New Tories, new nickname...

From the Beeb.

Conservative leader David Cameron warned the government it was going to have to be "extremely tough" on unions to avert a wave of strikes.

He said Labour was "so reliant" on unions for funding they felt they had a "stranglehold" over the party and could "dictate terms".

And he backed tough action on strikes as they "rarely achieve their goal", he said.

Ah, so that's it, then. Wavey Davey* Cameron wants to stop us striking, for our own good. Don't you see, striking doesn't work, you're just hurting yourself and others (never mind that when we in Higher Ed. struck for higher London weighting, we won the principle that it too goes up with inflation annually - albeit we didn't get the maximum demand of £4K).

Of course, I've said it before, we only strike when we're losing, usually, it's no coincidence that strikes only happen when the employers aren't just backing down and paying out to avoid trouble - the best strikes never happen.

As it is, price are going beserk (note, this is not necessarily inflation, the media confuse this fact, prices rises due to real demand increases or natural rises in the cost of producing a good are not inflation, inflation is a monetary phenomena when money falls in real and thus relative value). The price of our labour should rise to cover that cost, else we're giving money to the capitalists. It's as simple as that.

The principle is clear, if you went into a shop and said "Can I have that oil please, I need it to make my car go" they'd ask for the folding stuff - no amount of pleading how necessary your job is, how that vehicle is needed for some essential public service, would shift the hardware store to give up their goods for free.

So long as the market system exists, we need to play by its rules - even if sometimes the rules of the system Wavey Davey supports leads to outcomes he doesn't like. Watch out for him and Wavey Davey Davis (if, chortle, he gets re-elected) and their cuddley libertarian Tories engaging in massive state intervention in the Labour market.

*As Reeves and Mortimer revealed to us in the early nineties, Wavey Davey is the devil.