ANOTHER CUNNING PLAN

In the BBC TV comedy series Blackadder one of the character is always coming up with a "cunning plan" that always turns out to be completely useless. The present government has a cunning plan to deal with the economic crisis. Cut the workers wages, increase their pension contributions, slash their pensions benefits and increase the pension age to sixty eight. This has led to hundreds of thousands of public sector workers taking part in a 24-hour UK-wide strike in a dispute with the government over pension changes. "Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said pension talks will not be reopened and "nothing further will be achieved through strike action". Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union - which estimates that an "overwhelming majority" of its 250,000 public sector members are on strike - said the UK would have "the highest pension age of any European country". (BBC News, 10 May) The truth is that inside capitalism slumps and booms are part and parcel of the system and there is no cunning way to plan it despite the efforts of Baldric or Francis Maude. RD