Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

One-nil to the Coalition - but the battle over public sector pensions has only just begun
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{"s" : "","k" : "a00,a50,b00,b60,c10,g00,h00,l10,p20,t10,v00","o" : "","j" : ""} Matthew d'Ancona, 20:38, Saturday 2 July 2011

Ministers should put the champagne on ice, says Matthew d'Ancona - for in reaching a deal over pension reforms, they face an extraordinarily delicate balancing act

There is a famous New Yorker cartoon depicting a man who is plummeting from a skyscraper and, halfway down, declares cheerfully: "So far, so good!" Well, so far, so good for the Government in the public sector pensions dispute.

When the talks resume on Wednesday, the atmosphere will have changed: inescapably so. Ministers are celebrating the fact that the industrial action taken by four unions last Thursday did not bring the country grinding to a halt. The striking unions claim that they have finally awoken the public to the alleged injustice of the proposed pension reforms, and that this was only the first skirmish. To return to the metaphor of the cartoon: only when one side finally hits the pavement, and the other is caught safely in the fireman's jumping-sheet, will we know who was right last week.

Too much attention has been paid to Ed Miliband's position on the industrial action, as if the prime significance of the dispute were to dramatise the Labour leader's relationship with the trade unions whose backing won him the job. In fact, Miliband's soundbite "These strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are going on" was a perfectly serviceable example of the "triangulation" he allegedly deplores. He blamed the Government (repeatedly, to the point of daft self-parody) for its supposedly "reckless and provocative" conduct, but insisted that his party would always be on the side of the parents and children inconvenienced by the strikes. This was neither a moment of glory, nor one of disaster. I imagine that Miliband wanted to get off the stage as quickly as respectably possible, on the grounds that, as Napoleon said, you should never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

But is he? Is David Cameron storing up trouble on a disastrous scale for himself? Starting a fight that he cannot win and ensuring that he will have to make a cosmically embarrassing U-turn months down the line? Certainly, there are tensions within Whitehall that reflect the anxious determination of its most senior figures to avoid such an outcome. There is anger at how Treasury sources allegedly briefed Danny Alexander's speech on pensions reform on June 17 giving rise to the risky impression that the proposals were less a discussion document than a blueprint, the essential detail of which was not open to debate.

In fact, there is still a fair amount on the table, such as the precise distribution of the contribution increase across the various pension schemes, the phasing in of the new retirement age, and the fate of the "Fair Deal" policy that mandates private sector employers to offer public sector workers comparable pension arrangements to those they have previously enjoyed. The spirit of the age is irenic and collaborative, as is the Coalition's rhetoric. Ministers want these negotiations to be recognised as negotiations rather than a thwarted stitch-up.

There are mutterings, too, about Francis Maude's performance on the Today programme last week, up against Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the striking Public and Commercial Services Union. "We need somebody to be the front man," says one of his Cabinet colleagues. "And Francis is not the man for the job." To be fair to Maude, I see no queue of ministers lining up to go over the top in his place. The Cabinet Office Minister is, as I have written before, one of the most capable senior members of this Coalition, and also one of its best strategic thinkers. One sticky interview is small change compared to the grasp Maude has of the bigger picture.

His priority has, naturally, been to keep the unions at the table but not to panic if some of them peel off for premature action of this sort. In the end, a deal will have to be done, and the PCS and the teaching unions risk making themselves look irrelevant and isolated by mounting strikes that cause inconvenience but do not spread or capture the public's imagination as a symbol of much broader injustice. No less dangerous for the unions is the contingency planning that each such strike necessitates and the lessons that it teaches government. Every time the workers march out, their managers learn a little more about how many staff they really need and what tasks could be automated. In the midst of the greatest technological revolution in history, it is dangerous to force an employer to test one's indispensability.

Where Maude's Cabinet critic is right is that this is all about public diplomacy. In search of an appropriate narrative, ministers and their spokesmen often quarry the Thatcher era and its lessons. It is true, as is often pointed out, that a government must prepare meticulously before taking on the unions. Having backed down against the miners in 1981, Margaret Thatcher built up coal stocks in anticipation of the battle against Arthur (Euronext: ART.NX - news) Scargill in 1984-5 a strategy that helped to ensure her triumph. So associated is the Iron Lady's legend with her taming of the unions that all Conservative leaders feel a filial obligation to follow suit when confrontation looms.

