Anybody else feel like we are heading for an equivalent of the "winter of discontent"?

[Ihatethedawnchorus]

There just seems to be more and more talk of strikes from different areas and it just feel likes a build up of general discontent(not blaming anyone, things are bad, not likely to improve in the short term and people are getting desperate and disillusioned with good reason)

Most public sector workers - you lnpw those people who held everything together through the pandemic? - won't get anywhere near 4-5%. So will be taking a near to 10% paycut.

In good times they were told public sector pay restraint was essential as no inflation and no money etc etc. And now because there is inflation they can't have a payrise either.

So which is it? Or both: they can never have a payrise at all?

Many of them have had pay cut in real terms by 25% in the last decade already.

This won't fly.

So it's the Government's move. It's largely due to their economic mismanagement that there's no spare money. What happened to making hay while the sun is shining? So where is the long awaiting sunny upland with the at least inflationary payrise?

People have had enough now.

Wimbledon this week. Ball in their court now.

Well if Brexit is self-harm then mass strikes ate the ultimate form of self-harm.

However it seems that the people who were anti-Brexit seem to be the ones supporting the strikers. See the recent Mick Lynch thread.

The exception is the RMT who supported both types of self-harm.

Brexit was utterly pointless and always going to make everyone poorer and everything (like the NHS, food prices, product availability, inflation etc) shitter for zero benefit. As everyone was told beforehand by every credible person. Never before have people who knew their fields ever been so unanimous on any topic in my memory.

Yes, striking will make things shit for many people. But given the economic mismanagement (see above, plus the decades of doing nothing about sorting UK productivity growth) and public sector workers always taking the brunt of it, many people have no choice any more except to strike.

Not remotely the same.

Inthe last 2 weeks I've been through 5 airports. 4 in Africa, 2 of them hub airports and Heathrow.Guess which one was chaos with the baggage hall piled high with luggage from 2/3 days before.

Unless of course they can't afford Christmas, or heating, or food. Some people are working their arses off and still struggling to pay for basics.

Agree. Oct/ Nov is when it will get really bad and people will get properly angry. It won't be pretty.

And a few hundred quid from Rishi Rich will not cut the mustard.

Brexit didnt make everyone poorer. I believe Rees-Mogg did well from the fall invalue of the Pound.

Unless there is a general election then there will be more strikes & disruption. You would think that Boris would be throwing money at us to keep his voters voting Tory in the next election.

Yes. I'm in UCU and my branch voted to strike for a total of 10 days last year. It was very hard but I stuck it out and did get something back from the fight fund. If we ballot again I'll grit my teeth and vote strike. I'll support any other union striking. My brother and I were in London over the rail strike weekend and we managed, with buses and a lot of walking. No point in a strike if it's not disruptive. As pp said, let the fuckers at the top sweat a bit.

I normally love the dawn chorus, however when I name changed I'd been woken up about 5:30 by the birds nesting above my window for the previous 5 days.🤣

But yes, things just feel very bleak at the moment and there just doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel, just lots of drudgery.

PHEW! that's one less worry on our minds then! 😆

Guess I’m not the only one feeling mega anxious? I just want the stupidity of Brexit to be acknowledged- at least with a Europe Lite there could be some hope of reducing tariffs that have been introduced and bringing some prices down. So sick of people saying Europe have inflation too - yes, but not as bad as ours!!!!

Wages are so low at the bottom that they cannot absorb the economic shocks currently hitting us and so working people need higher wages. They've asked for them and been refused. In that situation strikes are the only way to go.

Yup.

Not on the scale of 1978/79 and not the impact of 1974. However a lot of people will struggle even more financially and I think a recession will happen.

This, in spades.

I hope Brexiteers are happy.

They usually deny they ever voted for it in the first place (looking at you, friend, I know you did, don't pretend you didn't, you told me on the day you did!)

Unless there is a general election then there will be more strikes & disruption. You would think that Boris would be throwing money at us to keep his voters voting Tory in the next election.

The next general election is 2½ years away. He's not going to start bribing people this soon. Voters have very short memories.

And to the person who remarked that people keep voting to harm themselves, this has always been the case. British (or English, at any rate) people don't vote to make themselves better off: they vote to make other people worse off. You will win far more votes by sending some refugees to Rwanda than you will lose by starving or freezing a few thousand poor people to death at home. English people's spitefulness trumps every other motivator. Why do you think more than 2 million people read the Daily Mail every day?

Don't count on it. They won the vote, we've left the EU, the county's a mess, yet according to them it's those that voted to stay who caused all this.

Yes. It's shit and about to get shitter. I think the impact of the October fuel price rises will be the tipping point for a lot of people.

ILoveAllRainbowsx conflation, much.

I presume you voted for Brexit and yes, it's a shit show. It's going to get worse.

I'm a local government worker and I've joined a union for the first time ever this week so I can vote for strike action when we are inevitably asked to vote on another piss poor pay offer. I've never been one who is pro strike action in the past but in real terms my pay has been slashed by multiple percentage points. We had a pay rise awarded recently got the 2021-2022 financial year that gave me an extra £30 a month. My utility bill has increased by £150 a month. Petrol costs me an extra £60 a month. I've switched to Aldi to save money on food and cancelled my daughter attending her performing arts club because it's simply not affordable right now.

It's not just Ukraine that has caused this crisis, much as the government would like everyone to believe. It's not even just Brexit. It's 12 years of economic mismanagement that has seen a massive shift of wealth to the upper echelons of social whilst us workers are left fighting for the scraps they leave behind. The government spent billions on useless PPE that they are now going to burn FFS, but they can't give keyworkers an inflation matched pay rise?

Fuck the Tories, and fuck anyone that votes for them.

I also dread to think what this government's reaction will be if there are strikes/demonstrations, they haven't exactly shown themselves to have any compassion or uderstanding.

You will win far more votes by sending some refugees to Rwanda than you will lose by starving or freezing a few thousand poor people to death at home.

And yet those policies didn't stop them losing both byelections, did they? I don't doubt that the Tories are attempting to start a culture war and use the tactic you mention, but it's much less clear whether it'll actually work.