Brits will be hammered by a wave of strikes every day until Christmas in a new ‘winter of discontent’, as Britain is plunged further into chaos. The Daily Mail has more.
Rail workers, including Eurostar staff, nurses, ambulance staff, teachers, security guards handling cash, cleaners, porters, driving examiners, rural payments officers and civil servants are planning action that will affect every day over advent.
Millions will have their lives disrupted by the coordinated walkouts, which are set to cripple essential public services in the run up to Christmas.
Of particular concern is a NHS Christmas walkout on December 20th, which some fear could bring the health service to a standstill.
Government estimates seen by the Times suggest the rail industry alone will lose up to £260 million because of the strikes.
Meanwhile, the hospitality industry has warned that industrial action will cost it £1.5 billion in lost sales as people avoid going out to pubs, bars and restaurants.
Hospitality U.K. chief Kate Nicholls tweeted today: “Hospitality businesses don’t have time to play with and losing the busiest Christmas trading week to rail strikes could be final for many.”
Steve Brine, chairman of the Commons health committee, said this winter’s planned action was potentially “more concerning” as new anti-strike laws have made it harder to legally call strikes.
This suggested union barons were more determined than ever to shut down Britain, he said.
Mr. Brine told Sky News: “We keep hearing that this is a repeat of the winter of discontent of the 1970s. In some ways it is not, but in some ways actually it is possibly more concerning because of course different industrial dispute legislation since the 1970s has made it harder to reach a strike mechanism trigger ballot.
“The fact that you have so much coordinated strike action now suggests that there is deep unhappiness with levels of pay and with some conditions within parts of the health service.” Meanwhile, simultaneous walk-outs by nurses, ambulance drivers and hospital staff could see hospitals fight to keep even basic services running.
Three unions – GMB, Unite and Unison – are discussing a co-ordinated strike date, says the Guardian, with talks between union bosses and ministers said to have taken place about how to “avoid loss of life”. The Royal College of Nursing has already confirmed members will strike on December 20th, and on December 15.
The Fire Brigades Union will ballot its members on December 5th for strike action over a pay dispute, while secondary schools in Aberdeen will close for pupils in some years next Thursday in years S1 to S4 due to walkouts.
Around 188 staff working for brewery Greene King are set to strike next month in a row over pay. Currently, no date has been set for a Tube strike this month but one may still happen.
Worth reading in full.
Meanwhile, there’s no sign the Government is getting any kind of grip on the unfolding chaos – other than the endless seeking of ‘compromises’ with their most implacable enemies.
Little wonder, then, that Labour saw its majority shoot up in the Chester by-election. Samantha Dixon, the new MP for the city, won 17,309 of the 28,541 votes cast, beating Liz Wardlaw, the Tory candidate, into a distant second with 6,335 votes. Labour increased its share of the vote from 49.6% to 61.2%, it’s best-ever performance in the city. According to Christopher Hope in the Telegraph, if such a swing was replicated at a General Election it would be enough for Sir Keir Starmer to win a majority.
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Stop Press: I told Mark Steyn on GB News last night that the only time the machinery of the state swings into action is when someone is accused of a ‘microagression’ or ‘hate speech’.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/03/courts-open-24-hours-crack-down-rioters-police/
Why did not the same decencies apply to the far left?
Echo, Echo, Echo.
The overburdened criminal justice system mysteriously has resources to open 24 hours, like an old fashioned corner shop. If only that could be applied to the legions of shoplifters or, even better, to provide justice for women victims of violence.
To make room for these convicted rioters, Timpson will have to clear out the jails of even more of the persons who are not supposed to be there – the criminals who are to be persuaded that crime does not pay, despite their experience that it clearly does. An experience reinforced by their very early release.
Here’s the thing with certain types of shoplifting: a fair trade is the exchange of one thing for another, with both things being traded deemed to be of equal value. Now, when powerful corporations are charging £1 for a plastic bag, £2 for a loaf of bread, £2 for six eggs, £8 for a bit of steak, £5 for ten screws etc, who’s stealing from who? Because, very clearly, the tacit agreement of a fair trade has been broken. Big corporations are now p*ssing down on us saying “I’ll trade you my grain of rice for your cow”, and they do this with the full support of the state which hangs the threat of imprisonment if you don’t hand over your cow for their grain of rice. We’ve been conditioned into believing that paying for, say, only four of the five items we need, is theft, and we do this while knowing full well we’re being robbed blind by greedy corporation’s; I don’t consider that as theft at all, I consider that as a rebalancing of the exchange.
Aren’t consumer goods relative to income as cheap as they have ever been?
Until when you retire, then your in trouble.
