid the cuts altogether?

Well, I'm afraid I have to be HORRIBLY CYNICAL and suggest that he knows PERFECTLY WELL what the economic reality is, but he is trying to deceive people – mainly his own Union members, but also the public – in order to wind them up for a fight.

Why?

More on this story later…
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Day 2437: Dinosaur Stops Tube

Tuesday:


No, this is not about Dr Who and the Invasion of the Wobbly Rubber Monsters.

Large, Placid & Stupid

This is the Tube strike by the RMT or Really Mean Transport Union.

The fault – unsurprisingly – can be traced back to the Prime Monster. Yes, it was Mr Frown who insisted on flogging off the Tube to one of his CRAZY off-balance-sheet PPP schemes, against the wishes of Londoners who had elected Mr Mayor Ken to OPPOSE the government (yes, look how well THAT worked out).


Back in 2003, nine of the twelve London Underground tube lines were handed over to a company called "Metronet" who promised to spend seventeen billion pounds improving them. (The other three tube lines – the Northern Line, the Pick-a-dilly Line and the Julie Bee Line that goes to the BIG TENT in Greenwich – were given to a different company called "Tube Lines" who are going to be sending four-and-a-half billion on similar upgrades).

Earlier this year, though, Metronet suddenly announced that they had OVERSPENT rather a bit. To the tune of one BILLION pounds, it turned out. And could they have the money back, please.

Well, the reaction of most people was: "TOUGH!" After all, wasn't the whole POINT of these "Public Private Partnership" schemes SUPPOSED to be that the private company would get the REWARD in return for accepting the RISKS? The government would agree to pay over the odds prices making profits for the companies involved… so long as those companies controlled the costs. If they started overspending, then the extra would come out of their profit NOT out of the government's pockets. Which are – of course – YOUR pockets.

So Metronet were told: "you're NOT getting any more money! Oh, all right, have a-hundred-and-twenty-one-MILLION-pounds… but that REALLY is it!"

"Okay," said Metronet. "In that case… we're BUST!"

This, of course, is the point where the whole PPP idea is shown to be not worth the paper that Mr Frown scribbled it down on. When it comes down to it, companies like Metronet do NOT have to take the risks: they just go BUST and dump the problem back in the government's lap.

It is not like the government can REFUSE to RESCUE the London Tube: the entire economy is supported by the profits of the City, and most of the rest of the business in the UK gets done in the Capital too. (Yes, that IS a really dumb idea and we should encourage people to move businesses to the north and the west where life is cheaper and happier, but unfortunately that is the opposite of what has actually happened under the Labour and Conservatory governments.) So the country RELIES on the infrastructure that gets most of its businesses to work in the morning… and that means the Tube.

On the other fluffy foot, that very reliance means that ACTUALLY the jobs of the Metronet workers ought to be a lot SAFER than other people's – these jobs are VITAL!

(Whereas jobs in RETAIL disappear all the time, especially with the rise of home shopping on the Wibbly Wobbly Web and DOUBLE especially when some MANIAC shuts down the Underground for a day and costs all the shops millions in lost sales!)

But even so, the RMT wanted a copper-bottomed assurance that their jobs would be guaranteed COME WHAT MAY.

Now, in order to avoid ACTUAL bankruptcy – in which case the Union Workers would have NO JOBS AT ALL – Metronet had gone into what is called ADMINISTRATION, which is like the LIFE SUPPORT WING for companies. This means that the company gets a bit of a reprieve from the people it owes money while it tries to EITHER arrange new finance from the bank or shareholders OR it finds a "white knight" who will buy it up, pay off its debts and start again OR, in the worst case, comes to some kind of arrangement with the creditors to pay some part of their bills and try to limp on. If none of those work, then it's time for the old pearl-handled revolver in the board room.

Judging from their press release, there were TWO main sticking points for the union.

The first was about the pension scheme, and whether all their members would get the pensions that they had been paying for. Now, under the law brought in after Cap'n Bob took the Mirror Group Pension Fund swimming with him in the Med that really ought not to be a problem because the scheme ought to be completely separate from the company anyway. But the union wanted a promise that that was so.

And the other issue is that it looks like Metronet were thinking of making savings by cutting the workforce BEFORE they went bust, and the union was not happy that the administrator was only promising their jobs were safe so long as the company actually was in administration. They wanted the administrators to promise that their jobs were guaranteed even when the administrators were no longer in charge.


So, after hours of negotiations, they were finally promised that even in the event of the ACTUAL END OF THE EARTH there will still be jobs for them the following morning. With this sworn in blood by the Mayor and the administrators, the RMT finally agreed to call off what was left of their strike.

As a promise it is obviously WORTHLESS. If the union makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the administrator to find a buyer or a new loan from the banks then ALL their jobs will cease to exist. Certainly, the government will have to set up a new Tube maintenance company – but they will start hiring from scratch and will employ as many or as few of the RMT workers as they think they need. Or maybe they will hire some Polish plumbers instead.

Maintaining the London Underground is dirty and difficult and dangerous work, and the people who do it would have a lot of sympathy if it were not for the fact that they make millions of other people's jobs just impossible by going on strike for completely ridiculous promises.

Actually, as a service industry, Metronet basically IS its workforce: they do not OWN the tubes, they do not MAKE things, all they have is the people who do the work. As the largest stakeholder – if not shareholder – perhaps the RMT should think more about RUNNING the company, instead of just RUNNING IT DOWN.