The Facebook crowd would be all over it, stirring it up. That's what people do now. It sends a shiver down my spine.

I'm not sure we'll see huge, disruptive strikes of the likes we've seen before.

The miners, the transport workers, the printers...etc were all unionised and organised. Workers seem a little more disparate now

a stat somewhere that 25% of the UK's workforce is in a Union, that seems plenty to me to cause problems if they get their act together.

Are their potential strike actions justifiable? Damn straight they are. You're going to lose your public sector job and you still don't understand why your money was used to prop up banks who now seem to be sitting on their hands when it comes to making money available in the wider economy. Public sector employment has been the biggest employment growth area in the UK in recent years, more than the private sector. Here's the simple line of action:

1. Banks have been bailed and many are part-owned by us
2. Deep public sector cuts are to be made
3. Private sector SMEs can't get credit for love or money and yet SMEs employ over 50% of the working private sector. Credit is an integral part of business growth.

Someone really needs to start explaining to me how the actions proposed by the Government that are on the table stimulate a return to a growth economy. I want to see it, I want to believe it but I can't.

Will I be cheering them on if they strike? Nope, because it will be a nightmare if they commit numbers across all sectors to a strike. My business will suffer undoubtedly some way or other. But I won't be blaming strikers for the actions they take, they're just banging their heads more noticeably against the brick wall of corporatism and croneyism. Having said that the likes of Bob Crowe can f**k off as far as I'm concerned, odious little man that he is. He's as much a fat cat as all of them in the City.

And relax.

Surely most people can survive for quite a while before they actually need cash. I reckon that, once I'd raided the piggy bank, I could last a good month before I have to go to a cash machine.

'Odious' doesn't quite do him justice. A nasty thug, basically, setting trade unionism back thirty years. Loathe though I am to reference the Daily M**l for anything, here are Bob's true colours shining through...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1279035/RMT-union-boss-Bob-Crow-...

...I think that's the killer question. I've had to try and avail myself of union support (NIPSA) for a couple of work issues ongoing since August 2009. I found my initial (volunteer) rep very supportive but inexperienced to handle the level of HR games-playing being used; the higher-level official (employed by the union) I was soon passed on to could talk the talk in the pointless meeting but was the worst person I've ever had to deal with in terms of communications and organisation. You'd have more chance getting a phone call returned by Lord Lucan.

A month ago, issues dragging on with literally nothing progressing, I had enough. I reported him to another union official who seemed sympathetic, asked her in person and in writing to take on the case and for God's sake run with it, do SOMETHING, while I took my doctor's advice and stepped back from it.

Things were grand for a couple of weeks until I phoned to check and it became clear that NOTHING was being done. And still no word from Lord Lucan. I doorstepped the union's top guy in his HQ a couple of weeks back. He assured me he'd deal with it, have a word with Mr Elusive. A week later, still no contact. I sent Top Guy an email saying I'm resigning from NIPSA and going to Unison: if this was the kind of guy he was happy to work with, good luck to him - but I'd put up with the crap for months on end and if it had been any other situation (like hiring a plumber) I'd have simply gone elsewhere after the second unreturned phone call.

I haven't yet signed up to Unison (I need to be sure they can and will move on an existing case first), but at least the official I'm dealing with is returning phone calls. It's a start.

But my general feeling? These people - unions - couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery let alone a campaign of civil disobedience. Scargill was a self-aggrandising moron who could somehow mobilise the masses with hand-written placards; today's union bosses are either backroom politicians with glossy brochures or throwback idiots like Bob Crow. No matter how crap Britain becomes I don't believe anyone - short of a situation where cash-machines don't work - has the appetite for serious strikes/disobedience. we're all too jaded: we know it doesn't work, it just causes pain in the long run and the country's buggered no matter what.

Unions should stick to doing their best for members in workplace disputes and stop involving themselves in politics on a national level.

1) The, "Putting public sector workers on the dole will cost you money as you have to pay their dole money" argument. Err, isn't the point that as public sector workers I'm already paying for them? So if they can't do a job that demonstrates some kind of real public value (i.e. a policeman, fireman, binman etc as opposed to the Racial Minorities Equality Monitor or someone doing a mundane admin job that could be computerised) then frankly it's a no-brainer.

2) The, "Banks have a duty to lend money" argument. No they don't. They're profit-making businesses that got us into this mess largely because they lent / invested / funded too much without bothering to make sure those decisions were without undue risk. Why repeat the same mistake?

I think the "bash the bankers" approach is as dumb as the "all benefit claimants are layabouts" approach. It's too big a problem for generalisations and requires far more thought than simplistic slogan wielding idealogues would have us believe.

