Hypocrisy and ridiculous consequences: The Tory plan to impose turnout thresholds on trade union ballots

I'm not being spiteful, the facts of their administration shows Labour were economically and socially incompetent and wasted the best decade for nearly a century to change our lives for the better e.g. build a few million homes with the money.

As to bringing up what the Tories would do, in 2007 the crash didn't even begin until September/October when the government let Northern Rock fail before they got their shit together and added liquidity into the financial markets like the U.S. Federal Reserve and European ECB.

ONCE the crash started, Brown who was convinced he'd 'cured boom and bust' kept on throwing money at the Public Sector thinking we'd emerge quickly, instead of helping the Private Sector that paid for the former - so as our tax revenues crashed, our expenses were still rising up until 2010, when Darling was budgeting for a £167 bil plus deficit when they were re-elected.

Labour's post 2010 plan was 'more of the same' that got our finances in such a mess, calling that 'a stimulus' rather than directing it to PRODUCE balance growth and jobs in the private Sector.

Darling was raising National Insurance post 2010, which he admitted would COST Private sector jobs, what sort of plan was increasing the tax on job creation in the worst honking recession for 80-years????

As I said, incompetent, they don't have a clue unless they can throw money at a problem - hence their 'negative' campaigning and trusted 'class war' to paper over their lack of non State control ideas to BUILD an economy, rather than cover it in red tape and regulations, weakening it further.

yet in 2007 the tories would match labours spending plans! Hindsight is a wonderful if spiteful thing.

Thegambler .... I can give you the list of early Blair Labour Party City companies like those in Private Equity (who'd directors 'paid more tax than their tea ladies') and those paying cash for Lords investigated by the police that also had government contracts ... which explains why Brown lowered Capital Gains Tax early on to a tapered low of 10%, raising it to only 18% by the time he left office.

Those 'New' Labour days are gone, so back to 'Old' Labour trade union paymasters - and influenced by their policies/agendas.

Thegambler .... Brown formed the financial regulatory tripartite in 1997 that failed so badly; Brown and his FSA has long since apologized, please keep up.

Our bank had to be part nationalised ' as they would run out of cash the next day', how many other countries had to do that in 2007/8?

As for the Conservatives, they were paying down debt from the 1990's recession and balanced the annual budget - but this spending 'stimulus' by Brown on a fat, inefficient Quango State mentioned below - was what the Conservatives had to trim.

GDP 'growf' Balls style continuing throwing good money after bad, wasn't a sensible option when we had an annual budget deficit of £157 billion in 2010, that was balanced by Tory policies by the late 1990's.

So lets keep this simple and I’ve tried to find a source that is fair( overly in my view) and try wasting your breath defending Labour by challenging the following link – with graphs and charts.
www.economicshelp.org/blog/5509/economics/government-spending-under-labour/

“During the years 2001-2007, there was a sharp rise in government spending. In real terms, government spending increased from just over £400bn (2009 prices) to £618bn in 2008-09.

"As a % of GDP Government spending also increased from 36% of GDP in 2000 to 46% of GDP by the end of 2008-09"

"This increase in government spending contributed to budget deficits and higher public sector debt."

"After a short period of budget surplus (due to spending restraint) in the late 1990s, the UK experienced a budget deficit of 2-3% of GDP between 2002-2007."

"By historical standards, this is relatively low. It still met the Maastricht criteria of keeping budget deficits to less than 3% of GDP."

"However, the budget situation was also improved by impressive tax revenues from the housing and financial boom. When the credit crunch hit, tax revenues rapidly dwindled causing a marked deterioration in public finances.”

• If the government had entered the credit crunch with a budget surplus and lower public sector debt, the government would have had much more room to pursue a real and sustained economic stimulus.

However, because there was already a deficit, the recession caused a rise in the cyclical deficit. The deficit of 2009-10 of 11% of GDP was primarily due to the deterioration in public finances, only a small part of this deficit was due to expansionary fiscal policy (VAT cut)

• A great failure of spending decisions of the 2000s, was to allow budget deficits during rapid economic expansion. A budget deficit of 3% of GDP may have sounded relatively low. But, in hindsight, this exaggerated the underlying deficit because tax revenues were boosted by tax revenues which evaporated during the credit crunch.

In other words, we had an economy built on excessive government spending sand, financed by speculation and debt.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

Don't get me started on where Tory party funds come from.

