Britain’s biggest public sector union calls strike “To see if anyone notices”.

[davywavy]

After a strike ballot held yesterday, Britain’s biggest public sector union, Unison, has declared an extensive publicity campaign for the strike “because otherwise you might not realise.” The industrial action, planned for the 30th of November, will be backed by an extensive advertising campaign to ensure that the rest of us are aware it is taking place.

Unison spokesman Will Poole said “Normally if you ring your council during office hours nobody picks up because we’re all too busy on diversity awareness training courses, outside having a fag or signed off for stress. But on November the 30th you won’t get an answer because we’ll all be on strike.”

“In your face, Thatcher”, he added.

Mr Poole then went on to call for blanket media coverage of the event highlighting that, rather than working, Unison members would be spending their day at home watching Loose Women in their underpants, apparently blissfully unaware that they get that sort of coverage in the Sun and Daily Mail all the time anyway.

The union will face an uphill struggle to make its mark as recent surveys have shown that most normal people have to be forced to engage with the public sector at gunpoint.

However, the union was criticised for calling a strike after only 29% of members voted in the ballot, whilst many members of the union were surprised that a strike ballot had been called at all. Mandy Wilcox, a social worker from Retford, said: “I didn’t vote in the ballot because I only found out the other day we weren’t still on strike from the last time. I’ve not been into the office for over a year and nobody's said anything. With successful strike action like that, it's only a matter of time before the Coalition toffs all resign.”

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I bet they change the date once they look at their calendar and realise the 30th November isn't a Monday or a Friday

H

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Up here it's the information technology unions. I can only assume the theory is that downing tools at Nokia will magically make their products worth buying again.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Well it worked for British Leyland.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I'm already looking forward to when the entire national economy will revolve squarely around that gargantuan copper and nickel deposit Anglo American PLC just found up in Lapland. It'll be just like the 19th century again!

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

I think you will find that many people will be aware of the strike as I expect the Daily Mail to publish numerous articles about how the lazy local government officers are letting children live in squallor because they want to keep their gold plated, 90% tax payer funded pensions.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Yeah but dude - they're print that every week?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Well, you fellows got a lot of practice being serfs then so it'll be like old times!

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

There were never any serfs around here! When people ate bits of bark to stay alive through their sordid lives of mind-numbing poverty, they did it as free... ish... individuals. You know, not free as in "free to eat proper food", of course, but certainly free to starve in new and exciting bits of wilderness if they so chose.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Oh, perfect. Now it turns out even that ore deposit rests wholly or partly within a conserved natural preserve (http://www.miningweekly.com/article/anglo-american-reported-to-have-made-a-major-nickel-discovery-in-finland-2011-11-04). Clearly I need to pick better examples.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Not for long.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Well, they'll have to pretend to debate about it first.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Don't be such a bunch of lefties about it! Those trees aren't doing anything important!

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Well, it's just that the Greens are a part of government, and they'll have to be given some sort of a deal on a quid pro quo basis... not because they're hell-bent against jobs and foreign investment, of course, it's more that their voters are already a bit mad at them for folding like a bunch of cheap suits on the issue of nuclear power.

Just a matter of having the PM arrange a modus vivendi, really.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

My chum raggedhalo is a green and he wonce told me that it was impossible to create wealth, only move it about, so if you've got that in power in your country you have my profoundest sympathies.

[belak-krin.livejournal.com]

True, but maybe the strike will lead to a mass invasion of skunk-cannabis dealing immigrant, benefit cheat, single mothers with (insert latest animal)flu!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

What do you mean "maybe"?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I think they started off in a rather radical constellation, but... well, these days they're increasingly just another establishment party. After all, this is a country where major labour unions can end up vocally opposing hikes in capital taxation because it turns out they like, you know, jobs. As a political culture we're generally comfortable being a bunch of lefties, but that doesn't mean we're not interested in balanced budgets.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

TBH I'd give my left arm for a balanced budget round here.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Well, we are slipping a bit. Eurozone crisis, economic downturn, that sort of thing.

Isn't that more or less what the Tory/LibDem coalition has said it's trying to accomplish over your way, though? "Eliminate structural deficit in five years" and all that?

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and when they've done that we'll only have the £940bn debt to tackle.

You know, I remember saying that the debt was looking a bit overly high when it was £36bn...

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

No wonder the British and French governments have resolved on time-share aircraft carriers.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

The propellor fell off the Charles de Gaulle whilst on manouevers recently.

Still, it makes a lovely big paperweight.

That said, the Argentians have nothing that can take on a Type 42 so they aren't getting the Falklands before we've got all the oil out. They're like the South Atlantic Scots.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually it's a good thing the BNP didn't get in, isn't it? Or they'd have nationalised the Lifeboats and they'd all be going out on strike as well.

H

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

If they should ever try again, you can always send in the Royal Navy first: They'll be ever ready, trained as they are for it by the very best of the best, to shout "BANG!" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/757788.stm) at the hypothetical Argentinian menace until it surrenders.

[(Anonymous)]

Normally, I would despair at the notion that not working & creating wealth is a good way of making society more fairerer and soforth, but state parasites having a day off from f*cking the country up probably will.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Gosh, I remember that.

On the plus side, we managed to power a battleship by attaching Lord Nelson's corpse to a turbine.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I was at St. Paul's Cathedral only fairly recently, and now you're saying I was taking poorly-lit, tourist-y pictures of an empty coffin? How can I properly gawk at the shrivelled corpses of your national heroes if you keep using all of them for cheap energy?

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Oh, in fact, you've just reminded me that I spotted a 17th century burial monument there that I need to write a journal post about. Might not have remembered otherwise.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

You were in London and didn't invite me for a drink? I'm actually rather hurt.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

As ever-ready as I am to imbibe alcohol in good company, my tight schedule sadly intervened. On the plus side, that very schedule means I can now boast scientific observations about what I saw: I've found the British Museum is a festering, seething hive of Finnish tourists. They sort of infiltrate in with the rest of the tourists and then you hear isolated snippets of Finnish all throughout the exhibits. You might want to call Ghostbusters.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Being a member of the British Museum, I get to go in when there are no tourists about.

I even have a card which lets me take a friend.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

That is brilliant, and I fail to see why everybody who lives within a day's distance from London doesn't also do that.

(In fact, as we were walking out of the place, there was a fellow right behind us who reproachfully turned to his mate and said "Nothing British in there!", which was... strange.)