Kieran Lawrence looks at autonomous weapons and the effect they could have on modern warfare
Continuing a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Angela Merkel
Ben Bland examines the fallout from the Iowa caucuses and looks forward to the New Hampshire primaries.
In the first of a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Nicholas Sarkozy
The Yorker politics team has invited various political societies to provide a fortnightly comment on current affairs. First up is the York Tories, with their column "The Blue Duck".
When less than a third of the electorate vote, does the result actually prove anything?
That’s not a question you want to ask at your local Unison office. “The workers are furious,” we’re told in their press releases. To quote the union itself: “Unison members have voted overwhelmingly in favour” of strikes.
25% of NHS workers who are Unison members voted; in all branches of the union an average of 29% returned their ballot papers. Of those that did vote 78% were in favour of strike action, therefore less than a quarter of unionised workers in the public sector voted for strikes. The teachers’ strike in Scotland managed 82% on a 54% turn out, but again overall less than half of members voted for a strike.
Back in the 1970s the British disease was what the continent called our “near constant strikes” as unions demanded ever-higher wages causing chronic inflation. We don’t want a return to those days.
The main cause of these strikes is pensions. There is not some bottomless pit that produces “public money”; there is only taxpayers’ money to pay for these demands. If the unions get their way, your taxes are paying for someone to have better wages and pensions than you can hope to get in the same job in the private sector. In the private sector it has been accepted there will be a squeeze whilst the public sector has demanded a better deal than the people paying their wages.
The government is asking for an increased pension contribution so that we can afford to give people a decent pension in their old age and decent public services now. People are living longer and are in much better health than ever before. That means the cost of an individual’s pension will go up. We cannot expect the whole of this increase to come out of the budgets for our NHS, schools and councils. More must come out of the wages paid to the people who will benefit from those pensions.
For years, even before the recession hit, the country spent more money than it had. We have got to face the fact we have been living off debt for years. Debt held not just by banks but by ordinary people, who bought government bonds to help their country pay its bills. Someone has to add up the figures and balance the books. Only that means we need to be able to afford these wages and pensions.
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