Doesn’t that rather depend on your personal circumstances. My point is that as far as I know, consumer goods are cheaper than ever if you look back through history. They could be cheaper but firms would make less profit and less able to distribute dividends and achieve share value growth which benefit investors like pension funds, and less able to invest in R&D to improve products and processes which benefit consumers. Capitalism isn’t perfect and crony capitalism is not ideal, but I don’t think stealing is the answer – the costs are just passed on to other consumers, or staff in lower wages.
Depends how you are defining cheaper – when I think back to the one solid, sturdy washing machine that my mother had almost my entire childhood (and I’m from a big family) with the several mid range not so solidly built ones that I have been through in my long marriage – it begs the question, are they really cheaper?
Re theft – I agree with you. Society breaks down pretty quickly if we all decide we’re entitled to grab things without paying for them.
I agree about the washing machine if you add in a notional value for not having to buy new ones periodically- I hate shopping!
These days people buy things on the basis of “want” not “need”. The corporations are busy inventing new must have bells and whistles that don’t change the utility of an object but simply offer things that you never missed.
How many of us are seduced into buying a product because it has features we never knew we needed and then fail to use.
I use a phone primarily to communicate. I find having a decent camera on it useful. I do not need all the seductive features that so-called AI offers. Smart is not required as I rely on myself for the smart stuff.
My wife uses her washing machine on the same program all the time..
Our TV is only used on four of the hundreds of channels available.
My radio is tuned to one station and stays there all the time.
I watch programs as they are broadcast and look forward to the next episode of a series, rather than streaming and binge watching.
I could go on – yes, you do they chorused. Sorry but when you get old all you have left are your memories because most other bits are failing.
All very good points though in theory some people do value all of that fancy stuff
I suspect that many people value them because the advertising suggests they should.
Undoubtedly
I think some people enjoy shopping, looking for features, thinking they are buying something superior- I guess it fulfils a desire
Hmm – the problem with that is that the cost falls not on the wealthy, who raise the prices, but on those poor punters who do not steal but have to pay for what you take.
I guess I’d argue that’s a symptom of the manufactured chasm that divides the elites and the people. That so many of us reel in horror at the very thought of an attempt to rebalance the books is yet another symptom – a psychological one, again manufactured by the elites so that we passively accept what they tell us we must. And, just to be clear to everyone, I’m talking about paying less for a set of items of need, I’m not talking about not paying at all or not paying for items that are not needed.
Anyway, I knew it would be a highly contentious post, and it’s not like I don’t understand the arguments against the post (yours is the most compelling), it’s just that I believe the unwritten contract of a fair trade has, like many other things we now simply accept, been ripped up and burnt by a tier of society that holds the people in contempt.
Absolutely
Fear and loathing of the white working class is palpable in the elite’s response to the unrest, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
As the vacuous designation ‘white’ was created by the political establishment as a counterbalance to BAME (now ‘global majority’), this is a beast of their own creation, one that can no longer be placated by the simulacrum of unity that is the state’s recovery strategy of ‘organised spontaneity’.
A designation as worthless as the beads and trinkets that imperial traders once got native peoples to accept in exchange for their gold. And how odd that the ‘communities’ have leaders who, acting like colonial governors, are negotiated with by Westminster as if the latter were the imperial centre, whereas the ‘white’ community does not. In fact, the latter is not even treated a community, despite the fact that the other communities are overtly ethnic or religious.
These clergy who appear as part of this recovery strategy are real pieces of work. Blind guides whose studied blindness refuses to see the warning in their own scriptures: a house divided against itself must fall – and great will be the falling of it.
It’s not odd of the Almighty God-State to choose these tame charlatans. And didn’t Jesus of Nazareth tell his followers to sell their garments and buy swords; weapons used in the violent civil disturbance in Gethsemane? Jesus must have been Far-right. Is the ‘white’ non-community His body being crucified all over again?
And what a pity that certain people cannot be stopped before they board a dingy. Is it likely that Yvette All-Refugees-Welcome Cooper will be, as they say, ‘robust’ about that ‘free movement’ of people?
As much as I dislike Spiked, I’ve got to hand it to Brendan O’Neill on this one, he pretty much nails it. Well worth a read.
Britain is coming apart at the seams – Weeks of unrest have revealed tensions, anger and a collapse in social trust that can no longer be ignored, says Inaya Folarin Iman in Spiked.
The patchwork quilt of ‘communities’ evidently needs the attention of more seamstresses. Is this threadbare item no longer a comfort blanket?
Solar Farms Mean Food Shortages – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, your new MP, your local vicar, online media and friends online.
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https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-prisoner-swap-terrorism-espionage-putin/33061336.html?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=pn-msg&utm_campaign=2024-08-03-Ominous-Implica
What’s really going on?
