Will the PCS Uncover Its Arsenal And Rescue The North East?

So the long standing  Tory instincts to cut and burn have not gone away. This time they have served notice that public services are to be slashed  at a rate that will hurt the young, the old and the bewildered to an unprecedented degree. And they seem to be expressing their intention with undisguised glee. As for their bedfellows text books and history books will eventually make a judgement about them; for now they seem to be tossing away their unexpected time in the limelight and confirming their unfitness for power.

The North East relies heavily on public service employment opportunities and most of those jobs are appropriate in a modern economy. Slashing them does not make sense and in any case the given reasons  for doing so are not convincing. There is a need to cut, because we have a massive deficit, but the amount and timing is deeply unwise. We are not Greece and we are not Iceland and consequently the level and timing of cuts should be more gentle, for the sake of the economy and therefore the people. In passing I cannot resist that old joke: what is the capital of Iceland? Answer three pounds and fifty pence, or some such trivial sum, but I digress.

The government will be aware that civil servants have struck before, albeit not for long and with little intensity; but is there a danger that they will miscalulate the sense of betrayal that might eventually unleash the weapon available to the Public And Commercial Services Union? A  selective use of civil service computer systems could bring this government down in months and although the government will know that they may well make the mistake of thinking that civil servants are sleeping bureaucrats, rather than what almost all of them are - hardworking employees involved in virtually every area of society; they help to maintain the very fabric of decency within this modern economy. The government seems to be be more gentle with avoidance schemes than school toilets; that of course is just shorthand for their seemingly undisguised glee at exercising their cobbled power to impose their political dogma.  

WB