The race to the bottom in pension provision continues apace for both public and private sector workers in the UK. Management at the Port Sunlight-based company, which makes Flora and Marmite, want to close the final salary pension scheme which covers 7,000 employees, corporate theft on a grand scale. As a result Unite, GMB, and retail union USDAW members at Unilever are taking their first ever national action – covering 12 UK sites.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said:

“The government shamelessly tries to play public servants off against their colleagues in the private sector, when the real divide over pensions is between the wealthy bosses and shareholders, and the workforces they exploit.

"Despite ministers' best efforts, the public sector strike last week was supported by many in the private sector who recognise that the answer to their problems is not an equality of misery, but fair pensions for all.

"The real pensions scandal is not the very modest packages in the public sector, but the near destruction of decent pensions schemes in the private sector.

PCS website

So Shithead apologised - well no, he didn't. He said IF people were offended by his repetition of the Cameron dinner party table talk, he'd be happy to apologise. So he hasn't apologised, has he?
There is, of course, no chance of the BBC's unofficial spokesman on industrial relations getting the push. The ONE Show (one's enough) is live, according to the BBC. Live shows, we all know, go out with a minute or more's delay, in case anyone says anything reprehensible. So the BBC OK'd this incitement to violence.
Later, when asked if the corporation would apologise for offending millions, spokesperson stated that no comment would be made.
Then the manure started to pile up, and a mealy-mouthed semi-apology slithered out.
Let's try to imagine what would have happened if a statement of this nature had been made by a Muslim about Christians or Jews. I believe there's a law against such inflammatory speech.

The talking turd is on a million quid a year, and, as has been pointed out he works in the public sector, i.e., at the BBC. But his job's safe, unlike those of hundreds of thousands of the poorly-paid people he wants to kill.

Addendum (2nd December): -

But Clarkson told the Times that he had informed the One Show's production team of the details of his joke. A BBC spokeswoman said last night: "Jeremy had a meeting with a One Show producer before appearing, as is standard for all guests. The meeting is to cover the topics that will be discussed and the expectations the show has around issues such as tone and balance, and it was made clear where those boundaries lay."

So, passed for tone and balance by the BBC. 

Jemmy Hope blogspot

Almost 5,000 people have been arrested during Occupy protests across the US since the movement started on September 17 in New York. And as it is showing no signs of slowing, even some police seem to be defecting to the other side.

­Retired Philadelphia police Captain Ray Lewis became the game changer on November 17. Arrested while demonstrating with Occupy protesters on the streets of New York City, the 24-year veteran of the force was held in police custody for 11 hours and received one comment from a New York cop.

“Nobody talked to me. This one individual later on told me that I had the testicles of an elephant,” says Ray Lewis.

Occupy Wall Street has become an undeniable American household name.

Police crackdowns against the democratic movement have become something of the norm. But what is not so normal is seeing one side endorse the other.

Although all of America’s police force is part of the 99 per cent, Captain Lewis says cops secretly supporting OWS face dire consequences by going public.

“A tremendous fear of losing their job. Being disciplined, being fired and then what do they do? Everybody in the 99 per cent have that fear and police officers also. They have children, they have wives. What would they do if they were fired? There are no jobs available,” Lewis says.

As economies reel under the hammer blows of Robert Peston and public sector strikes over pensions loom, those who bring our children into the world, those who educate them, clean our streets, bury our dead, help the old and the infirm, once again are bracing themselves for the opprobrium that will be heaped upon them by politicians and mass media for actually daring to protest about the negative changes that they have been subjected to over years of Thatcherite policies by governments of all parties. For in truth, the anger over the erosion of pension rights is but the tip of a very large iceberg of discontent.

Council manual workers in Calderdale, where I live, have endured three years of demoralization, first by having their pay cut under the disastrous ‘Single Status Agreement’ which left them with greater inequalities in their pay system than existed before, then by the forced merger of different departments at operational level, which has seen highly trained craftsmen sweeping streets and roadsweeper drivers engaged in horticulture! This new system has made life harder for everyone, and now to complete the demoralization all these services are being fast tracked to be cherry picked by the private sector! By May 2012 it looks like manual workers employed by the local council will be a thing of the past!

All this headlong rush towards selling off every public asset you can find to help a corrupt and greedy banking system to indulge in ‘business as usual’, opens up some very interesting cans of worms! For one thing almost everything going on in this country since the arrival of the mantra that ‘privatisation is divine’ has been, and continues to be, erosive of both democracy and government in this country at both national and local level. Increasingly one starts to wonder if, when everything that involves the exercise of power will soon be in thrall to some global multinational company, what will be the ‘raison d’etre’ for politicians who seek our votes, when all they really will be is a mouthpiece for a rump of fat cat public executives acting as middlemen between the public and private service providers who could just as easily bill the public at point of sale!? What would be the point of us paying their taxes and allowing them to use the law to fleece us at every opportunity, when the biggest cut would simply go towards their multiple homes, plush offices and bloated salaries! Indeed, under this shabby capitalist ethos, what would be the point of representative government at all? You haf failed Mr. Bond! So ze world will be ruled by Blofeld Global Services Inc.!