Russia considers both conventional and unconventional military means to be tools of national power and applies them in combination. It is the unconventional operations of the Russian special services that aim to set the conditions for the successful application of conventional military force.
That those ‘unconventional military means’ have been repeatedly used in Western Europe is yet another wake up call to the deluded who believe Putin has no territorial ambitions for the ‘Union State’ of ‘Greater Russia’ than merely a few bits of Eastern Ukraine.
And, far from mitigating such activity outside Russia, the August 1 prisoner swap could intensify it.
‘Putin has signaled “that he will reward those within the Russian security services willing to double down on war against [the United States] and Europe.”
Alexander Clarkson, Kings College
In 2006, Russia adopted a law empowering Putin to deploy the security services abroad to liquidate anyone Moscow deems an “extremist” or “terrorist.”
‘……the suspect shot Khangashvili from behind, firing two shots from a Glock 26 pistol equipped with a silencer. After the victim fell to the ground, Krasikov is accused of then shooting him in the head, killing him on the spot, before getting back on his bicycle and fleeing. Police divers later recovered the handgun, a wig and a bicycle from the nearby Spree river.’
France 24 Dec 2021
‘In June 2019 at the latest, state organs of the government of the Russian Federation took the decision to liquidate Tornike Khangashvili in Berlin……Russian state authorities ordered the accused to liquidate the victim…….Khangashvili had given up the fight against the Russian Federation years before. He had not held a weapon in his hands since 2008……This was not an act of self-defence by Russia. This was and is nothing other than state terrorism’
Presiding judge Olaf Arnoldi
On February 13, 2004, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former top official in the de facto independent Chechen state of the 1990s, was killed by a car bomb in the Qatari capital, Doha.
In November 2006, Russian agents assassinated former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Aleksandr Litvinenko with radioactive poison in London. In 2018, agents attempted to kill former Russian GRU officer Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury. There have been numerous attacks on Chechen dissidents in several European countries. In 2020, Czech security officials accused Russia of sending an agent with ricin poison to kill the mayor of Prague and two other officials.
‘Armin Papperger – who has been with Rheinmetall for 34 years, including more than 11 years as CEO – made headlines when his garden house was set on fire.
“The message (of the prisoner swap) to Russian and foreign audiences is that the Kremlin has rescued ‘its’ people, whom, in line with its narrative, it never abandons,”
Oleg Ignatov
And the message from the Kremlin to the West?
“Let the traitors feverishly pick out new names and hide themselves in witness-protection programs,”
Medvedev
In fact, Russian methods are often unsophisticated. There is a long list of failures.
Ukraine has a considerable body of material from the Soviet special services, including instruction manuals and operational reports that comprise an invaluable archive on the evolution of Soviet unconventional warfare techniques and structures.
And Ukraine has its hit list on the horrifically disgusting Myrotvorets website, proudly displaying “Langley, VA, USA” at the top of each page, asking for information on the whereabouts of anyone listed on its “Purgatory” page, essentially any person who has somehow offended those in charge. The list not only includes people like Patrick Lancaster or Eva Bartlett who openly report on the truth in Ukraine, but also such personalities as Tulsi Gabbard, past US Member of Congress and presidential candidate. Victims it has successfully killed, e.g. Daria Dugina, the Moscow car bomb victim, have their photographs overwritten “Liquidated”.
‘The Myrotvorets website is not connected to the Ukrainian government nor is it a “kill list.” The founder of the OSINT group, Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins himself recently criticized those who continue to misidentify Myrotvorets.’
‘”Myrotvorets is a Ukrainian government kill list” is rapidly becoming the most effective way to identify the dumbest people in this website.’
Who said it is a government list on here. CGW certainly didn’t.
It is undoubtedly Ukrainian.
The Myrotvorets website shows close-up images of tortured, dead Russian soldiers, overwritten with the text “Death to the Russian Fascist Invaders and Occupiers”. The home page quotes former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, saying “There should not be a single Russian who goes to bed without thinking whether his throat will be cut in the middle of the night.” The website identifies itself as the “Center for the Study of Crimes against the National Security of Ukraine”. Go to the Purgatory (Чистилище) page and the third person down, the 19-year old Kalinkin Kirill Alekseevich, has been liquidated – the photograph is marked Ликвидирован. And you defend this website and claim it has nothing to do with Ukraine?!
When I was young going to university was far less common and we got a £300pa grant to cover living costs. Most worked full time during vacations to generate extra cash, and in my case, to buy a motor bike..
I was a regular at Bernard Matthews’ turkey factory. We earned £10 per week. Not bad for a single chap but there were men who were supporting their family on that, and whose wives weren’t working because rural Norfolk didn’t have any opportunities locally.
