I was delighted to find out that His Honour, Mr. Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of 'Noo Yawk', has been paying attention to this blog and noticed my suggestion of some months ago that London and the south of England should break away from the rest of the Kingdom in a sort of UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) so that all those City slickers could go on making oodles of moolah which we could hang on to instead of doing what we have to do today and send it by the trainload up to 'Jockland'. In this week's Spectator he has taken my idea one stage further - well, they always think bigger, these Yanks - and suggested a 'special relationship' between London and 'Noo Yawk' based on the several shared characteristics of both cities, but especially their financial muscle which is likely to come under increasing threat from the Orient in the near future. A splendid idea, in my opinion, and I gather that he and Boris are already on terms and about to take this idea further.
Normally, even the whispered mention of globalisation is the sort of thing that usually produces flecks of foam on the lips of any Leftie, so it was with some surprise that I read today of plans for the British trade union, UNITE, to enter merger talks with the United Steel Workers' Union (USW) of America which already has over a million affiliated workers in Cananda, too. I have conducted a quick skim across the comrades' blogs but no mention is made. I suppose it must be a case of, I say 'globalisation' and you say 'workers of the world unite'!
Of course, there is a rather crucial difference between the globalisation of big business and big unions. The former bring work and jobs and thus increasing wealth to poor people in poor countries whilst the latter will, in true, traditional, 'closed shop' style, do everything in their power to keep tariffs up, wages up, prices up and above all, jobs for life at home.
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