First and most important, for the vast majority of people this has so far been a relatively painless recession. The Government has protected them from the full force of the contraction with unprecedented quantities of public support which in any other circumstances would have been condemned as the most scandalous pre-election giveaway of all time.Not from my perspective.
My firm's accounts show our profits halving. Those profits are my income. So my income just halved in the space of two years. Granted, it has halved to a level that is still (by any measure) comfortable, but two more years of this and I will be paying for the privilege of going to work. Painless this is not.
We have, of course, taken what steps we could to mitigate this. As a result, none of our staff have seen a pay rise for some time. Some have been laid off; they can but dream of the type of redundancy provisions that Unite - Gordon's paymaster - demands that we must fund for their members. Their strike, and the news of the postal workers' settlement, sounds like another world. Not painless for my staff, then, either.
Of course, Gordon doesn't mind this. I have never voted Labour, and never will. I doubt that too many of my staff would vote for him either. But we are not the ones for whom Gordon has ensured a painless recession; we are not the ones at whom the message is directed. We do not figure on his radar. We are already a lost cause.
Except that I seem to remember hearing the phrase "A Future Fair for All".
I should wish.
Even the posties settlement is spin.
ReplyDeleteThey aren't getting a good deal at all.Just spin put out by managements and unions to cover a rather embarrassing lack of progress.
by the union.
Granted it is far better than most will have got this year but by my reckoning with what has to be given up and what they get it amounts to a 1% increase in 2010 a 2.5% cut in 2011 and a 1.5% increase or possible decrease in 2012.
Small potatoes by private sector standards but the 6% increase is just newspaper headlines.
I expect the unite deal will be similar.
That actually worries me, BQ. If the postie in the street is being told a 6% rise, then when he actually sees a 2.5% cut then we are going to be right back to square one. Unrest, strikes, further disruption to us all, and a further slide into irrelevance by the Post Office.
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