ANDY1961:
starfighter:
Carryfast:
claretmatt:
I don’t even think most tanker drivers want to go on strike… It’s just the Unions trying to bring the government down again
They certainly won’t get a 35 hour week or whatever it is they want now. Boils down to greed, however it’s dressed up
Any government that believes in using the military,in whatever way, to get what it wants in civilian matters,needs to be brought down.FAST.
And if you want to lecture anyone about greed then start with the bankers and the government’s chosen big business cronies.
Will you be saying that if there is a major flood in your area and the troops turn up as part of the cleanup?
Yeah, exactly! Good point. Wonder what ridiculous answer he’ll come up with in response to that.
Carryfast - how you can draw a parallel between this goverment and the ■■■■’s in 1930’s Germany, shows you up to be the fool that you are. And when I say “fool” I’m talking about your ignorance of proper facts, not just your warped view of just about anything.
Hitler didn’t believe in democracy. Hitler murdered most of his political opponents and used the german Jews as scapegoats. Hitler’s henchmen - thousands of them - intimidated the German population - not just the german Jews - into voting for him. Despite that, he still didn’t get elected first time around. And when he eventually did get elected he was elected through his party’s “tactics/strategy” (murder, intimidation etc etc etc), therefore NOT elected democratically.
As for your take on the British Army and the oath they take. Well, thank god you weren’t in the trench’s at the Somme.
Firstly Hitler was actually elected to office one way or another.Democracy that doesn’t allow the democratic power of the electorate over policy by way of referenda,in addition to that of choosing the actual ‘government’,is just a form of dictatorship.
The fact is there is no big difference between the oath sworn by Hitler’s troops to that sworn by British ones today.Both allow the use of troops to be used,on the government’s side,in DISPUTES,not RESCUE MISSIONS,between the civilian public and the government,without any actual legal ability for those troops to excercise the type of choice that ‘should’ apply where they are being used in a civilian environment such as in the case of crossing a civilian picket line. 
As for the situation in WW1,at that time,under the circumstances which applied then,I’d probably have been shot at dawn for political beliefs in supporting the Bolshevik cause,as it was at that time,before Stalin and before the murders of the Romanovs and all the zb that followed resulting from the zb’d up ideals of the Russian Revolution and Communism.However your unfortunate choice of the Somme as an example seems to actually reinforce my case of what happens when troops follow orders to the letter instead of just telling their officers to zb off. 
No surprise though that despotic regimes like Stalin’s and Hitler’s produced a similar situation,from the point of view of the relationship between the military and the civilian public,where industrial disputes would be concerned,as that which has existed between the British public and it’s military in the case of disputes such as the general strike of 1926.
Unlike you,having heard the story as told by those that were involved at the time,I’m under no illusions that the British government would not be prepared to escalate things to similar types of levels as those despotic nutters would have done,with an unquestioning army prepared to follow orders to the letter.Which is why the general strike of 1926 was called off thereby putting the cause of British workers and the British economy back to the Victorian era.I think the police actions during the miners strike gives some idea of how far the government is happy to go.
I’m also under no illusions as to how far things would,theoretically,escalate,in a case of a situation,whereby anyone in the army decided to take the type of action which I would in refusing to cross a civilian picket line and IF the union movement then decided to support that by way of (trying to) defend that person/s from the actions which would follow.
I’ve also got a suspicion that the TUC and Unite knows that which is why it hasn’t had the bottle to say that it would guarantee all essential services supplies in the event of it taking action thereby removing any need for military involvement in the dispute.Because it isn’t prepared to face up to telling it’s members that any action they take is liable to be broken by use of the military and that’s the reason for the government’s use of the military in the dispute,not to ensure ‘essential supplies’,in just the same way that the government used the military to break the 1926 general strike.
All of which seems to me to be an accurate reflection of the present situation concerning the way in which we’re governed.
