The excitement of the junior doctors strike is over. The pampered and overpaid apprentices, training to be in the top 3% of wage earners (for a 40 hour week) said it was not about money but about saving the poor old NHS. So the Government offered them more cash and the greedy bastards stopped striking and threatening to emigrate en masse. Shame. So next up in the public sector summer of fun are the University Lecturers who are having the day off today and tomorrow.
I write as the son and husband of a lecturer so am fully aware of how much work they do. Or rather how little. And they are well paid for doing very little. They have more or less complete job security unless they commit a heinous offence like questioning global warming or liking UKIP on their facebook page.
In the recession whilst folks in the private sector got P45s or, if they were lucky, got to keep their jobs but with no pay rise, the lecturers got pay rises across the board. And of course each year there are promotions and folks getting new jobs, all advertised in the Guardian. If you were crap you got a pay rise if you were less crap you got a promotion and a big payrise. Fabbo, what's not to like.
The University employment industry has expanded massively since the early nineties as we have massaged youth unemployment figures by persuading vast numbers of not very academic kids to go and study for worthless degrees from "new" universities which no employer takes seriously. The kids postpone unemployment/shelf stacking at Tesco but meanwhile there are more and more jobs for the lecturers.
Now the economy is growing the Government's token attempt to cut the deficit means that lecturers are still getting pay rises but not very big ones ( 1%) and so are lagging the private sector where folks can earn more as the economy grows.
Unfair shout the lecturers who want to outpace the private sector in both good times and in bad and have job security and fat pensions paid for by others and do fuck all work. And so the overpaid and idle bastards are on strike.
My Mrs was last night pondering whether to show solidarity with her comrades and go on strike. Being an honest woman, if she goes on strike she really will do no work which means that when the industrial action ends (Friday) she will just have to catch up on marking over the weekend and will be two days pay worse off. She is bright enough to work out that this is pointless and - i think - also accepts that the demands for more pay are just wholly unjustifiable.
My suggestion for the idle and overpaid bastards who fill our young people's minds with left wing nonsense is to announce that their strike is not about pay but it is all about saving the NHS.
The general public swallowed that bullshit last time and the Government is so spinleless it will probably just cave in anyway as it tried to buy popularity ahead of the Brexit referendum. it worked before...