Support your local strike committee. posted by Richard Seymour

The picket lines are out, and more than a million workers will not be crossing them today. I had a sneaking suspicion that the atmosphere of the Winter of Discontent would be evoked. And, shatter my bowels, here it is:

The shockwaves from the one day strike are being felt across the country with schools closed, rubbish not being collected and bodies not being cremated.

Rubbish piled up in Leicester Square! The dead unburied! Hordes of children getting a day off school! Hell in a handbasket, I tell you.

What's remarkable - well, actually, highly predictable - is that the BBC noos presenters are trying their best to paint this as an attempt to increase council tax. The middle class presenter almost leapt out of her pink suit to exclaim at Dave Prentis: "This all comes back to ordinary council tax payers like me whose bills are going to go up!" The tendons in her neck almost snapped with outrage. Prentis retorted that it would not put taxes up a penny, since the result of any cut in Local Government Pension Schemes would be to force workers to rely on benefits and increased pensions from the state. But more important is that this pension scheme is being paid into by workers for the duration of their working lives. What the government proposes to do is to transfer approximately £100 billion from workers to the state, which they'll only go and spend on Trident, tax cuts for the rich and the next invasion. The whole purpose is to engineer a structural change in the British economy, radically altering working arrangements for every working person. 2.5 million people are on the Local Government Pension Scheme, which is about 10% of the workforce. Initiating such changes there will make it much easier to replicate among private sector workers. So this is hardly a sectional dispute: it's about fighting off an attack on the right of working class people to have a decent retirement, many of whom will not live until 65, who will literally be forced to work until they drop under these proposals. It is about an attempt by employers to increase the absolute amount of time we spend working for them and drastically decrease the amount of time they spend giving us back our unpaid wages, which is what pensions are. And of course, the government's attack targets some of the lowest paid workers, 70% of whom are women.

Meanwhile, a general strike has started in France, and it is expected that about 135 rallies will be held to demonstrate solidarity. Transport workers are already out which means that only a real scab commuter could actually get to work today anyway. Airlines like Ryanair and Easyjet have cancelled flights to France.

Some photos and narrative from the French upheaval here (via Long Sunday). And here they've taken to torching shiny cars, taking a leaf out of the book of the banlieue rioters.