Posted by RMS
on November 1, 2009, 3:37 pm
Paddy McGuffin: Morning Star
The levels of vitriol and knee-jerk hatred levelled at striking postal workers this week have been spectacular to say the least.
How dare working people take lawful action in a bid to stop their jobs ending up on the scrap heap and their pay and conditions slashed to a barely living wage? How dare they condemn the obscene bonus culture which has seen Adam Crozier and his cronies line their already bulging pockets with multimillion-pound salaries? And how dare they stand in the way of a three-time chancer flogging off what is one of the country's last publicly owned assets - do they not understand that this is progress???
While the assembled hackery has formed an unruly mob baying for the blood of the strikers, not enough ink to fill a fountain pen has been expended over the likes of Crozier and his boss Mandelson, who seem to regard the postal service as their own personal fiefdom.
Crozier, like other blood-sucking parasites, shuns the daylight... I mean spotlight... but then all that money doesn't count itself. In 2007 he was revealed to have trousered a spectacular £3 million while simultaneously bleeding his staff to the point of anaemia, axing an estimated 45,000 jobs and closing 4,600 post offices - apparently due to the dire financial situation the Royal Mail was in.
His track record prior to his latest wallet-bustingly remunerative position is somewhat chequered. Starting out at Pedigree Petfoods, he then flitted from the Daily Telegraph to Saatchi and Saatchi, the ad firm which rebranded Thatcher, before becoming the surprise chief executive of the Football Association.
His dictatorial style there along with his slashing of the 91-strong FA board to replace it with a 12-member committee led one unnamed former FA executive, when asked his opinion of the man, to state: "I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire."
But let us not pass over the vital role of the true eminence gris in this tale of woe.
While the right-wing press have been indulging in their much-loved hobby of bellowing, flatulent posturing and union-baiting, there has been scant mention of the Machiavellian presence of Baron Greenback himself, Lord Mandy.
If you care to trace back any of the recent brutally reactionary anti-union or anti-working-class policies of the last 12 months, there is one shadowy hand at work. He's always there, pulling the strings and egging on the fat cats into a frothing state of self-justification and grandiosity, tickling them under their multiple chins and whispering sweet nothings into their ears.
Delays on pleural plaques compensation, self-regulation for mercenaries and arms firms, the Post Office sell-off - all bear the hallmark of Mandelsonian treachery.
This is someone who wouldn't know a principle if it came up and introduced itself with references. A man for whom sympathy is just a word between strychnine and syphilis in the dictionary and one he seems equally averse to.
Mandelson had the arrogance and mendacity to state that the postal strike was "suicide." The truth is that it would be suicide for the CWU not to strike.
We have to back the CWU and break Mandelson's stranglehold on what's left of the public sector before it's too late.
And maybe, as he seems so keen on talking about self-destructive urges, he should take his next freebie holiday at a certain clinic in Switzerland.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/features/The-bloodsuckers
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