Strike!

I’m off work for the next two days. Not for reasons of illness or a need to swing the lead, you understand, but because I am throwing my weight behind a noble cause.

I am on strike.

I – along with my staunch union colleagues – have decided to take a stand against the appalling pay offer that the current Government has thrown at us like crumbs from their wine drenched table.

Pah! We laugh at your miserable 2.45% offer when the price of even the most basic of foods is slowly rocketing skywards!

We’ve essentially taken a pay cut for the last three years running and now enough is enough.

Do I think we’ll actually get the 6% demanded by our union executives?

Not a cat in hell’s chance.

But if we don’t ask (or in this case, demand) we don’t have a hope of getting any more.

I realize there are inflationary pressures holding the Government back – nobody wants to see the country spiralling into recession – but we’ve all got to be able to afford to live. And at the moment I’m as close to the wire as I’d like to come. And that’s even with taking in extra work at home.

I don’t even have a problem with food prices going up. Farmers have had a crap deal for years and years and most, despite the image most people have of them, have made loss after loss for so long that many have gone under. What we’re now seeing is a readjustment that has been a long time coming. Ironically if we’d valued our farmers more in the first place and had allowed them to make a decent living I’m sure these food price hikes would have been felt less sharply.

There are global readjustments too – the global economy is in a huge state of flux. This isn’t Gordon Brown’s fault by any means and I don’t hold him personally responsible.

But I do blame him for not allowing me to bring home a decent wage.

Don’t tell me how not to waste food, Gordon. Karen and I already make every meal stretch into two. Just throw some more moolah my way so I can pay the ruddy mortgage!