It was perhaps, therefore, bad timing for the public sector to walk out on strike against changes to their pensions, when another 300,000 of them will lose their jobs by 2017 and unemployment already stands at a worrying 2.62 million – an almost 20-year high.

Indeed, many factors have contributed to a terrible economic outlook – and warnings abound that, if the eurozone fails (as the FSA has ordered banks trading in Britain to prepare for), the direction our country will take economically does not even bear contemplating.

With such dire prospects ahead, and with families looking to struggle even more, as one of the 2.62 million unemployed (but not one of the 1.6 million claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, or, indeed, any benefit from the state), I welcome any measure the government can offer to help (VAT cut, please, George!) – and am more than a little bit miffed that those who do have an income are willing to risk their own jobs by trying to protect their superior (as against the private sector) pensions.

I mean what, exactly, do they think is going to happen in the most unlikely event that the government turn round and agree to their demands? Where do they think the money is going to come from to maintain their pension pot? An increased tax on families? An increased tax on small businesses? An increased tax on large businesses (e.g. banks)?

No, if the government ever decided to protect the public sector pensions, there would be one source of the funding: alternative efficiency savings. I.e. extra cuts. I.e. extra staff cuts. I.e. sending P45s to some of those who fortunate are enough to have a job but who were on strike today because they still were not happy.

Take one for your comrades!

Of course those people paid by us do not always make life easy for themselves. Take, for example, the Office of the Public Guardian, which employs 481 people. I have dealt with a few of them myself, and have often been left wondering how, in an office no member of the public visits, it can take so long to process documents. The last acknowledgement I received before I became unemployed informed me that it would take 12-13 weeks to process the documents. Could this be because, whilst the documents are sent to Birmingham, they need to be passed back-and-forth between the three offices?

Now, the Office of the Public Guardian earns its £22 million from the Ministry of Justice and administration fees charged to the weak and vulnerable when they are applying for Lasting Powers of Attorney (the fee for which has recently gone up), and 177 of their staff working in their London office are milking the taxpayer and the weak and vulnerable for all they are worth:

“…Nor any member of the public ever set foot in this office….

“Had they done so, they might have been surprised by the baskets of fresh fruit on each desk, including a ‘mix of apples, pears, bananas, Satsuma’s and plums.’ All paid for by the most vulnerable people in society.

“The fresh fruit and hand gel cost a mere £26,000 per annum. Yes, that was £26,000. For 177 people. £150 a year each. A lot more than the proposed increase in pension payments for the average employee earning £20,000 a year…”

Anna Raccoon was keen to know what the 177 were up to today:

“Naturally I was keen to learn from my spy in the office whether these fruitbatcosseted creatures were on strike today, on account of being asked to contribute more to their pension. He looked out of his window.

“‘Can’t see any sign of activity, difficult to tell the difference’ he said.

“I had to phone the Ministry of Justice to find the answer. Yes, they are on strike. All 177 of them.

“Absolutely outraged that they couldn’t find a way to get the elderly widows, children, and severely brain damaged to fund the increase to their pensions. They are being expected to pay for that themselves. Can you imagine?”

They want their cake and they want to eat it, too. And why not? I do not wish to be disingenuous to the majority of public sector workers – after all, if they believe their telephone-salaried union leaders, then there are countless alternatives to the government’s plan of action. There are alternatives, granted, but few lead us anywhere other than to Greece – and then the public sector workers really will have a reason to complain. When they are added to the jobless pile.

This issue is complex, and certainly not something I could cover in one post (particularly one which is already at 900 words when I am nowhere near halfway through my thoughts), but to summarise my thoughts on the strikes, I would say thus:

I support the right to strike. I will argue and fight to the death to support the right to strike. But union leaders’ attempts to manipulate their members into holding the country to ransom on ideological grounds at a time when difficult choices need to be made are disgraceful. If Labour were in power still, they would be cutting the public sector, too (though maybe not quite as courageously) and, whilst the unions would oppose these, their opposition would not be so fierce.

When Labour came to power, Gordon Brown raided the private sector pension pot, costing private sector workers at least an estimated £100 billion. The government’s proposals for public sector pensions would not be nearly as damaging, though they are, admittedly, being asked to contribute more whilst they are working. Gordon Brown gave private sector workers little choice, whilst the government are trying to negotiate with the unions to create an affordable solution. Negotiations are still ongoing, but unions decided to strike now, anyway, with barely one-third of their members supporting such action.

