Petrol

Rachel

Is it just me or is there something more to the tanker drivers threaten strike? Like the government have cottoned on to panic buying and encouraging everyone to spend before the end of the tax year?

The petrol stations are going crazy here!

Diddy Mau

Rachel wrote: »

Is it just me or is there something more to the tanker drivers threaten strike? Like the government have cottoned on to panic buying and encouraging everyone to spend before the end of the tax year?

The petrol stations are going crazy here!

I like your theory, however knowing the government, they would have put the price up first.

JaffasGirl

they did though didn't they? or does the 3p increase not come in until after April 1st?

just double checked, comes in in August lol

Diddy Mau

JaffasGirl wrote: »

they did though didn't they? or does the 3p increase not come in until after April 1st?

just double checked, comes in in August lol

Yeah, and that's when they will strike for real:tongue_smilie:

Rinske

I think it's to create a panic about the petrol and people complain about that, so people forget to complain about the budget... :001_tt2:

PGM

Rinske wrote: »

I think it's to create a panic about the petrol and people complain about that, so people forget to complain about the budget... :001_tt2:

Government: "How do we charge them extortionate prices and make them want to buy it like demented fools.."

I drove past a garage this morning with the signs out saying no fuel. Aparently, about a third of petrol stations have closed since the last strike. So with so much less fuel at stations shortages will happen much sooner.

MarkT

PGM wrote: »

Government: "How do we charge them extortionate prices and make them want to buy it like demented fools.."

I drove past a garage this morning with the signs out saying no fuel. Aparently, about a third of petrol stations have closed since the last strike. So with so much less fuel at stations shortages will happen much sooner.

We were worrying about how we were going to get back home at one point last weekend, we were down in Devon and in Brixham, three of the sations had ran out of diesel at one point.... Its utter madness

Simon

I know this thread has kind of ended but my tuppence ha'penny is that the Govt are once again using the press/media to "rubbish" the unions. (Bit like Maggie Thatcher did), to sway public opinion....

Dont forget that the Public service are going through horrendous cuts at the moment and the unions are fighting hard to help protect their members jobs and especialy their pensions. This is what Unions do and why they are important to have for individuals so they can stand up to a big bullying employer. Yes they can be a pain, \but are not the Govt also a pain..Think petrol duty, budgets, expenses scandals...

The PCS union will be out and on the streets on the 10th of May to protest against yet more cuts to the ordinary civil servants pension rights whose pension is NOT "gold plated", (these are for the top civil servants and there are only a few of these), but a fairly modest amount considering the payments they make under the contract of employment they entered into.

Watch the telly on or around this date and listen to how the unions are rubbished and the decent hard working civil servants are portrayed at theives to the public purse and society as a whole.
Without them we would have Chaos, think tax system etc..

Well, I feel I got good value for that tuppence H'apennys worth, hope its not a rant!

coojee

It's all very well public sector workers saying they're hard done by and maybe they are (although I did watch a programme recently that proved on balance public sector workers get better pay, better conditions and a better pension at the end than private sector workers) but the private sector is also having it tough, our pensions were eroded by years of Gordon Brown's thieving and yet we just soldier on. I do wonder sometimes if people in the public sector actually know what life is like for the rest of us who can't (and wouldn't) just down tools. We know that if we down tools our employer will go under and we'll lose our jobs. The public sector doesn't have that fear.

The tanker drivers dispute is another matter as they're not in the public sector, the issue here is with the unions trying to bring the government down. Why else would they leave the talks last week with a proposed resolution and then advise their members to reject it? Why leave talks with a resolution that you're not happy with unless the plan was to go on strike all along?

stevef

The tanker driver dispute is not about bringing the Government down, it is mainly around training issues and safety standards. Trade Unions are representative bodies who are required to act in the interests of their members and in accordance with their members wishes. During negotiations when a proposal has been tabled you would expect the Trade Union Officials to seek the opinion of its members on the offer. The recommendation from the Officials is to reject as presumably the offer does not meet the requirememets the Officials were mandated to negotiate for. But they need to test the opinion of the Members who may wish to accept. This is standard behaviour of any representative negotiating on behalf of others, not some hidden political agenda.

Public sector staff do not strike at the drop of the hat. They know the importance of their work to society and the impact on society of striking, the decion is made after much deliberation and soul searching. Most public sector are very aware for what is like for non public sector workers and are in real fear of losing their jobs, often for ill founded political reasons and nothing at all to do with performance or service need.

If workers in the public sector do have better working conditions and pay (and I am sure for every example proving the case one way, another example could be found proving it the other way) and better pension provisions, surely this is a case for bringing private sector pensions up to better standard rather picking off individual public sector schemes without properly evaluating them.

MarkT

I understand Simon's point in as much as how the government portray the unions, but to a degree, they do make a rod for their own back in the demands they are making when there is rife unemployment - put it another way, if these big bad companies decided that they were not going to give in to the demands, and fired everyone who did not show for work the following day, do you think the same company would have difficulty in finding replacements? Sad fact is, no one person or sector of industry is irreplaceable.

And as for CooJee.... 100% agree with you here, the public sector does not understand how the rest of us go through life. I managed less than a week working as a temp for one government agency who, had created their own jobs by mishandling millions of EU money and treated the people that they had overpaid it to as being totally in the wrong and actually took pride in their work when they rifled through 3 separate accounting systems to find missing money so that they could chase it.... Oh, and were equally disappointed when they discovered that the money was unable to be collected as the mistake was made over 5 years ago...