Today’s headlines are:  nurses have voted to go on strike. Check out the dead tree editions, compiled in the usual place here. Do scroll down a bit for the horror stories. Didya know that some nurses eat the patients’ leftovers because they are so poor (Daily Mirror)? 

The strange thing is that the arch-lefty paper, the Guardian, doesn’t mention the nurses’ strike vote on their print front page. They have dedicated half the top page to Matt Hancock, the other half to Biden. The Midterm elections are no longer front-page news. They’re now in the domain of the usual ‘writing heads’. I’m not wasting my time and the health of my eyes on their warblings.

The broadsheets seem to be a bit conflicted about their attitude to this ‘nurses strike’. For the first time, both The Times and the DT have added up the sum being talked about: the 5% offered by the government, with the additional 12% demanded by the NHS staff trade unions. Here’s the DT:

“Nurses have voted for their first ever national strike, despite warnings that demands for a 17.6 per cent rise are “simply not reasonable”. Workers at around half of hospitals have backed industrial action that would cause thousands of operations to be cancelled – including for patients with cancer and other deadly diseases. On Wednesday, Downing Street said the plans were “deeply regrettable” and that the pay demand – which comes with a £9 billion price tag – was “not deliverable”.” (paywalled link)

It certainly isn’t ‘deliverable’, not when “we” need to spend so much money on the illegal invaders. The Times has details (my emphasis):

“They will walk out before the end of the year at most hospitals, including cancer and children’s units, in a dispute that could last until spring and affect hundreds of thousands of patients. Nine in ten nurses backed the first UK-wide industrial action in Royal College of Nursing (RCN) history, with staff at 176 employers set to strike within weeks. The action is likely to coincide with a looming winter crisis. A&E and ambulance waits have been at record highs and NHS chiefs fear that a flu and coronavirus “twindemic” could flood hospitals with patients.” (link, paywalled)

No mention of waiting lists and lockdown backlogs – have they vanished? Perhaps the NHS trade unions and some lefty papers might stop and ask if it’s ok for them to demand such sums while more people are in need of food banks (link).

Perhaps the MSM might tone down their fear porn about ‘twindemcis’. Perhaps some brave reporters might ask if the supermarket chains won’t re-introduce their ‘support’ for NHS staff, providing them with reductions on their food costs, as they did in the lockdown years. Perhaps someone might tell the NHS trade Union bosses that ‘we’re all in it together’. Perhaps porcines might take to the skies …

It seems however that Labour isn’t as keen on this and other strikes as the Westminster champagne socialists would like:

“Labour has also failed to back the strikes, with Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, unable to say that he would have offered such a pay rise given the current constraints on public finances.” (paywalled link)

It’s surprising that Labour hasn’t taken a stance, given that the balloting of NHS staff has been in the papers for some time now. Aren’t they the ones always screaming about ‘Toree Cuts’ and ‘Toree Austeriteee’? Perhaps the prospect of getting into No10 and then having to deal with this whole mess is concentrating their minds? Moreover: is Labour abandoning strikes and strikers in order to look acceptable for disgruntled Tory voters? 

In an astonishing opinion piece in The Times we find that for the Werstminster socialists some animals are indeed more equal than others. Nurses demanding a pay rise of 17% elicits a mild ‘tut tut’. University lecturers however, whose pay is on a similar scale as nurses, are being lambasted for the temerity to go on strike for a 12% pay rise. After all, ‘students are paying fees’ and thus can expect to be taught! Under the headline “Lecturers’ strike demands are a denial of reality” we read that 

“The University and College Union has announced that 70,000 staff are to go on strike, in what is planned to be the largest walkout on record in the higher education sector. Three days of strikes will take place this month at 150 universities and about 2.5 million students will be affected. With universities making it clear that refunds [of student fees] are out of the question, this disruption seems bitterly unfair. As well as proposing a 12 per cent pay rise — a spectacularly unrealistic and inflation-stoking demand — staff also want the reversal of cuts that were imposed this year on their final salary pension scheme, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension fund.” (link, paywalled)

Why is the lecturers’ demands of a 12% pay rise ‘spectacularly unrealistic and inflation-stoking’ but the nurses’ of 17% isn’t? Why must we weep over nurses not being able to buy food but lecturers allegedly on zero-hour contracts, forced “to live in tents, sleep on library floors or go to food banks.” is only “disgraceful and must be addressed by constructive talks between all sides” (link, paywalled)? Why are those unions’ demands ‘ludicrous’ by refusing “to acknowledge the economic realities the country now finds itself confronting.” (link, paywalled) but NHS trade unions are exempt from such vituperative observations?

One can either screech about ‘Toree Cuts’ or admonish all who demand more pay to face economic realities – that’s ‘all groups’, without some being supported as ‘more deserving’. So far we’ve not heard of public servants or indeed teachers’ unions balloting for strike actions. We’ve not heard of Whitehall or local council  cleaning staff or some teachers needing to use food banks. I’m sure that’ll come. 

I leave you with news that the ‘Climate Change Committee’ – the one promoting Net Zero and all that jazz – has come up with an astonishing piece of advice:

“The Treasury could cut the cost of energy bill support this winter by £34 million just by encouraging households to close their curtains at night, the government’s climate advisers said.” (link, paywalled)

Oh dear. Who knew … but what should all those home owners who’ve abandoned curtains for posh shutters do now? And where’s the ‘advice’ to use draught excluders at the bottoms of our doors? 

Perhaps we peasants better do our bit, keeping our curtains drawn all day long. We must mind our steps though and not fall over yon draught excluders: we don’t want to have accidents just when there are no nurses and doctors to look after us. Oh – and stock up on snake oil and patent medicines. You never know, they might come in handy. Have a lovely day!



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