He denied the proposed industrial action was about pay, although he persisted in stating that it was about getting rid of inequalities in pay. Indeed, it seemed to be all that he was bothered with.

This seems to derive from the fact that the drivers are sub-contracted out to the oil distribution companies by a variety of firms with different rates of pay.

Health & safety procedures, practices and processes – Try googling “Jack-knife” or “shed it’s load”. Also it’s usually not the lorry drivers themselves that get hurt. A lorry is a big old lump of metal, it’s usually pedestrians and drivers of smaller vehicles that get killed.

Independently accredited training – Well I can’t speak for lorry drivers but I know that in my civil service days, in-house training officers were the supervisors that were too crap to let loose on the public but couldn’t be sacked or were to too incompetent to be promoted out of harms way.

Portable sector pensions – Rates of pay, hours of work and working/holiday/sickness/redundancy arrangements – All these things are being eroded away and many of the benefits that we are losing in this country are ones which aren’t noticed until we need them. Again any union worth it’s salt should be trying to get what it can for it’s members. My better half works for a local law centre and already she is seeing people in dire straits over changes in pension, sickness and redundancy changes.

Equal opportunities – For lorry drivers I think it’s more about age rather than race. My better half’s uncle used to work for a haulage company until he retired at the maximum age possible. For a couple of years afterwards the company would get him to come back a couple of times a week for jobs. As he wasn’t under a formal contract he wasn’t entitled to many of the benefits or rights he was before.

Grievance and disciplinary procedures – Don’t really know enough about this to comment.

Trade union facilities – I don’t know about lorry drivers, but in my civil service days most of our meetings involving industrial action had to take place in the car park.

“These threatened strikes are part of the unions’ war against non-Labour government. They were behind the student protests, they’re behind the “anti-cuts” protests and they’re behind this one”
I think you’ll find that the students were behind the students protests – the clue is in the title.
My dad is terminally ill and I spend most days watching him waste away while I do what I can. He doesn’t want to stay in a hospital ward as the last time he was in he was dropped twice by nurses on the night shift. He said he didn’t blame them as there were only 2 of them to watch 21 old and dying patients so they were rushed off of their feet. Already this year he has lost 2 of the health care people who came to visit him at home due to redundancy, and now we have heard that a third – a district nurse – has been made redundant. Last year his physiotherapy unit was closed. On top of this, due to cuts in funding, my better half will probably be losing her job early next year when the cash runs out.
I’ve been on a couple of anti-cuts demos this year and I’m sure I’ll be going on several others too. I can assure you Mr Wonko, that it isn’t the unions who are behind me.