"Tougher strike laws"- Well, Mr Miliband?

Rather than threatening a "renewed Thatcherite onslaught" to restrict the rights of the trade unions, Cameron should be planning the exact opposite. (Tories to restrict strikes in essential services,10/07/14) With inequality rising, especially with tax avoidance and evasion increasing, and the "squeeze on earnings drastically underestimated", union representation on company boards, taking part in collective bargaining and restoring a semblance of sanity to boardroom pay, is now essential.

 Such co-determination has been in existence in Germany since the 1950s, with the effect of avoiding major industrial action, acting both as a brake on inequality and as a method of increasing productivity. Instead of insulting strikers with absurd comments like the one from Francis Maude that when strikes happen, the "hard-working people suffer", as if the strikers are lazy, the government would do better to follow the German example.It`s not just football that Germans are better at!

As for Labour, the continuing lack of support, as witnessed last Thursday, for unions in their struggle to attain decent standards of living for their members, is becoming embarrassing; can Labour win an election simply because they are not the Tories? Disraeli didn`t only coin the phrase, "One Nation" but also the description of ordinary people as the "Angel in the marble", in the belief that his party could win the support of the working class and become electorally undefeatable; one of the first Acts of his 1874-80 administration increased trade unions rights, including one allowing peaceful picketing. Detailed knowledge of history can be useful, Mr Miliband!

      Cameron`s Toryism, however, is intent on destroying the rights of the working people, and so, instead of decent levels of corporation tax as in the other G7 countries, we have pay freezes and a minimum wage requiring subsidies from the taxpayer. His pledge to "back tougher strike laws" if elected in 2015 is a clear indication that he sees nothing wrong with the disgraceful levels of inequality we now have, and, in fact, intends to extend the rich-poor divide further. Churchill, with his disgraceful attitude to trade unions, might have agreed, but Disraeli certainly would not have. Neither should Miliband, not if he wants our votes!