Yet there are limits to such analogies with the struggles of the Eighties. Partly because Lady Thatcher was so successful, there is much less militancy than there was a quarter-century ago. It was fascinating to see a middle-aged teacher on Thursday's Newsnight lamenting the fact that his younger colleagues were so much less inclined to take to the barricades. And it is true that the colours of union politics were infinitely more lurid in the days when Ronald Reagan simply fired all striking air traffic controllers and the National Union of Mineworkers was seen as the "enemy within" in one of the final chapters of the Cold War. Today, the younger generation thinks that Tolpuddle is something you step in at Glastonbury, and that the Battle of Orgreave is a scene in The Lord of the Rings .

The flipside of this is that the public's pain threshold has dropped dramatically since the Thatcher era. The new British disease is impatience. In the Seventies and Eighties, there was a powerful collective sense that these struggles were worth fighting to save the nation from terminal decline. Now, strikes inspire irritation rather than conviction. For the moment, the polls suggest that more irritation is aimed at the strikers than at the Government. But that could easily change. Boredom is the father of appeasement: months and months of intermittent strikes like Thursday's could tilt the balance of opinion so that the public starts to blame the Coalition for all the inconvenience and to ask why Cameron can't meet the strikers halfway.

The political calculus could scarcely be more complex. Ministers must get their reforms for demographic and fiscal reasons but through negotiation, rather than confrontation. The Coalition must appear reasonable and sensitive but not to the point of looking weak or "doing another U-turn". As further strikes follow, which they will, Cameron must respond with growing indignation but avoid making martyrs of mild-mannered English teachers, or, God help him, nurses. There is still a long way to fall. So far, so good.

Klitschko v David Haye (07/01/2011)
10:44 hboboxing: Haye is showing boosted confidence, using his speed to his advantage. Close round but giving it to Haye 10-9. #KlitschkoHaye [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:44 hboboxing
10:43 Eurobot: Haye dives forward on the front foot and strikes over the top. That was a big hit! And Haye goes again! The bell rings but both fighters keep going for half-a-second. Is Klitschko hurt? Looks like there's a mark above the eye.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:43 Eurobot
10:42 Eurobot: This fight is balanced on a knifepoint, with Haye still full of confidence, looking for the feint and waiting for an opening, while Klitschko's ability to jab has been ever-present without getting too much on Haye.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:42 Eurobot
10:40 Eurobot: ROUND FOUR: Haye landed the bigger shots in that third round, landing one huge jab but it's Klitschko who strikes first in round four, only for Haye to get a glove up to deflect.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:40 Eurobot
10:39 hboboxing: Haye is finally starting to reach Klitschko, penetrating his defenses. Fight can go either way at this point. 10-9 Haye [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:39 hboboxing
10:39 Eurobot: Klitschko gets Haye on the ropes and gets close with a tiple combination. Haye takes it and responds with a smile, asking for more. Looks like Haye emerged unscathed there.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:39 Eurobot
10:38 Eurobot: Haye pounces off the front foot, landing a right hander and forcing Klitschko to hold on briefly. The Hayemaker smells blood and forces his rival into the middle of the ring but without being able to land another significant shot. Much better from the Brit, however.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:38 Eurobot
10:36 Eurobot: ROUND THREE: Haye's not had much of a look in yet and that may concern his corner, who would have been hoping for an early finish. Most expect Klitschko to get the verdict if it goes the 12 rounds.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:36 Eurobot
10:34 hboboxing: Haye is looking for Klitschko to make a mistake so he can land a big shot. Hasn't happened yet. 10-9 Klitschko [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:34 hboboxing
10:34 Eurobot: Haye makes his first move of the fight, connecting with two shots before just missing with an overhand right. That got the crowd going! Klitschko responds with a big jab - the best of the night so far - but Haye took it well.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:34 Eurobot
10:33 Eurobot: ROUND TWO: This feels like a home bout for Haye, who's caught face-on with a jab early in the second round. He barely flinches and continues to try and invite Klitschko in, playing a patient game to try and find room for the killer punch.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:33 Eurobot
10:32 hboboxing: As expected, Klitschko is leading with his jabs. Haye is able to dodge most of them, but hasn't been able to do much else. 10-9 Klitschko [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:32 hboboxing
10:31 Eurobot: There goes the bell. That was a cagey start, with neither fighter landing anything significant. Haye's corner tells their man to relax and control his punching.


