Strike Dumb

Here in the lovely country of Northumbria, everyone is getting deliriously excited about the next Great Event on the horizon; the soothsayers are in ecstasies, and by my reckoning, they're probably in the Seventh Heaven by now; Beeby See hasn't shut up about it for days, and even the phlegmatically psychotic sweetie Guardy-Ann is pontificating on the matter in her customary venom.

The hard-done-by public sector workers are planning a Day of Strike Action (which to my simple feline mind has to be a contradiction in terms, since to strike is to carry out no productive action at all). Dismayed by the Tree/Liberationist Alliance Administration's dogged insistence on reducing the level of public expenditure in order to offset the widening abyss of debt swallowing up the Kingdom, they've decided that the public sector workers - paid from the revenues raised by heavy-handed taxation - are receiving excessively generous pensions. In view of this, they've decided to reduce some of the excesses paid into these pots, thus reducing the frequency of overseas pilgrimages of retired administrators to Tuscany. So sad.

So we're soon to be greeted with the sight of schoolmasters, headmasters, kindergarten playground supervisors, environmental support officers, diversity coordinators, fish quota accountants, homeopathy advisors, pilgrims, pigeon psychologists and a plethora of other essential and frivolous trades taking to the streets, waving placards in ungrammatical Anglo-Saxon, replete with greengrocers' apostrophes. I'm really looking forward to it. (When I was a kitten, Caedmon used to take me to such demonstrations so that he could show me the linguistic atrocities of semi-literates.)

This Great Strike - the greatest ever (since the previous one) - has been coordinated across the various trades and professions by the respective Trade Guild Barons. These are the inspirational shepherds and guiding lights of the striking employees, who've tirelessly urged their flocks to vote for this Grand Gesture against the vile and reprobate Trees. In the event, only a small percentage of their charges have bothered to turn out to vote, but from those meagre attendances, the mighty result has been obtained. Hooray for Redistributionist Demockery-Cy!

As far as the Trade Guild Barons are concerned, it's a great result; they can play their chess game with Caedmeron and Clegge in the snug and smug assurance they're not going to lose any money. As far as the public sector employees are concerned, they're Striking a Blow against Injustice, Poverty, Discrimination and fishpaste. They will lose a day's pay for each day they strike, and they'll feel virtuous and inwardly cleansed by their cathartic act of self-denial. The Tree/Liberationist Administration will be greatly pleased, since they've saved heaps of groats from unpaid salaries as a consequence. Result!

Meanwhile, the wage slaves working for the private sector will continue to toil, unrecognised, unloved and unnoticed. Their taxes will continue to feed the Public Sector Beast - until they eventually lose their employment, and the tax revenue stream dries up. And then what...?