Welcome To The Young TURCs

Today, the so-called Trade Union Reform Campaign (TURC), yet another Astroturf lobby group that declines to say who pays its bills, has formally launched itself before a gallery of cheering supporters (Sid and Doris Bonkers). As I previously showed, this crowd has a chairman who is under investigation by his own party, a CEO who’s been booted off the Tory candidates’ list, a press officer who can’t keep his trap shut while plotting, and the flannelled fool Henry Cole advising it.

And this dubiously talented grouping has now established a Parliamentary Council, which sounds impressive until you do a few minutes’ research. Following the roll-call, the blurb proclaims “These MP [sic] come from diverse backgrounds, are at various stages of their careers and represent constituencies right across the country” to which I call bullshit.

Apart from Liam Fox – who entered Parliament back in 1992 – all the MPs named are from the 2010 intake. So they’re all at exactly the same stage in their career, although one could argue otherwise for Aidan Burley, who shows every sign of having peaked and being headed for the exit. And there is no-one from outside England, with only one from the London area.

The supposed “star” of this Council, as the obligatory boast by the supremely clueless Cole on the Guido Fawkes blog shows, is Fox, a former cabinet minister, but he departed that role involuntarily, and as I noted, had been conspicuously adjacent to a number of leaks from his department in the preceding months. Liam Fox is damaged goods, and moreover is unlikely to have Young Dave’s support.

[Fox’s leaky behaviour can be seen HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE]

Just what does TURC expect this gathering of MPs to do, other than be 90% susceptible to being fed a large amount of bovine by-product by an ideologically driven bunch of clowns who have already reduced the credibility of the group to a figure not unadjacent to zero (and alerting the Trade Union movement to their presence so they can all have a good laugh)?

Neither TURC, nor the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA), whose highly dodgy dossier on this subject I considered earlier, have yet provided one example of the kinds of activities that union reps undertake during facility time. They cannot therefore tell why Trade Unions should pay for this activity, nor how this is some kind of zero sum game that allows more strikes to be organised.

But no doubt TURC keeps some less than totally desirable characters off the streets and fully occupied, and for that reason one cannot be too harsh on it. Plus it’s a rich seam of comedy gold.