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:31 Eurobot
10:30 Eurobot: Haye's keeping his gloves low, relying on his superior speed and reflexes. Is that a risky strategy? You certainly don't want to receive a big one from Klitschko. One punch from that man and it could be over.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:30 Eurobot
10:29 hboboxing: Klitschko catches Haye behind the head and pushes him down. No knockdown. #KlitschkoHaye [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:29 hboboxing
10:29 Eurobot: ROUND ONE: Klitschko quickly backs Haye into the corner but the Brit works his way out, popping around on his toes. Hold on, Haye's down! Looks like the Londoner was pushed on the back of the head. Nothing to see here and we're back underway.


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:29 Eurobot
10:28 hboboxing: And it's on. #KlitschkoHaye [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:28 hboboxing
10:27 Eurobot: The duo reluctantly touch gloves and we're off! Haye will need to make a quick start...

Wladimir Klitschko v David Haye (07/01/2011)
10:52 hboboxing: Klitschko looking like Klitschko in R6. Haye couldn't do much with that. 10-9 Klitschko [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:52 hboboxing
10:51 Eurobot: This is another good round from Klitschko, comfortably stepping back to fend off Haye's single-punch attacks.


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:51 Eurobot
10:50 hboboxing: RT @Franklin_McNeil: Wlad has won fifth, 10-9. @EmanuelSteward is pleading with Wlad not to let Haye land the final punch of round and s ... [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:50 hboboxing
10:50 Eurobot: ROUND SIX: Klitschko continues to edge forward, Haye darting from foot to foot. Klitschko's cut below his left eye but is boxing well, always looking to land the jab. Haye's not had a look-in in this round.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:50 Eurobot
10:48 Eurobot: ROUND FIVE: Klitschko lands a big right hander with Haye catching it face-first while trying to duck into the ropes. That's left blood coming from Haye's nose! Haye holds on to regain some composure before responding in typical fashion, looking to set the agenda with his speed and pace

Wladimir Klitschko v David Haye (07/01/2011)
10:56 hboboxing: RT @mountain_goats: @badlefthook @hboboxing remember shots to the body? you wouldn't know they were an option from this fight [via Twitter]
Saturday July 2, 2011 10:56 hboboxing
10:56 Eurobot: Haye may have just edged that round. Remember, Klitschko was docked a point by the referee for pushing so Haye could well have a 10-8 round behind him.


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:56 Eurobot
10:56 hboboxing: Haye can't win unless he knocks Klitschko out. And he can't do that unless he throws more punches. 9-9 Klitschko [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:56 hboboxing
10:54 Eurobot: Both men size eachother up before Haye sends a left hook over the top. That caught Klitschko but didn't have too much power behind it. Haye's still looking for the big shot.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:54 Eurobot
10:53 Eurobot: Klitschko pushes Haye down yet again and the Brit complains to the referee, who takes a point away from the 6ft 6in Klitschko.



Saturday July 2, 2011 10:53 Eurobot
10:53 hboboxing: Another push down and Klitschko loses a point. #KlitschkoHaye [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 10:53 hboboxing
10:52 Eurobot: ROUND SEVEN: Both men are marked - Haye on the nose and Klitschko below the left eye - but neither are suffering too badly so far.

11:00 Eurobot: Here's a few stats for you: Klitschko's thrown 149 punches, landing 61, while Haye's thrown 136, connecting with 27.
Saturday July 2, 2011 11:00 Eurobot
11:00 hboboxing: Klitschko dramatically out throwing and out landing Haye. Is Haye's opportunity for a KO going to show up? 10-9 Klitschko [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:00 hboboxing
10:58 Eurobot: ROUND EIGHT: Haye has another word with the referee - is he complaining too much? Time to get on with the fighting.

11:04 hboboxing: Haye landed a couple of nice shots in R9, but not nearly enough. 10-9 Klitschko #KlitschkoHaye [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:04 hboboxing
11:03 Eurobot: Haye moves into the final 30 seconds of the round with an attempted combination. He'll need to connect with more of them if he's to get Klitschko to the mat.


