Another argument for privatising the molly-coddled BBC

The BBC is in many ways a great resource, but has become far too complacent over the years. The strike by these over-paid public-sector employees is yet more evidence that these people are far too insulated from the economic realities the country faces. It is creditable that a couple of the Today presenters broke the stirke yesterday and came to work to present the programme; perhaps it's no accident that one of the two (at least), Evan Davis, has a background in economics, although Sarah Montague perhaps also a similar background, but at any rate she is one of the better presenters there in my view.

The last Labour government debauched the economy with major negative consequences for the private sector, the part of the economy that actually generates the money that the public sector spends. It's the sense of entitlement by well-paid people at the BBC that really grates; their attitude seems to be that the rest of the country can go hang, provided their cosy little cartel is not disrupted. I continue to hope that the present Coalition government will not chicken-out and carry through its promises to reform (i.e. reduce in size) the BBC; if the cost of this tough action, and the sackings that should go with it, is a few days or weeks of 'dead air', then so be it. The Humphrys and Kearneys of this world must be made to realise they are not indispensible. The strikers may whisper malevolently that those who went to work instead of striking will not be forgotten, but equally those who did strike will not be forgotten either.

Tea-times in Scotland out of danger

A threatened strike at Tunnock's bakery in Uddingston could be avoided as a result of an agreement (details yet to be announced) with the union, you guessed it Unite.

I have fond memories of both these 'delicacies' from my childhood, but haven't tasted either in years - my efforts at weight loss take precedence now.

London Tube 48-hour strike - Bill goes all "Devil's Kitchen"

I had the dubious pleasure of watching Bob Crow, the 'capo' of the union (aka 'gang') known as the RMT, last evening telling poor unfortunate Londoners why they would just have to 'grin and bear it' because members of the union were staging a 48-hour strike for some fatuous reason; not that I'm biased of course, you understand, but watching that 'mockney' lout on my television screen brings a rage-mist down over my eyes, I'm a little embarrassed to admit. Luckily I happened to flick through my RSS feeds tonight and found something in Gavin Whenman's blog that struck me as specially apt. The embedded video relates to a shorter strike a couple of years ago and encapsulates what are I imagine the sentiments of many commuters in London tonight. There is 'profanity' in the embedded video I'm afraid, but it seems to me that when confronted by divisive and offensive eejuts such as Crow some leeway is permitted:



- the title by the way refers to the serial swear-blog known as the Devil's Kitchen of course - even if I find the language used regularly there to be far too strong for my tastes, I read it often because the quality of the writing is otherwise so high and the quality of the arguments deployed is plenty high enough - even if I call a halt when the ranting carries on for screen after screen of obsessiveness in some of the [far too] lengthy articles.

However, amidst all the probable chaos in London over the next couple of days it is pleasing to read in the traditional 'journal of record' that the online blogging community is recognised as providing a valuable level of helpful information and advice for those who will be trying to negotiate their way through Bob Crow's ego-fest in the coming couple of days.

Council strike action - do you think they will provide rebates?

The admittedly wickedly-radical idea occurs to me that if council employees are to conduct a series of regular strikes to improve their pay, we council tax payers should receive some kind of rebate for the periods when the council is not providing us with the services we pay them to provide. There's more detail about the services which will be curtailed all over Scotland here and in the Highland Council region here; a summary of the effects on council service in Highland Council region is given on the main page:

Industrial Action Services provided by The Highland Council will be disrupted on Wednesday 24 September as the result of industrial action, which is part of nationwide action by Unite the Union, GMB and Unison members in respect of the National Pay Award. The Council will endeavour to keep disruption to a minimum.

For comparision, I use a number of services for which I pay by subscription, provided by commercial organisations. It is invariably the case that when these services are curtailed for whatever reason, technical problems or industrial action for example, that there will be a 'rebate' in the form of an extension of the period of my subscriptions to cover the period when services were not being provided, without me having to ask for this. I've never heard of a government or council, anywhere, which takes it responsibilities for providing services equally seriously, have you?