For once I am in agreement. I see a friend who doesn't live in London occasionally we had a nice day out booked for Sat 26 Nov until they announced it's strike day.

I may not see her now until the new year in the meantime I have booked tickets for exhibitions and stuff and I have to hope they will refund me as I don't have another date scheduled yet.

Okay I know it's petty in the scheme of things but how many other people will have their weekend ruined. I also just realised that Mayor Sad Dick has done nothing to help people on strike days, he could suspend the congestion charges but hell no he probably earns more money on those days.

I've said it before strikes should be banned in key sectors and replaced with compulsory arbitration with fines and imprisonment for those that do not confirm whether they are unions or management.

One more point

It is all very political and planned industrial action across many Unions to undermine the Government and actually Society as well.
Trouble is that they are just beginning to hack everyone off.
Nurses are undervalued but they always have been.
They earn more than they say they do albeit it isn't a job I would ever want to do.
When you take job/vocation up you know the score and so to strike while asking for a ridiculous pay rise is morally wrong.
Civil Servants - don't get me started!
Most of them are working from home and saving fortunes in travel and in many cases childcare but still they want more!
If they work in London lets have the weighting back first and then talk after.
If not, then make them go back their offices before anything will even be discussed - that applies to every one of them throughout the Country.
I am not sure our government has the bottle for the fight but they should issue a statement now that sets out our rules before anything else will be so much as thought about let alone negotiated.
I am just sick of public servants now.
They generally don't do what it says on the tin and yet they want even more for less - reward for failure yet again!

If we cannot produce and keep our own staff in our own healthcare service and have to import people then there is something very wrong going on and it contradicts the opinion to deal with numbers of immigration.

COYP

Sorry to burst your bubble but civil servants cannot all go back to the office 5 days a week as the government has sold off so many buildings that there is just not enough room to accommodate them all at once.

Most buildings have around 3 times the staff allocated to them than there is actual room to accommodate them so if all staff turned up at once they would have to turn 2/3 approx away.

Many other office based workers now work entirely at home and have seen no detriment to their wages etc. This working in the office is a fallacious position put about by the former Minister for Victoriana Jacob Rees Mogg.

They also had no or very low pay rises for the first 4 years of the Con-Lib government which has not been corrected yet.

Enjoying getting up later and not having someone who knows better than me (apart from the missus of course).

Quite. There is so much ignorance of state sector work seemingly informed by bygone days and Boulting brother comedies.

Those who still see state sector workers as jobsworths fudging it to a ring-fenced final-salary pension (done away with years ago, by the way) truly have no clue.

They are severely reduced in number, criminally under-resourced, grossly under-paid and with crushingly low levels of moral. This is partly fed by the working conditions and partly by the ignorance of, and absence of any appreciation from, the population they serve.

There is undoubtedly a neat correlation between those who still think they are lazy, incompetent and cosseted and thus applaud further cuts to the civil service and those who whine because it takes an age for anything to come back from the Passport Office or DVLA.