Tales of the Unexpected - Home Office Strike Called Off!!

Regular Readers will remember my blog post from last week - Crying Wolf? It's Another Civil Service Strike!

I had argued that the demands were so wide-ranging it was unlikely that the government would make sufficient concessions that would satisfy a ideological driven union.

To my delight and surprise, the Home Office strike has been called off at such short notice and I had started to plan a piece following up how the tanker dispute shows the way forward for a modern industrial dispute. But this time, using the Home Office as the example.

Then, this was swiftly followed by Damien Green (he must have been delighted!) saying that he did not recognise the 1,100 new jobs that was suggested by PCS as the explanation for the strike being called off.


To find out what is really going on, I found that the PCS have helpfully linked to the job advert on their website. (PDF reader needed.)


The small print says:


"Applications from surplus staff applying on level transfer will be considered before applications from other level transfer staff/promotion staff and in line with the usual process. 

Redeployees applying on promotion will not be given priority status."


What this is saying is that these jobs are at the moment only open to existing Civil Servants at risk of redundancy within the Home Office and elsewhere in the Civil Service.


These are not new jobs.


This advert was available from the 20 July 2012, two days after the strike was called.


This same advert is the reason why the strike was called off at the eleventh hour on the 25 July 2012


If these jobs were to satisfy the "win condition" I alluded to in my post of the 19 July, then the strike should have been called off on the 20 July.


The PCS stared down the barrel of a PR disaster of their own making and blinked first. Despite all the desperate efforts to spin the other way, of which Malcolm Tucker would be proud, I simply do not believe the PCS version of events.

Zombie Politics

The papers are full of the usual "tensions in the coalition" again.

These days, are par for the course. Normally, just rolling my eyes and moving on, I was very struck this time by the focus of the right-wards lurching demonstrated by the likes of Nadine Dorris and Bernard Jenkins focusing on gay marriage legislation and House of Lords Reform.

Both of these are the right thing to do.

To remove patronage in the make-up of the legislature; and lets be honest, it is patronage. Stephen Byers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt secretly recorded suggesting they could be lobbied by the highest bidders and then using their positions within parliament to take forward lobbyist's concerns and being promptly told by Labour they would never get a peerage.

And gay marriage is nothing more and nothing less than full equality under the law for whoever you might fall in love with. The 1947 Marriage Act is a state definition of marriage. Religions can carry out their own variations within their ideology. The Catholics prohibits divorcees from marrying within the Church. Thats fine, thats up to them. But that is not the same as saying that that marriage is only for a man and a woman, which state is well within its right to legislate.

The New Statesman reports a Gallup poll showing 43% in favour of gay marriage.

PCS voted to take strike action over public sector pensions on a 61% majority on a 32.4% turnout.

The Conservatives polled 31% in the local elections on 3 May 2012 on a turnout of 32%.

Who here has the bigger mandate?

Lynne Featherstone is right when she says its not an either/or; that the coalition are more than capable of multitasking.

Thats the nature of coalition, it requires compromise. The Tories have yet to grasp this basic concept.

Compromises in a Coalition is the grown up version of "Show me yours and I'll show you mine."