Own goal

The ability of socialists to shoot themselves in the foot has brought me great joy and some hilarity over the years, from Michael Foot's inability to judge the public mood, to Neil Kinnock's triumphalism in 1992. From Gordon Brown's complete inability to come across as human to the current crop of leadership hypocrites. But the politicians are not the only ones, the "real" socialists of the SWP have also over the years managed to associate themselves with every lost cause, terrorist supporting agenda, anti democratic movement going, flitting from one cause to another whilst being perfectly prepared to drop such shibboleths of gay rights as and when faced with cosying up to Islamic extremist groups.
Their ability to get it wrong knows no bounds as witness this classic.

Times.

LAST-DITCH talks to avert the next round of British Airways strikes had to be abandoned last night after protesters from the Socialist Workers party invaded them.

The disruption followed the apparent release of details from inside the talks by the Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson, who is accused of sending a string of regular updates via the social networking website Twitter.

The tweets, sent under the name derekamicus on a page with a photograph of Simpson, contained remarks such as: “Willie and Tony locking horns over accusations of unequal treatment of allegations of bullying.” Another read: “Arguments over the 8 sacked workers,” and then: “Fear of more sackings to come.”

A tweet sent just before 6pm read: “Intruders from left political group has infiltrated Acas building and disrupted talks ... Police called ... Much noise and stamping.”

About 60 left-wing protesters forced their way through the doors of Acas and up to the 23rd floor five hours into the talks, claiming to be showing solidarity with British Airways workers.

Walsh was surrounded by chanting protesters and had to be escorted from the building by police. The Unite joint leader Tony Woodley angrily remonstrated with them telling them to “shut up”. Many of the demonstrators staged a sit-in until they were removed by police. No arrests were made.

Talks to avert a strike, talks to save disruption to passengers, talks to prevent union members losing money from said strike disrupted by those showing "solidarity" with the BA staff.
You couldn't make this stuff up.

Not that Unite come out of this terribly well, I mean, what the hell was Tony Woodley doing "Tweeting" during negotiations?

Last night BA said it was “astonished that Simpson feels it appropriate to tweet a running commentary of some very delicate and private negotiations involving top mediators”.

I mean I know socialists are addicted to tweeting as the 140 character limit encompasses their attention span, but you'd think that during delicate critical (and private) negotiations you'd be very careful not to tell the world how it's going every couple of minutes.

Ye gods it's difficult to imagine how these people get in positions of power over us, yet somehow they do. I despair for this country at times.

Mummylonglegs  has a good go at the idiocy which is the Unite union members who support strike action.