Recall that very few owned a TV. Most rented them. A car was totally out of the question and rural bus services were virtually non-existent except on market day to the local town.
No-one rioted or complained about their lot. Such things were for the townies down South.
But then, of course, people didn’t have their “misfortune” rammed down their throats by 24 hour news and social media and they made the most of their lives.
And we survived the winter of ’63 without central heating, and were cut off for a week with no power for days on end. Thank goodness for coal and coke; Mum cooked all our meals using pans on the open coal fire.
Imagine the impact of that on modern British society today.
Muslims have been responsible for a number of terrible atrocities in the UK, worst of all perpetrated in the name of their religion. The Southport attack raised the question in many peoples minds as to whether the attacker was a Muslim. We were fed the information that the attacker had been born in Cardiff and was therefore a second-generation immigrant. This did not, and still does not, answer the question.
Unfortunately, the rioters’ behaviour has completely occluded any rational discussion of what they probably, and quite reasonably, given the history of such acts, suspected.
Strangely, the terrorist coward appears to be from the Tutsi Elite tribe of Rwanda, majority Catholic it seems, the same as Rwanda’s dictator Kagame. Of course he may well have secretly converted to Islam, which may come out later.
The media keep giving lip-service to the three children he murdered, while neglecting his attempted murder of 10 other victims. They immediately trotted out the Bog-Standard “Mental Health” Excuse for this carefully-planned terrorist attack, so the public have good reason to be suspicious of his motive.
https://unherd.com/2024/08/how-britain-ignored-its-ethnic-conflict/
A dreary article saying very little of value in an extremely convoluted manner and which amazingly misses the central issue behind the current disturbances – the British people have had enough.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/02/keir-starmers-two-tier-tyranny/
More garbage.
Far Right, far right, far right…blah, blah, blah.
It might help if Tom Slater actually checked out some alternative news sources.
Empty out the prisons of murderers,rapist,career criminals to make room for dissenters of the government narrative! Peachy, brilliant Starmer
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/02/britain-is-coming-apart-at-the-seams/
Fortunately, India Folarin Iman rescues Spiked with a well thought out article which addresses the real issue – multiculturalism or Islamification as it is becoming – has not and will not work and ordinary Brits have had enough. She only lapsed once to the lazy default of ‘far right.’
Far Right these days is a pejorative term used to describe English and British, patriotic, white working class and usually male.
I guess I am far right then.
You are right in the sense that you are correct. I will take far right as emphatically correct.
I was watching a documentary about The Who last night. One notable quote was from Roger Daltry who explained that in the community where he grew up fighting was the accepted way of solving disputes, but he had to change his ways because the other members of the group didn’t want to fight over creative differences.
I am guessing that in some communities (in his case, East London) they are still wedded to this tradition and when confronted with aggressive, provocative policing still take the position of “Come and take me if you think you are hard enough”.
Several of the videos did show this with a number of youths running up to the police line and gesturing to them to come and do it.
I didn’t see any provocative banners, other than the cross of St George, the flag of this country. I didn’t see any Nazi symbology, possibly because that is actually far left.
The most disturbing thing appears to be the copy-cat burning of vehicles.
One thing that would simplify policing would be the blanket ban on all face coverings and the immediate arrest of anyone wearing them.
I am intrigued that the footage suggests it’s the copy-cat burning of a vehicle, ie enough to provide press photos, rather than trashing the whole street-full. And it’s usually, strangely, done by all black balaclava-clad “pros” working as a team, and not by people in Manchester United shirts and shorts. And it’s always done where MSM photographers are, but the ubiquitous police aren‘t, which is probably why all the people under piles of policemen are pensioners and young girls, rather than masked people in black.
Funny how none of these organised far-right groups of thugs driving from town to town can be detected, infiltrated, prevented, or arrested, yet are known to be far-right rather than, say, Antifa or, worse, agents provocateurs.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/03/after-southport-the-rage-against-the-throng/
I am not a fan of Brendan O’Neill since he wrote robustly in favour of mandated “vaccines” for Care Home workers but this is a peach referencing his and Ranting’s taking the knee for BLM at the time of the murderous rioting in the USA following the death of the career criminal George Floyd…
“The idea that we should take lectures on social disorder from a politician who bowed to an ideology whose street violence caused 25 deaths and a billion dollars’ worth of damage is laughably absurd.”
Fortunately, this couple of sanctimonious, treasonous thickos had a picture taken of this momentously stupid event which will rightly follow them to their graves.
Kneel and Ranting, together for ever.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13706035/David-Miliband-handed-1-million-pay-package-aid-charity-heavily-funded-British-taxpayers-huge-sum-six-times-Sir-Keir-Starmer-paid-run-country.html
Donations to charities are just secondary taxation for the gullible.