This brave new world will also see the end of the public service ethos. It will become a culture of ‘no pay no way!’ ‘If you aint got the do re mi – back of the queue for thee!’ The council used to give us spin like ‘Go that extra yard’ or ‘grasp the nettle’ - a good private joke among council groundsmen! These days it’s been all about ‘move the goalposts’ (an equally good private joke among council groundsmen, though I suspect ‘burning our bridges’ might not go down too well with crematorium staff.)

All this stuff, and those who propagate it, suck. It isn’t just manual workers. I know teachers, youth workers, social workers, and have yet to meet anyone in the council’s employ who thinks positively about them as an employer! There is continual suspicion, distrust and in some cases outright emnity, none of which appears in the council’s upbeat, pep talking magazine! So much for spin!

Anyone with half a brain can see that this country is progressively going down the toilet. Our so called representational system is no longer representational. Who ever you vote for you get the same. Ordinary people are marginalized by a rich elite who dumb down a critical education and spin out worship of consumerism through a diet of crass mass media.

A new online resource aims to help 'vulnerable' workers obtain details on their employment and safety rights at work. The TUC says it Basic Rights @ Work microsite will introduce these vulnerable workers - people who have little knowledge of their employment rights, who find it hard to access advice and who do not have the ability to protect themselves against abuses - to information about employment rights in the UK and how to enforce these rights through statutory enforcement bodies. Health and safety is listed as no.1 in the site's eight categories of pay and employment rights. The microsite contains five videos created by the TUC and enforcement bodies which explain how the different agencies, including the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), operate. TUC deputy general secretary Frances O'Grady said: 'Thousands of people around the UK are exploited at work every day because the law is not strong enough to prevent mistreatment and rogue bosses use gaps in employment protection to treat their staff badly.

Lie 1: Three days before the election, David Cameron: "Any cabinet minister … who comes to me and says 'Here are my plans' and they involve frontline reductions, they'll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again".

Lie 2: A month before the election, David Cameron: "Our plans involve cutting wasteful spending … our plans don't involve an increase in VAT."

Lie 3: The coalition agreement: "We will stop top-down reorganisations of the NHS."

Lie 4: The coalition agreement: “We will guarantee that health spending increases in real terms."

Lie 5: Two months before the election, from David Cameron: "I wouldn't change child benefit, I wouldn't means test it. I don't think that's a good idea."

Lie 6: Michael Gove, just before the election: "Ed Balls keeps saying that we are committed to scrapping EMA. I have never said this. We won't."

Lie7: Liam Fox: "a bigger army for a safer Britain", but it now loses 7,000 soldiers.

Lie 8: In October 2009 George Osborne said: “..........retail banks should stop paying out significant cash bonuses.” A year later, he opposed an updated EU Capital Requirement Directive intended to limit them.

Lie 9: David Cameron: "Yes, we back Sure Start. It's a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this." Yet the government’s Early Intervention Grant means a reduction of £1.4 billion in the amount given to early intervention programmes. As a result, 250 will shut and the rest will suffer cuts in the services they offer.

Lies 10-16: No cuts in tax credits for families with an income of less than £50,000; prison for anyone carrying a knife; no cuts to the navy; keeping the child trust fund for the poorest third of families; no hospital closures; 3000 more midwives; a two-year council tax freeze.

Lie 17: “We cannot afford our bloated public sector workforce.” Yet ONS figures show that average annual public sector employment as a proportion of the UK workforce was 21% in 2010. When Thatcher resigned in 1992, 23% of the work force was employed in the public sector. Compare this with other European countries: France 25%, Holland 22%, Denmark 30%, Sweden 28%, Norway 40%, Finland 27%.

Lie 18: Although Osborne has called the PFI model “failed and discredited”, the private sector is due to spend some £16.2bn under PFI deals signed between 2010 and 2012 according to the OBR – and last June
the Treasury approved several new PFI projects.

Lie 19: David Cameron, June 5th 2010: "You have to address the massive welfare bills.....” Yet average welfare spending as a % of GDP was 10.4% in the years 1979-1997 compared to 6.4% in the years 1997-2010. In 1997 welfare spending as a % of GDP, 1997 was 7.8%. In 2010 it was 7.1% (www.ukpublicspending.co.uk).

Lie 20: George Osborne, 20th October, 2010: "Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink, when we confront the bills from a decade of debt.” Yet national debt was lower as a proportion of GDP at the start of the financial crisis in 2008 (36%) than in 1997, the last year of John Major’s government. (42%), and in 2010 the UK’s national debt as a proportion of GDP (52%) was the second lowest of the G7 countries (www.ukpublicspending.co.uk).

... sign this petition to save the NHS from privatisation.

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/Protect_our_NHS_Petition