Quintin Jardine's blog

I have sympathy with the people who are on strike in Britain today. There are one of two exceptions, though; for example the tosser with the scarf who was interviewed on BBC Scotland this morning, trotting out the old learned-by-rote claptrap. His name was John something and he was billed as ‘Student’. Student? Then what the pluperfect **** was he doing there? What bloody right had be to present himself as a spokesman for people who have actually done a day’s work in their lives, and who have real, personal concerns about their long-term futures, and what idiot in the BBC news production  team decided to put him on air?

That’s an aside, though. Public sector pensions are an area of interest to me, not least because I have one. I spent the 1970s in an off-shoot of the civil service, and accrued pension rights, non-contributory incidentally, for all that time. When I came to collect, I had done some calculations on what I might be due, but when my award came through it was well below my estimate. I queried it and received a letter from some junior clerk that was full of mumbo-jumbo and way short of the actuarial calculation to which I should have been entitled. I was left with no further redress and a continuing feeling, which persists to this day that I’ve been cheated. So yes, those people who are out there marching are right to make their points about entitlement now, and I’m behind them on that.

But what are they gaining by taking a day off work? What are they gaining by stealing a day’s education from children, and by inconveniencing their parents? What are they gaining by pissing off someone like me, a supporter, because my wheelie bin hasn’t been emptied this morning? Or pissing off my step-daughter, another sympathiser, who’s flying into Stansted this evening facing the likelihood of massive delays at passport control, that will probably cost her the difference between a rail fare and a taxi fare back into London? What exactly is the sense in all of that?

The last industrial action on this scale gave Margaret Thatcher the excuse and the ammunition to emasculate the trade union movement. What will be the consequences of this one?