JP's Corner of The Blogosphere

So said the Conservative election posters in 1997. Everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon now, with Tube workers being the latest to hold a ballot. Could it be that Dave Cameron was right when he said that the Trade Unions have scented weakness in the government? The cynic in me says that if this latest threat is actually a genuine show of concern for the 800 potential job losses, then the whole country would have been on strike from the beginning of the recession. Meanwhile, I have another Unite link for you. I wouldn’t want you to think that it is just Len McCluskey who is deluded. In this article , Tony Woodley is emotively appealing to staff to gain the respect from [their] employer by supporting this strike. Maybe I’ve missed something, but as Willie Walsh stands against the “unjustified Industrial Action” and vows to withold their travel perks, I don’t see much evidence of respect for the strikers. Of course, if you should be foolish enough to be taken in by t...

Being someone who likes to keep their finger on some sort of pulse, I decided to use Twitter to see what people are really saying about the British Airways strike. If you’re interested, I searched for #bastrike. Is this what one might term a ‘trending topic?’ Of course, there’s not much point in blogging if all I do is make out that I’m hip enough to use Twitter. Any fool can do that, but only one fool can give my opinion. I was pleased to see evidence that a lot of passengers have been unaffected by the strike , which does imply that there is some truth in what BA have been saying about their contingency plans working. Unite, on the other hand, like to paint a rather different picture, and despite my dislike of them I am going to give them some air time and link to one of their articles . Not because all is necessarily fair in love and war but because I found one of their statements particularly amusing. Apparently, “Unite believes BA is grounding its own flights so it ca...

…by reducing the use of raw materials through efficient use of signs which don’t repeat unnecessary words.   …by reducing the number of cars on the road. …by ensuring that the footpath down to the Parkway Railway station makes pedestrian access easy.

…is how someone described the bottle of sparkling white grape and apricot juice I served with dinner yesterday.  No points for guessing where I bought it.  But it was very nice, it had to be said.

There’s no point my returning to the Blogosphere if I don’t express an opinion on something topical or controversial, so let’s get down to business. Veteran readers may not be surprised by my admission that I am not a huge fan of trade unions, and Unite’s recent performance has done nothing to endear me. I recall the BBC’s Nick Robinson making a comment at Christmas that the real issue at stake is a political one and it all comes down to power.  It might be easy to disagree with him if Unite were running an honest campaign about the “plight” of the cabin crew, but all I’ve seen over the last couple of weeks are some Communists and an American gangster making increasingly deluded statements. If this post is to be believed, there is very little truth in the Unite campaign.  Perhaps that’s because in comparison with everyone else the cabin crew have nothing to complain about.

*cough* Like much of the Blogosphere, this particular corner of it has gathered much dust recently. You don’t want to hear excuses, and I don’t want to concoct them, so let’s leave it at that and gloss over my absence.  Suffice to say that I had promised myself that I would start blogging again once I got my new computer, and I now have said new computer.  Shiny. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, my first impressions of Windows 7 are very positive.  That’s probably not the most profound thing I could have said as I burst back in, but it’s true nonetheless.