The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

A fab new ploy was unveiled on Newsnight. One of the metrics (ugh!) of the railway industry is 'number of cancellations'. These are unavoidable in even the best-run systems because of e.g. track maintenance running late, tree on the line, and so forth. If a franchise reports these before 10 p.m the previous day, the cancellations are removed from the timetable and the cancellation is, as it were, not a cancellation. However, if a franchise can't operate a particular service because, say, nobody turns up to drive it, that's down to the franchise and they get fined for it.

If the franchise rings up before 10 pm and cancels a service the next day because they know full well they won't have enough drivers that is not a cancellation (within the meaning of the Act), it is a criminal offence (seeking pecuniary advantage by deception). But driver numbers are a co-efficient of union attitudes and training regimes, more a matter of national policy than franchise inefficiency, so civil servants and government ministers will have to accompany franchise-holders to gaol. In a perfect world. In any kind of world that makes sense.

[Mick Harper]

Rishi is apparently coming under pressure 'to do something about all these strikes' and since, apparently, this is just about the only thing that the modern Conservative party does agree about, he is presumably giving it some thought. Any outbreak of thought is something we must encourage so, first, why now?

That is obvious enough. Inflation. The old system, which has served us so well, of RPI plus a bit if you're important, RPI if you're not and RPI minus a bit if you are are only self-important, breaks down in a time of inflation. However, this is misleading. Because the inflation is foreign-generated, it is not a matter of catch-up, it is a matter of who is strong enough to avoid suffering the five-per-cent (or whatever) drop in living standards everyone is suffering from. And, remember, when prices come down again, who is going to say, "Strewth, we'd better take a pay cut this year."

But before any of that, the AE way is always to ask the more fundamental question, the one subject to careful ignoral, "Why are strikes permitted at all?"

[Mick Harper]

It is because of something called 'collective bargaining'. This does not exist in what we philosophers call 'the state of nature' which goes something like this:

[Mick Harper]

In theory there is neither individual nor collective bargaining, everything is decided by supply-and-demand. In classical economics, by the marginal cost. If the mine owner needs a thousand miners he has to offer the minimum wage that will persuade a thousand people to sign on as miners, but in turn every miner gets that wage whether they would work for less or not. Hence it's also the maximum wage all miners can ask for. It's neat, it's efficient and, it would seem, equitable.

Apart from the mine owner. He is not necessarily the richest man in the scenario. He has no choice in how much coal is produced (that's down to geology) nor how much he can sell the coal for (that's down to the market price of coal). He could easily wind up the poorest man in town, having gone bankrupt, but when he ends up the richest by a long way, many people see that as not fair. As a historian describing the origins of the Communist Party of Great Britain recently said on Radio 4

[Mick Harper]

They say all politics is local. They say all poverty is relative. Suffice it to say that South Wales in the early twentieth century was one of the most prosperous places in the whole of human history. It is also where and when British strikes were legitimated. Before the Taff Vale judgement of 1901, it was unclear whether employers could sue trade unions for loss of profits if they brought their members out on strike. Whether it was wise to do so was a separate matter.

The judges said the Taff Vale, maybe the richest railway in the world transporting Welsh anthracite down to Cardiff docks, could. The unions had to form the Labour Party to get the verdict overturned, which it was in 1906 when the Liberals won the general election and passed the Trades Disputes Act indemnifying unions against such actions.

AE-ists don't ordinarily take sides but might have to in this instance...

[Mick Harper]

The current state of play was summed up -- as is customary in Britain where there is no effective parliamentary forum -- on Newsnight. Three propositions were advanced pretty much nem con:
1. There is a right to strike.
2. Over the years there have been constant but unavailing efforts to make it harder to strike.
3. They are going to have another go after all the Christmas strikes have made the unions so unpopular the public will be all for it.

Even the most rabid MP (all of them) can spot a few contradictions here.
1. If there is a right to strike it should be made easier not harder. Britain has a fine record when it comes to protecting and cherishing human rights.
2. If the state has been trying to prevent something for years and years and only succeeds in failing every time, it is probably not very wise to have another go.
3. If a party with a massive majority (and relative unanimity on the issue) has to wait until some fortunate concatenation of circumstance makes it safe to proceed, it probably isn't.

AE would recognise that all this is a sign of a fundamental paradigm bust and would go back to basics
1. There is no right to strike.
2. Striking should be made illegal.
3. There is no need of it because supply and demand determines wages with reasonable equity.
But AE-ists would discover what was discovered in 1900
4. It makes no difference whether strikes are legal or not legal. So long as individuals have the right to decide who they work for, strikes will happen.

So it's not a simple question but answers will be easier if people wouldn't keep talking bollocks. This is difficult when the largest party in the land believes tacitly that strikers are vermin and the second biggest party believes (not tacitly, but structurally) that strikers are to be supported at every turn.

[Grant]

The wages of so-called core workers will go up anyway because of the soaring wages in the free market economy. If postal workers aren’t given ten percent they will leave by next Christmas.

Did you know that car sales are soaring. Odd that, during a recession and all.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/05/uk-new-car-sales-rise-as-industry-leaders-say-recovery-is-within-grasp

[Mick Harper]

The Post Office are trying desperately to shed tens of thousands of workers on account of Spanish practices built up since Rowland Hill introduced the penny black. That is why they are losing a million pounds a day trying to compete against companies built up since Margaret Thatcher abolished the Post Office's parcels delivery monopoly.

Car sales have been increasing since the end of Covid restrictions. There has not been a recession in Britain (technically defined as two quarters of negative growth) since Covid days. Odd that.

[Mick Harper]

When Cyril Ramaphosa was elected president of South Africa he was described as 'the world's richest black African'. As Mr Ramaphosa has no discernible mercantile skills or background this can reasonably be translated as 'the world's most corrupt black African'. It is therefore quite unreasonable for people to make a fuss when they find a couple of million of his ill-gotten rands tucked away in his sofa.

PS South Africa has won this year's Free Election/Stoopidest Electorate competition (again) beating off fierce competition from Northern Ireland (again).

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Guardian Books of the Year

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

Guardian Books of the Year

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

How do you 'win' a strike?

It depends on who 'you' are. There are five parties involved: the strikers, the union, the employers, the public and the government. It is very difficult for the strikers to win. Their interest is solely in the difference between money lost while they are out -- three hundredth of their annual wage each day -- and the extra they get from striking -- a few hundredth of their annual wage. Even two days is probably enough to wipe out any advantage and two days is not likely to produce a favourable outcome. This is why strikes are very rare events.

In a perfect world, they should never happen at all. The employers -- who are faced with the same calculation expressed as unpaid wages, increased wages and lost output -- would manoeuvre to make sure employees can never gain by striking. So why do strikes happen? Generally speaking, it is when one side is not the strikers but the union and the other side is employers who are also the public and also the government. Then some very odd things happen.