Surely, logically, logistically, the obvious route would be to wait until negotiations had finished before going on strike if you still weren’t happy? Oh, but of course, the union leaders care not about logic or logistics, they also care not about their members, they just want to fight the Tories so that the public hate them and vote their chums in Labour back in to dole out yet more taxpayer-funded perks and non-jobs to their members and prospective members.

The trouble is, there’s no money left for them!

Gordon was the proprietor of a bar in Glasgow …

He realizes that virtually all of his customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronise his bar.

To solve this problem, he comes up with a new marketing plan that allows his customers to drink now, but pay later.

Gordon keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around about Gordon’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into his bar. Soon he has the largest sales volume for any bar in Glasgow .

By providing his customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Gordon gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, he substantially increases his prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Gordon’s gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic president at the local bank recognises that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Gordon’s borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for any undue concern because he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral!

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS.

These “securities” then are bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as “AAA Secured Bonds” really are debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb – and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices still are climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Gordon’s bar. He so informs Gordon.

Gordon then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons. But, being unemployed alcoholics — they cannot pay back their drinking debts.

Since Gordon cannot fulfil his loan obligations he is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Gordon’s 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%.

The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Gordon’s bar had granted him generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the BOND securities.

They find they are now faced with having to write off his bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.

His wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, his beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion pound no-strings attached cash infusion from the government.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Gordon’s bar.

Now do you understand?

• Birmingham and Beyond is committed to fully and correctly sourcing content used from external sources. However, after research, the original author of the above could not be discovered. It is therefore presented without any form of citation.

The Labour Party is in a very difficult position, and it is difficult to see a way forward that they can ‘sell’ to their membership and to a sizable number of the British public.

The party itself is still in dire financial straits, and the Unions obviously want (expect?) their agenda to be implemented as government policy in exchange for bailing the party out yet again. This has been covered all over the media recently, though it has now gone quiet so we must assume that talks are being held even more secretly than usual for such events.

Meanwhile, the deep unpopularity of Gordon Brown has put the party into possibly the trickiest position it has ever experienced — certainly in the past several decades. A change of Leader after just a year would be extremely humiliating, and there would be widespread calls for a General Election to give the replacement PM a clear mandate. This call would come just as much from Labour Party members and Labour supporters as from elsewhere. However that as-yet hypothetical election seems doomed to result in a Conservative Government, even if it fails to win an overall majority of seats in the Commons.

However, it is clear to observers and commentators right across the political spectrum that the longer a General Election is left, the worse it will be for Labour. Not only would the prospect of an overall Conservative majority increase with time, as the country plunges deeper into the mire, but also the period of time that Labour would have to expect to be out of power would rocket upward from its present two-to-three terms to a generation or more.

It isn’t as if a change of leader would improve Labour’s standing, as they have no real talent suited to the position of Prime Minister, even on a caretaker basis. Polls have shown that the public would be even less supportive under any of the feasible alternative leaders than they already are under Gordon Brown’s premiership.

Harriet Harman would probably be the worst choice of all, especially electorally. Few male voters would support someone so vehemently anti-men (as the latest Fathers 4 Justice action shows) so that’s almost half the nation’s possible votes that would be threatened by having Harman running Britain. Some of her policies, including very recent announcements that will still be in people’s minds for some time to come, are so extreme as to assure Labour of yet another significant drop in support should they put her in charge. It would be political suicide.

So, where do Labour go? The least bad option would be for Gordon Brown to announce that failing health means he has to step down as PM, and to call a General Election this autumn. I wonder whether they have the wisdom to bite the bullet and take this path. Even knowing that the alternatives will prove far worse for them in the longer run, can they think beyond the here and now and make such a decision?

It doesn’t seem to be in their natures to do so, and I suspect that the Conservative Party chiefs are well aware of how Labour are most likely to go and are planning their own strategy with that taken into account. They will also have contingency plans ready in case Labour do twig, and go for the resignation and election (or even just the election, with Brown still in office) .

Whatever they decide to do, let’s just hope they don’t completely wreck the country in the process. It has been speculated in some places (I have seen it in three completely independent places) that — in order to damage the future Conservative Government’s credibility — they will pursue a so-called “scorched Earth” policy, deliberately turning our country into the worst possible mess they can make of it. This would be unsurprising, as Labour are well known for putting their own political aims and ambitions above everything and everyone else.

There are certainly going to be some very interesting times ahead…