I am a trade unionist in one of the supposedly more militant trade unions and we make deal after deal on cost neutrality. We have to be business savvy now, the 70's are long gone and you are a dinosaur.

thegambler ..... re the Tube Strike and 'the way the company went about it', in other words they didn't get "around a table", shorthand for 'giving us everything we want'.

The strike was about the union saying the ticket offices shouldn't be closed. the company saying they should, and the union thinking they'd have public support. Re support, ask the ones their view stuck at home, or so peed off they'd hit a reporter if asked.

And p-l-e-a-s-e do NOT get me started on a Labour Party 90% funded by Trade Unions, a shadow cabinet of which 80% receive funds directly to their offices from trade unions (including Miliband) and the majority of Mps affiliated - and Miliband's move to take the party back to 'the heavy hand of State' controls favoured by the likes of McClusky(?), who has threatened to pull funds from Labour if they lose the next general election.

The signs are there, especially to those who lived through to despair of the 1970's and a militant trade union movement more allied to the old Soviet Union Kremlin, than Westminster - and if you want details of that, just ask me.

When did I mention anything about the recession ? I know where I worked we threatened strike action as the company cried "RECESSION" despite making record profits and tried to fob us off with a pay cut. We got our pay rise and the companies profits went uop again...............good for all!

The economy in 2008 lost it under Labour, true. It wouldn't have happened under the Conservatives would it ?, They would have stopped the world wide crash ?. The structural deficit would have been a little smaller but the slash and burn reaction would have stalled the recovery as it did leading to what we've had.

the gambler .... show me one frigging recession since year dot that jobs increased and wages didn't suffer ... THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A RECESSION ... are you confused with a Brown 'boom'?

Show me one stupid militant strike, wildcat or otherwise, that WASN'T under the pretense 'their members were being shat on' - right up to the moment the company went tits up - and then it was Thatcher's fault. Idiots.

The economy LOST 7% of output in 2008 under Labour thanks to an unbalance economy relying on the proceeds of a City profits and bank balance sheet growth that we are JUST about to get back, made worse by record government and consumer debt - it will take years more to recover, and GDP figures ''boasted about" just show we are going in the right direct, along with the 1,5 million new jobs since 2010, 1 million full time.

Lower taxes help the 'trickle down', not in Labour's vocab, but even as we start to feel a bit better off, there will still be £1,500,000,000,000 (£1.5 trillion) of national debt that has to be paid of by higher national output, more taxes or both - a drain on everyone.

Labour in 2010 had no idea how to increase national output (GDP) other than by increased spending/debt and were waiting for after 2010 to tell us about their new tax rises - to help 'the cost of living crisis'.

Justify the Tube strike, easy, people want staff at those places and I think, not entirely sure here, that the reason they were allowed to strike was because of the way the Authority went about it. Strange that on the news when inyterviewed most people inconvenienced by the strike sympathised with it.

Your view if things is weird, trying to associate the Labour party of the 70's with todays, like me associating Heath with Cameron. They have nothing in coming, the field has changed so much, Blair is to the right of Heath and as much a centerist as Major. But all you can see is the labels. You seemingly support you party blindly like I support my football tyeam.

Why don'ty you talk about strikes etc, labour relations from 97 ?. You seem to be very cherrypicky. Like a leftwinger saying thatcher done this, Heath that, Major this etc.

Thegambler .... really, no comparison, justify the Tube Strike to me in principle and the effect/cost on nation output of each day they were on strike and why London workers should have to either have days off, pay more to get to work by taxi or walk to work in winter weather.

Re Germany and Japan record of strikes versus the UK over the past 10, 20, or 45 years, do you really want to tell me there is any comparison????????????

At the same time the trade unions can't allow their members to be shat upon, especially now when we are bragged at that the economy is growing yet wages at the bottom aren't keeping pace. The trickle down effect doesn't work, didn't under thatcher (lower tense meant), hasn't elsewhere, won't here.

The UK £1.3 trillion currently in national debt, can not afford to pee around being soft on militant trade unions; not the ones of the "1950's" you mentioned, but in the 1970's, when manufacturing fell from around 29% of our economy in 1970, to 23% by the 1979 general election.

