If the BBC fell over in a forest, would a bear still shit on them? It’s one of the great philosophical questions of our time.

Less surprising is the news that the BBC will be shutting down for two days over the Conservative Party Conference (5th/6th Oct) and two days over the Comprehensive Spending Review (19th/20th Oct). A complete coincidence, naturally.

The disagreement is over changes to the pension plan. Despite already backing down on major issues, the BBC is still cruelly insisting that the oppressed masses actually contribute some money to their own. Rumours about reducing the political bias have been laughed off by all sides as “daftness”.

The increasingly irrelevant TUC conference this morning has been a laugh. It began with a minute of “silence” for somethingorother which, to keep the Brothers and Sisters entertained, was actually filled with background music!

Then we had a morning of the teaching unions opposing the accadamies that give children a better education by taking them out of the failed union-dominated state comprehensive system. Bob Crowe also insanely suggested motorway sit-downs in protests at government spending cuts not rising as fast as previously…which would be fine if he’d let us know exactly when and where he’ll be sitting as well has how much acceleration room we’ve got. References to cuts making Britain “”dark” were presumably not an ironic reference to decades ago when we lived by candlelight during the power strikes.

It’s safe to predict that the disruption will not be as extensive as these dinosaurs fondly imagine, and that attempts to make it so will be viewed badly by a majority of people. If strikes are confined to the public sector, the image of public sector workers prepared to cause havoc so that the private sector is obliged to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed will not do the Coalition any harm at all.  YouGov have opposition to strikes currently running at 45/35% even before a single bin-bag goes uncollected.

What the unions have failed to recognise is that withdrawing labour is supposed to show employers how useful that labour is. In the public sector right now, we may well get a pleasant surprise at how the results unexpectedly backfire.