Anyone who lived through the 70’s will be aware that, rightly or wrongly, Thatcher’s win in ‘79 was in a large part because we had all got fed up with unions throwing their wait around, especially the public sector unions.

If unions fear a Tory government as much as they say, and with less 5 months at most to go to the next election, don’t you think they might have have bitten their tongues for a while rather than endanger a Labour victory? But  no, it seems that people who become union leaders have some form of Tourette’s Syndrome which means they are incapable of not calling for strikes:

More than 250,000 public sector workers are to be balloted on strike action over what their union says are “macho” government cuts to redundancy payments.

Job centre, customs and immigration workers could stage a two-day walkout in March if the action is approved.

It doesn’t matter whether or not their cause is just, the public perception of civil servants is, again rightly or wrongly,  one of featherbedded incompetents who don’t know how to do a days work whilst they hang around for their gold plated pensions. Pensions, I might add, are a very sore subject with the private sector who are losing their defined benefits schemes and seen the value of their defined contributions being hammered.

I like this bit though:

“Margaret Thatcher introduced this compensation scheme but the Labour government is now saying it is too generous and wants to rob hard-working low-paid public servants,” said the union’s general secretary Mark Serwotka.

If the Tories don’t make hay out of this and score a couple of points increasdee in polls there really is no hope for them.