...that cuts - serious cuts - need to be made for the good of the country, Bisto. I think a lot of people are happy to nod in agreement but express outrage when it looks like its coming too close to them/their friends/their departments. I'm sure your wife would much rather the trainee could be kept on, but sometimes the best will in the world can't deliver sentiment from stricture.

Truth is, aside from the current impasse with HR scumbags, I know my own job - public sector - could easily be cut, or at least made part-time. I couldn't honestly mount much of a defence in the current climate - I WANT the public sector to reduce in size and for waste to be curtailed (after decades of monstrous carnage on the public purse), and I accept that my job could well be seen as non essential. Yes, there would be certain longer-term consequences for my workplace but nothing of any immediate significance and nothing of any great importance even in the long term. Museums still exist withour curators; they just change into increasingly mothballed rooms of old stuff. Such is life.

Apparently my wife's job (management, different public sector place) and indeed her whole department is under threat. The consequences for cutting all of her department would have much greater middle-to-long term consequences for that organisation (a health trust) and for getting best use out of public money, but these seem to be desperate times. People wielding axes may well go for what seem short term solutions.

And leaving unions aside, an even GREATER shower of unschooled, in-fighting, posturing, public-purse-powered, self-aggrandising soap-box merchants is the Northern Ireland Assembly. These are the clowns who actually have that axe in this part of the world.

Bob Crow is a clown parading around his circus ring till the public get bored and boo him off the front pages; the NI axe-weilders, alas, are the people who've somehow inherited the circus - a load of half-baked strong-men acts, bearded ladies and loonies with uncaged lions - and they've set up their tent in everyone's front garden and there's bugger all we can do about it.

Could be a frugal Christmas round here...

This thread has thrown up so much informed comment. I dont think my situation will add to it.

I work in the private sector, & my contract has less than 2 years to run, when it is up, I will be 56, not an attractive catch. I have worked in a power station for a long time, I dont know anything else, & I am shit scared for the future.

It isnt just the public sector feeling the heat.

is only days away. Look at recent events such as the Christchurch earthquake (curfew to stop looting) and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (mob rule, law and order gone) and you see a snapshot of what would happen if the money stopped flowing.

Most people don't have piggy banks or mattresses stuffed with cash. If cashpoints stop working, credit cards, shops etc all grind to a halt. It will only take the first idiot to smash a window and walk home with a nice TV for disobedience to spread like wildfire.

I've long held the view that our so called civilisation is little more than a brittle veneer and that underneath tribal savagery lies, awaiting its opportunity to drag us all down.

Cheerful eh?

...the underdiscussed fact that Phil Collins has released an album of Motown covers. Let's bring this fight to the streets!

...coming in the air tonight?

Oh Lord!

We could call ourselves 'Landfill for Phil'.

...just Philistines...?

Either way, we've clearly all Had Our Phil. There's the first placard slogan already...

Floodgates open, over to you, etc...

has done so badly with his Motown Mauling he is presumably now a Rum Collins

Die Hard 4.

I once read that any civilised society is supposed to be just three days from anarchy. I forget whether that means three days without food, or three without electricity, or water, but you get the drift.

If things are looking bleak (Phil's Motown album could definitely be one of the harbingers of the end times), you might do worse than read Emergency by Neil Strauss. It's a real eye-opener full of tips of what to do in preparation for the final days (e.g., become a volunteer fireman because you'll get a badge, light and hi-vis jacket that will enable you to get through the inevitable traffic chaos). You might want to skip the bit when he learns to gut an animal he's killed, mind...

An expat living in Canada, I'm a bit removed from what's happening in the UK, but it sounds pretty tense and I wish everybody luck with their situations. For those at risk of losing their jobs, fingers crossed for you.

is to fill your garage with jerry cans of diesel, stock up on Calor gas, logs and candles, withdraw ALL your cash now and do a MASSIVE run to Sainsburys, make sure the shotgun is in good working order, and buy an extra thousand shells just in case.

is that its not as crap as the film

Frankly, I'm always amazed there isn't more social disorder than there is.

I do fear what will happen to many of the UK's towns and cities in the next few years.

We could see their near extinction and desertion. Can't imagine a deserted Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford?

Witness what's happened to Detroit. That's Detroit, Motor City USA. The American Capitalist Dream personified

Wild animals roam and savannah grass grows around skyscrapers. Trees grow from the windows of the monolithic former headquarters of major organisations.

America's a big place. People can always find somewhere to go. The UK isn't. Where will they go? London?
How many can that city hold before they close the gates?

See Below: Julien Temple's extraordinary Requiem For Detroit