When Labour & UK Trade Unions last ‘shared’ power and didn’t have the same priorities = Thatcher.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

“The Winter of Discontent refers to the winter of 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, during which there were widespread strikes by public sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises, following the ongoing pay caps of the Labour Party government led by James Callaghan against Trades Union Congress opposition to control inflation, during the coldest winter for 16 years.”

“The strikes were a result of the Labour government's attempt to control inflation by a forced departure from their social contract with the unions by imposing rules on the public sector that pay rises be kept below 5%, to control inflation in itself and as an example to the private sector.”

As the public sector trade unions appears to think they manage services and only their pay and pensions are not keeping up with inflation, when so many private sector taxpayers either lost their jobs or DO NOT HAVE private pensions linked to final salary (since the Brown raid in 1997) - IT IS TIME to tighten the strike rules for the good of the many.

The public sector employees increased by over 1 million from 1997 to 2010 and the public sector guaranteed pension liability of £1.3 trillion (separate from the 1.3 trillion of national debt) has only around £300 bil provisioned for, meaning the £1 trillion comes out of annual budgets when fall due.

Few would argue the public sector don't deserve their pensions, especially the front line workers, but they have to remember those funding them have suffered through the Great Recession and nationally our grandchildren's children will still be paying off the debt, so if tighter measures to stop ideological strikes are needed, so be it. IMO.

Which worker-director boards are you comparing with ? Surely not Lufthansa who were cancelling flights over gasp, shock, industrial action recently. As was the German Amazon outlet.

Jeez using the 70's to tar todays unions is a bit daft.

ttosca .... nice speech on how trade unions/employees 'know how to run the business' better than the shareholders who put their pensions in a company and mandate directors to run it for them.

Who are the shareholders of the London Tube and which union half-wit can justify CLOSING DOWN LONDON and inconveniencing millions of citizens who may lose their days pay - based on the trade unions illustrious history of 'advising' UK industry that was decimated from their actions in the 1970's??????????

Isn't it funny that the Japanese and German workers that advise on worker-director boards either have NEVER gone on strike, or hardly do?

THIS is the militant trade union example of running a business I remember, since having departing manufacturing and headed for public sector, where it's harder to run a country into the ground than it is a business.

news.bbc.co.uk/local/liverpool/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8401000/8401200.stm

“British Leyland's Speke factory symbolised all that was wrong with UK car manufacturing in the dark days of the 1970s, a million miles away from the high performing plants of today at Ellesmere Port and Halewood.”

“In 1978 British Leyland's Speke Number Two plant was under threat of closure, afflicted by a series of crippling strikes, low sales of the TR7 it manufactured, and a history of poor industrial relations coupled with inefficiencies.”

“In 1970 British Leyland, who had taken over Triumph, spent £10.5 million building Speke Number Two plant, it was one of the most modern and best equipped plants in Europe designed to build 100,000 vehicles a year all under one roof.”

“When BBC Nationwide visited in February 1978 the plant only had a few months of life left.”

My point is that a strike ballot is for a move from the status quo to a strike postion, whilst an elstion, whether for mayor or government is a 'end of the road' start again.
the 2 positions are different and dfifferent rules are valid.
It is perfectly justified to demand a 50 % vote to change the status quo, whilst demanding a lower % for a replacement of a fixed term position.

As a former "boss" I would most certainly have listened to ideas that would being about a better business for everyone. Where I work now (public sector) has regular consultation on the services we provide, with employees and end users. I am consulted twice over, both as an employee and a user.

And negotiations, discussions, explanations get far further than striking. Current tube strikes are largely jostling for power among hard left Crow wannabes. They all want the gravy if the top job and the big pay given to the Union bosses.

No, because strikers have chosen to be part of an union. They don't have to be. So, when that union decides to strike, they already have people who, one would assume, broadly agree with being part of a voluntary organisation. Thus, said organisation should be able to get 50% to agree with them.

We all get the vote, once 18. Whether or not you choose to exercise your right to use it is up to you - what you don't have a choice in is whether to be part of the electorate.

Public elections have nothing to do with strike ballots. Public elections are about a change of governance. Of course I think the lack of turnout in elections is a problem.

Strike ballots are about holding the public or a company hostage.

I laid out my own thoughts on the necessary steps for union reform here, and my only criticism of my former ideas is that I don't think they go far enough.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1088369-Some-musings-on-how-to-neutralise-the-unions/AllOnOnePage