Make no mistake, the proposals for employers to basically hire and fire at will, and for public bodies to privatise services without protection of employees' rights, having been received by the Government last October, would have been in the Queen's Speech this May if it hadn't been for the Liberal Democrats.
It strikes me as very odd that people think that the reason we are in this mess is because our workers are lazy. I thought the evidence pointed to destructive and unwise actions of bankers out to make money for themselves. And then continuing to award themselves humungous bonuses.
Vince Cable was pretty clear yesterday when he said:
"British workers are very co-operative and they are very flexible, so we don't need to scare the wits out of workers with threats to dismiss them. It is completely the wrong approach."Now Nick Clegg has made it clear that he opposes the plans:
I don't support them and I never have, for the simple reason that I have not seen any evidence yet that creating industrial scale insecurity amongst millions of workers is a way of securing new jobs.But my absolute very favourite is the unnamed Liberal Democrat MP who told Total Politics that the report was, frankly, s**t and started to pick on grammatical and spelling mistakes in it. Pure, dead, brilliant. There are so many of our lot that this could be, and I would certainly expect our lot to be as robust as that. It's nice when it happens though.
Thankfully, Beecroft and his mad ideas to make more money for the rich at the expense of those who actually do the hard work are set to be consigned to the recycling. Should the Tories ever find themselves governing alone, these will be back.
I think it would be good, though, if Vince employed Jennie as his SpAd. We'd have to get rid of that union proposal, of course, but her point is that it's possible to simplify regulations to the workers' benefit is a good one.
