General Chat

I have watched the television today and have come to the conclusion that no one has come up with a legitimate excuse for the strike.
I left school at fourteen, not paying a full stamp until I was eighteen, but contributing at the lower rate at first. Nowadays people join the work-force at 16, 17, 18, sometimes in their early twenties and "perpetrual students" at a very much later date, so why the angst about having to work longer to receive their index linked pensions. I paid contributions for fifty-one years and at a later time contributed to a private pension, using pre-taxed money to fund it. The pension I now receive is not index linked. Where were these union leaders and strikers when Gordon Brown was robbing the private pension funds?
In the Seventies and Eighties I spent quite a lot of time abroad, demonstrating and selling machinery to bring in foreign currency to this country, which was badly needed to maintain our balance of payments. Will today's action have done anything to help our balance of payments situation?
Bernard

Industry has/had the choice of a pension Government workers do not they dont have the choice to opt out take it or walk!

No I didnt support the strike this time I went to work like a good little sc*b :-(

its a loosing battle as far as I am concerned .

The public sector has been overinflated for years..so they have to take their medicine like the private sector have had to...my dad lost £25,000 on his final pension pay out...didn't see anyone shouting loudly on HIS behalf...

They're only bringing public sector pensions broadly into line with private sector ones.........EVERYONE has to work longer and collect less...it's a fact end of.

Or of course you could just close your eyes to the whole thing and end up like Greece.......beholden to the EU community for the crumbs thrown at the table.........there's your stark choices...i know which i would choose. !!!

Please remember that government workers pay their taxes too, if they want to loose money by supporting the strike then that is their right todo so and the money spent in weatherspoons is theirs to spend they have earned it..... also school isnt a child minding service its there to educate children. .....they picked an excellent day for it ...last payday before xmas . :-D

MY SON HAS A SAYING
Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank
but give a man a bank and he can rob the world

the governments much the same to me
no matter whos in power
the poor will always be poor

and no matter how you look at things the OAPs of today
have earned a better deal than they get
they fought to keep us free many dies for the same cause

yes your right the pubs and shops will benifit from the strike
and most of the local children have had a field day
the cimema was packed today

There are a lot of people looking for work who'd like their jobs/wages. (And I speak as a retired Civil Servant...... Who never went on strike in my life.)

Governments does not pay their wages, We do (the tax payer)

I have gone through life when things have changed at work (pay and conditions) and either had to accept it of move on,
personally i tend to change jobs if i am no longer getting what i was contracted for (by way of pay and conditions)

If they are not happy with any new deal then they need to do the same and not expect the future tax payer to foot the bill.

Roy

Don't know, but what I do know is that instead of it being relatively quiet ( wednesdays are) at the shopping centre today it was heaving with kids out of school, and probably also those on strike using the day to go Christmas shopping, so I beat a hasty retreat without buying anything.... it saved me some money if no one else :-D

True Joy. I have never worked out how they can lose a days wages for a strike and think they can ever make up that amount with a pay rise. A days pay these days is quite a lot. To say nothing of the money that was being spent on booze in Wetherspoons at lunch time by the strikers. Seemed like a jolly to me.

Do you think it did any good
I do
it saved the Govenment millions in wages

WHAT DO YOU THINK ????