We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Britain’s civil servants strike… how very splendid! Tuscan Tony Millard is very unhappy that Britain’s civil servants are on strike. No, not really
I for one was relieved that 110,000 civil servants went on strike today claiming the urgent need for more taxpayers money, presumably to spend down the pub during their 37 days annual paid leave. I calculated that, assuming their refusal to honour their employment contracts results in the withholding of a day’s pay, this little exercise alone has saved us the grand total of £7,403,846 (US$ 13,549,843) without us even having to put down the TV remote/let go of the mouse/whatever.
I assume that you civil ‘servants’ are all now sufficiently dissatisfied with your lot to seek employment elsewhere, preferably not funded by my tax receipts. Viva il mercato, as we say in Tuscany! Well done, lads, and thanks.
Tony Millard
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
The great danger with any public employee strike is that the public will eventually realize that the sky is not falling in the government workers’ absence. I’d imagine the last thing a member of a large-scale bureaucracy would want is to give the people under its thumb a chance to look around unfettered for a bit.
The comments BBC’s “Your Say” section on this subject contained a heartening balance of contempt for the civil service, even if the Beeb couldn’t resist putting the pro comments at the top.
Top work, Tony! 🙂
Amazingly, my life also didn’t come to an end yesterday, when the ‘hard-working but under-paid’ denizens of the Office of Lies, Damned Lies, and Government Statistics gave themselves an even longer bank holiday than they normally enjoy at our expense.
But would it be too much for just one BBC interviewer on the Today program to ask the question?:
Ah, we will know true anarcho-capitalist utopia is finally around the corner when that question finally gets asked of any public sector striker, on the BBC. I won’t hold my breath! 😉
Just out of curiosity, how much smoother are things running in Britain now with all those “civil servants” not being on the job? Personally I’d GLADLY pay them to stay home and leave the productive work to those of us in the private sector (as we call it here in the states.)