Though Cowards Flinch

Both sides should “give ground”, says Mr Ed Balls (via the BBC), to avert Wednesday’s “hugely disruptive” strike. He says “the government has got to give some ground, so have the unions”. What does this mean, in practice?

Well, it basically amounts to a special tax on whatever proportion of the workforce are employed by the government. That tax is two-fold, coming primarily in an immediate contributions hike, and secondly in the number of contributions. This is a tax on people who are already low earners (the majority of public servants earn substantially less than the national average), never mind the additional strains low earners face.

I don’t want to rehash the argument about pensions. The government never had a leg to stand on – and their devious, British Airways-style attempt to bully democratic unions by offering a slightly less crappy deal and then threatening to withdraw it unless the strike is called off just proves what we all suspected. Tories are outright bastards, high on the stench of their own rank privilege.

I did want to shout out to all those people who gush about Miliband, Balls and company. There’s nothing like the Labour Shadow Chancellor telling the country that he can sympathise with extra taxes on the poor to really make one’s Sunday morning. Yes, vote Labour and watch them try to out-smarm George Osborne.

Balls, like twat Miliband, flipflop over strikes for two reasons. The first is pure opportunism. They want to seem like the voice of reason. One wonders what constituency they’re appealing to. The strike is going ahead; millions will follow the lead of the unions. Anyone opposed to it can get all the “voice of reason” bullshit they want from Francis Maude.

I’ll be staying an extra fifteen minutes at the pickets just for him, by the way, the supercilious shitbag.

The second reason is that Balls is really just Tory-lite. Dubbed “Labour’s Keynesian rottweiler” by one utter dicksplash at the New Statesman, the five point plan for jobs and growth is shockingly weak. Moreover, it says absolutely nothing about the state of public services. The reason? Because Balls will plough on with privatising prisons, privatising hospitals and privatising schools. In order to seem small business and family friendly, he too will be pushing pension “reform”.

He will be pushing “the cuts to welfare, education and Home Office budgets that [Labour] set out before the election”.

He will be pushing “discipline in public and private sector pay”.

And on pensions? “Under Labour contributions and the retirement age would be rising too”.

Essentially he concedes the central Tory principle; that the poor must pay for economic “recovery”. Workers must pay for the rich to stay rich.

So I say, fuck you Ed Balls.