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:03 Eurobot
11:02 Eurobot: ROUND NINE: Klitschko shows a turn of speed to edge Haye into the corner, throwing a trio of punches without really connecting. Haye then falls on one knee and the referee's not happy with the Brit

11:08 Eurobot: ROUND 10: Looks like Haye will need a stoppage to win this fight. He's landing the occassional punch but nothing significant to wear away Klitschko's impressive defence. Klitschko ends the round with a great shot but Haye takes it well.
Saturday July 2, 2011 11:08 Eurobot
11:08 hboboxing: Klitschko is now doing what he does best - outboxing his opponent and taking zero risks. 10-9 Klitschko [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:08 hboboxing
11:07 hboboxing: RT @montelll13: @hboboxing Haye is slowing, Wlad will start pouring on the damage. Left hooks, right hands, done [via Twitter]

11:12 Eurobot: After 11 rounds Klitschko's success rate is 43 per cent, while Haye's sits at just 24 per cent. Saturday July 2, 2011 11:12 Eurobot
11:12 hboboxing: Jim Lampley called it -- this is now target practice for Klitschko. 10-9 Klitschko with one round to go. [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:12 hboboxing
11:11 Eurobot: Klitschko continues in robotic fashion, edging forward, jab after jab. It's frustrating Haye, who's attacks are off balance and ineffective.


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:11 Eurobot
11:10 Eurobot: ROUND 11: Haye goes down again - he's hitting the floor far too easily and the referee's had enough. He calls it a knockdown. Haye enters the second half of the round with a flurry of wild swings. He's got found minutes to make one land.

11:17 hboboxing: Haye hurts Klitschko bad with a hard right, but Wlad just wakes up and dominates. 10-9 Klitschko. Fight's over. #KlitschkoHaye [via Twitter]
Saturday July 2, 2011 11:17 hboboxing
11:16 Eurobot: There goes the bell and Haye raises his arm more in optimism than expectation. It'll go down to the judges and you can only see a Klitschko decision here.


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:16 Eurobot
11:14 Eurobot: Haye dives in with a combination and Klitschko's hurt! The Ukrainian holds on to buy some time but he's struggling. Haye's lost his momentum and is unable to follow the attack up with enough to floor Klitschko.

Saturday July 2, 2011 11:14 Eurobot
11:13 hboboxing: Jim Lampley called it - this is now target practice for Klitschko. 10-8 Klitschko with one round to go. [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:13 hboboxing
11:12 Eurobot: ROUND 12: Here we go! Can either fighter end this fight before the bell?

11:20 hboboxing: Wladimir Klitschko wins by unanimous decision. #KlitschkoHaye [via Twitter]


Saturday July 2, 2011 11:20 hboboxing
11:19 Eurobot: Both men stand in the ring, surrounded by their respective camps, anxiously waiting for the result. Here it comes...

What a shame Wladimir Klitschko wins by a unanimous decision

These middle-class militants will get a striking lack of sympathy

tweet0Print..Topics:Pensions & Retirement.Janet Daley, 20:35, Saturday 2 July 2011

White-collar workers protecting their unjustifiable pensions stir far less compassion than the working-class militants of old, says Janet Daley.

Call that a national strike? Unless you were unfortunate enough to have a child at one of the schools that was shut last Thursday and the statistical odds are that you were not you would scarcely have noticed it. At least not until you turned on the television news and saw the coverage which depicted it as a massive disruption of ordinary life.

The winter of 79 it was not. And for those of us who lived as sentient adults through the Golden Age of British industrial conflict, memories of the hardship we endured have never palled. My children raise their eyes heavenward when I regale them yet again with the stories of how we lived then how I changed their nappies by candlelight and taught them at home for weeks on end, while the Haringey school caretakers struck and the teachers refused to cross picket lines. In our day, you knew what you had to do when union leaders flexed their muscles: stock up on food, candles and coal, and resign yourself to victimhood. No sir, they dont make em like that any more.

But the contrast between then and now is more complex than it might seem. It is not simply that the current wave (or dribble) of strikes is being called on less persuasive grounds than the actions of the Seventies and early Eighties: most of the public seem unconvinced that public sector pensions should remain sacrosanct while their own savings and pensions schemes vanish before their eyes. It would seem from the strike ballot turnouts, let alone the participation in actual action, that even most union members are embarrassed by the demand to retain vastly better pensions than their neighbours who work in the private sector can expect.

And this brings us to the heart of what is really very different about todays industrial confrontations such as they are. The people who are being urged to strike now are largely white-collar, home-owning, middle-class staff who probably had some degree of choice about whether to join the public or private sector. Teaching, arguably, is almost entirely a state sector job, but there is still a degree of freedom in the choice of it as a career whereas, for example, there was no great variety of employment options for a working-class boy growing up in a mining village in South Yorkshire in the Seventies.

