(16 Oct 2022, 7:31 pm)Starscream wrote I only mention it because it is Labour Party orthodoxy that Grammar schools are evil.

In a televised debate, by the time he has explained why the privelage he gained from it should be denied to the children of bus drivers today, and has mumbled his non-answer about what his background as a union organiser tells him is the right way to go in the current wave of bus strikes (I'm guessing he doesn't expect to have a spare TWO BILLION pounds to renationalise them all, much less the HALF A BILLION needed to sustain their 10% pay rises through his five year term), he will have run out of time to tell the voters why he should be our next PM.

Some (many) will vote for him for no other reason than he is Labour.

Some others, such as fellow grammar school alumni like me, will be well aware that Kier's fine education means that he can do maths just fine, so his failure to speak his mind about an ongoing industrial dispute that, if his union paymasters had their way, will add £2.5b to the defecit before he has even chosen his new wallpaper, means only one thing.

He is leaving himself the option of adding £2.5b to the defecit to ensure he doesn't have to show a single ounce of backbone in holding the office he covets in the first few weeks he holds it, in the hopes nobody notices.

The Daily Mail will notice.

The Metro therefore will duly carry it.

And so drivers will spend the next five years feeling eyeballs burning holes in the backs of their heads, as people like me are conveyed to their <£10ph jobs working for world famous Newcastle companies, weighed down by the knowledge that our pay rises depend on the health of the local, national and global economy. Which won't have recovered because how could it, with such irresponsible people in charge of the public finances?

Here's hoping that's a feeling of shame that far eclipses anything a scab feels late at night. And if not, I guess we will have our reminder yet again, that in the field of unionised labour, some animals are better than others.

Support the drivers!

Lol

You may believe this race to the bottom rubbish, but it's a nonsense. It's funny how when we're told the economy is struggling, it's never the wealthiest people in our society that suffer, but it's always the least-well off or those who are in receipt of in-work benefits who are expected to make up the 'shortfall'

The economy will never grow at the rate any Government would want, unless people have disposable income to spend. It's basic economics. If, and by your expectation, workers were to continue accepting nil pay awards or real-terms pay cuts, then disposable income will continue to fall even further than it is now.

Quite rightly people are fed up of this, especially in the public sector, which has faced almost 14 years of pay restraint now. Referring to them/unionised labour as animals is disgraceful tbh, and has no place on this forum, along with some of the other language used in this thread.

If you're happy earning less than £10ph for a 'world famous' Newcastle company, then that's up to you and your colleagues. Just as others have a right to form a Union, you have the right not to. But don't then try and hold everyone else down with you.