613 days ago
The Mrs broke the picket line yesterday. Actually there was no picket line, University Lecturers on strike are too lazy to do even that. So I start with a data based rant on greedy and lazy and deceitful public sector workers. Then it is onto DFS Furtniture (DFS), Amigo (AMGO), Wildcat Petroleum (WCAT, Pineapple Power (PNPL) and the fraud Supply@ME Capital (SYME)
1046 days ago
The Mrs has left the radio on and I find myself listening to, the unimaginably bad, Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. Even the Mrs admits it is utter piffle and has now demanded that it be switched it off lest it make me even more angry with its utterly fake news. The show is all over a story today that the ONS has suggested that 1.3 million Brits have long covid. This, it concludes, is a great reason to go and have the booster jab although there is no evidence at all that it will stop anyone catching long covid from the very mild Omicron variant since it has been around for only a few weeks. The ONS survey has a key takeaway which the BBC loves as it allows it to indulge in praising the usual victims. Which professions suffer the highest rates of long covid?
1084 days ago
Back in the 1970s my late father would make a point of crossing the picket line when his colleagues were on strike. He, and his friend Bill Whitehead, would march past the other liberal arts teachers with pride. After the event, my father would note how unusual it was to see so many of his co-workers in the Warwick University English department actualy turning up on campus. Dad would have been proud to see the Mrs breaking the strike this week although as she was working from home that day it only meant answering emails. According to the bright young thing of socialism, Zarah Sultana MP, it is as University staff have suffered a 20% pay cut so she backs the strike. As so often Zarah makes things up. My father was the sort of lefty who believed that Government should look after the deserving poor and that folks should speak the truth. He would not have been a big fan of Ms Sultana on either count.
1103 days ago
The Mrs will be crossing the picket lines at her University and breaking the planned strike by the University Lecturers Union for this strike is utterly unjustifiable. Somehow, I think that the country will not grind to a halt as the massed ranks of liberal arts lecturers withdraw their valuable labour. But I am proud that my wife will not be joining her grostequely well paid colleagues on the picket line, but will be breaking the line and going into work to continue to fill impressionable young folk’s head with valuable insights into a Marxist analysis of the exploitation of labour.
3061 days ago
The Guardian has not been delivered today. I have enquired at the Newsagents and apparently no copies of the loathsome left wing rag have arrived in Shipston. Maybe Guardian writers feel that like the other lazy, overpaid, greedy left wing bastards, the junior Doctors, University Lecturers and School Teachers they should go on strike. If that is the case one must only hope that it is a prolonged dispute. But the absence of the rag causes my father some consternation.
3063 days ago
The University lecturers are not happy with their pay offer and so will tomorrow again be withdrawing their labour. For many that will be a real pain as they will actually have to go to the campus in July, in order to signal their displeasure.
You can have a look at how much lecturers can earn in the tables HERE which the Union is too embarrassed to update. For a job with long vacations allowing you do do "research" on a beach of your choice and with total job security, it sure is worth working your way up the greasy pole is it not?
The current pay offer
3102 days ago
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.
3119 days ago
The first time I encountered the woman who is now known as the Mrs but was formerly "The Deluded lefty" she made her views known by passing me her copy of The Guardian saying there was an article in it that I might find interesting. Since I fancied her big time, and still do, I did not respond "you must be kidding you daft lefty" but dutifully read the complete and utter piffle and feigned interest. On our second date I did not hold back as we had a big row over affirmative action.
But our relationship has survived. Her pals who are even more deluded than the Mrs quickly branded me as "the fascist boyfriend" for thought crimes like going to Lady Thatcher's funeral rather than having a party, for voting Tory and for believing in capitalism, Israel, freedom etc, etc.
The Mrs is this morning cheered by her news that the University Lecturers - greedy and lazy bastards - are going on strike to get even more money for doing sod all work. They better hurry up as pretty soon their 10 week summer vacation starts and they might actually have to cut into their Tuscany break to head back to Britain to man ( sorry, person) a picket line.
As a sociology lecturer, the Mrs has mad left views hard-coded into her DNA. She has never voted anything other than Labour. Until today.
Okay
3784 days ago
For once the Mrs was not on strike with the rest of the public sector last week. The University Lecturers have already staged several walk outs this year and why on earth would they interrupt a three month break in the sun to turn up for a protest. But the rest of the comrades walked out. Did you notice the Country crumbling?
Public sector workers now earn more on average than those in the private sector. It is almost impossible for them to get fired – job security is 100%. They get guaranteed final salary pensions. They get more holiday – and throw more sickies than those in the private sector and what do they want? More!
They are an innumerate bunch.
4039 days ago
I write as the son of a retired University Lecturer and the husband of a practising one, who is NOT on strike today. But many of her colleagues (some of whom I shall be meeting on bonfire night) are withdrawing their labour today. This is a politically motivated strike by greedy bastards who should be string up with piano wire.
Lecturers have a cushy deal. By your late thirties you can expect to be earning c£40,000 a year. You do not actually have to attend your institution of learning more than two or three days a week but can work from home. “Office hours” are not exactly those we in the private sector are used to. There is no 6 am alarm call and daily grind to hit your desk at work by 7 AM. Or even 9 AM.
Although nominal holidays are 25 days a year during the 20 weeks of vacation (plus reading weeks etc) lecturers do not actually have to er…lecture. They rarely have to pop into the factory and it is quite normal for them to spend the summer “working” from Tuscany.
It is almost impossible to be fired. Being lazy or useless is not enough. You need to be found guilty of gross moral turpitude which means some really heinous offence like reading the Daily Mail or having a picture of Nigel Farage on your wall. This is a job for life at the end of which there is a very generous pension scheme funded by the grateful taxpayer.
And yet the bastards are going on strike