Todays militants are not at all like those proletarian descendants of the Industrial Revolution, whose families and communities were trapped in a tragic historical synchrony with national economic decline, and whose defeat was as heartbreaking as it was necessary. This is not class war. There is certainly no sense on the part of most working-class people that this is a struggle in which they have a stake: they are more likely to see civil servants and public sector employees as jammy b------s who have cushy jobs they are unlikely to lose however inadequately they perform.

If the working classes feel this has nothing to do with them, other white-collar professionals, whose employment prospects have become insecure to the point of systematic paranoia, are even less inclined to sympathise with public sector whingeing. If you are out there in the hard, ruthless commercial world, watching your colleagues drop beside you in the trenches while your own pension rights fade away, you are not going to pledge solidarity to your public service counterpart who insists he has a right to retire six years earlier than you (with your taxes to support him). Paradoxically, you are far less likely to be generous in your judgment of the current strikers than you were of the old Scargillite armies of the Seventies and Eighties precisely because todays militants are people like you.

For the longest time during that terrible era which began with the fall of the Heath government, then destroyed the credibility of the Labour Party, and culminated in the bitter ideological struggles of the Thatcher period, the unions however disruptive they became were not reviled. They may finally have exhausted the patience of the country during that infamous winter of 1979, when many of us who had been Labour supporters changed our political orientation for ever, but considering the privations, public opinion took ages to turn definitively against trade unionism. This was because there was a great reservoir of genuine compassion for those old communities of miners, shipbuilders and steelworkers that had once been the engines of British prosperity and industrial might, and which were now losing the only livelihoods they knew and any hope of economic security for their younger generations.

Some of this was sentimental bourgeois guilt, but a good deal of it was a perfectly rational, humane understanding that inevitable as it might be this was a fate that was being visited on people who had led tough lives doing dirty and dangerous jobs, and who were not in a position simply to move on to a different sort of existence. Middle-class sympathy for those who were caught in the collapse of the old industries was not just confined to the Left, and it was engendered precisely by the sense that the victims did not have ones own advantages: the education and the social confidence to tear up your loyalties, abandon your roots and find a new way to live.

But thats all over now. Class-based politics is finished in Britain and so is class-based trade union activism. The only people who think that it isnt dead are handing out placards with the words Socialist Worker at the top. The Labour Party discovered this, then forgot it, and now seems to be hovering somewhere between the two possibilities. The unions, which exist as a force only within the public sector, have had to reconstruct their political raison dre. It is not workers against employers any more: it is a life-or-death struggle to stop the contraction of state power because power over the state and its functions is their only sphere of influence. Market forces and the introduction of competition are a threat precisely because they dismantle the central government agencies that can be easily disabled by concerted union organisation.

The unions oppose what they call the fragmentation of services (through private providers or academy schools) because it is only through state monopolies that they can maintain their national wage bargaining powers and their ideological hold on the way those services are dispensed. So they must place themselves firmly on the side of authoritarian uniformity and against the diversity which offers freedom of choice to people like us and them. No wonder they find it hard to enlist enthusiastic support even from their own members.

Dreams,

Yow wouldn't like to start a Dream Watcher thread?

-=====

Is it true that Cameron calls Pickles his Gherkin?

Someone watches " Have i got news for you " It was only a joke .. Fred clutching at straw's again to score a point .........

Thought you said you were going to ignore Fred?

I felt sorry for the old fart

Aids,

Once again help is at hand for you.

True I did watch "HIGNFY", but I was asking whether the remark is true.

Nice to see another coalition (tory) government cock-up is on the way.

I hope you won't be on sleeping on the pavement.

But that with your "elderly care" bill coming around, I hope your "bets" do well.

By the way the PR boy (Cameron) is beginning to lose his hair and cool in the HP.
To me he looks more of a Spiv every day. Georgie is very quiet lately, letting his master take the flack.

Happy days.

Unfortunately, it looks like Cameron's government is fiddling while Rome burns.

Think I will go back to France.

PS, the association of Pickles and a Gherkin has put me off Gherkins. T'is a pity as I liked cornichons and homemade rillette for breakfast.

Fred constantly bitching about Cameron and the sensible party reminds me of a Pekenese dog trying to bite someone's ankles as they walk. Someone was asking what Fred was like the other day. Perhaps a Pekenese might be a good image or more likely a 'Shitsu'.