Be interesting to see what reaction would be if they used 'migrant' workers instead of students, i very much doubt the word scab would be allowed then!

After all they do the jobs us nasty lazy thuggish Brits wont do...

Anyone posting on a strike day is scabbing, just like anyone crossing a picket line. Scab post should be burned. YOUR posties are striking to protect YOUR service and EVERYONE must support them.

Yes it would be interesting. The 'nasty brit working, class' wouldn't be low paid cleaners, field and factory workers etc. - no that would have been an hallucination I had when I and others just thought we were doing these shitty jobs!. But to judge fro comments over the past year ion Indymedia you would see some guilt from the PC brigade taken out against the english working class - or perhaps it's self loathing. Whatever it is there is a big elephant in the room....I think also the student demographic has changed. Still, should affect the comfort of a lot of the big NGO workers nor be too risque eh?Discuss.

1. If you post on a strike day then the amount of unsorted post increases and the difficulties for Royal Mail are increased - this is in the postie's interest.

2. Agency workers can't operate the sorting machinery so only a bit of hand sorting gets done. Ten years ago, as an 18yr old non-union temp, I walked straight past the picket line every day - then returned 10 minutes later with tea and coffee paid for by RM. No-one ever accused me of being a scab.

How can anyone claim that I MUST support the strike? "MY" posties may be trying to protect "MY" post service but they don't appear to care at all about "MY" right to hold a dissenting opinion. I don't like the idea of management giving themselves bonuses if the business is in as much trouble as they claim - those bonuses are supposed to be earned. On the other hand, I don't support a pay rise for a group of people who are already ridiculously well paid for doing an unskilled job and still can't manage to deliver my mail to the right address.

If you post on a strike day you contribute to RMs revenue and enable RM to pressure posties to handle vast amounts of scab mail for no extra pay once the dispute is over. Scab mail and mail handled by scabs will be blacked and burned.

RM is busing the scabbing students into Liverpool sorting office because they do not want pickets to have the chance to talk to them and persuade them that what they are doing is wrong. They know that if we can talk to them, they will not cross the picket line.

You, Steve, are ill informed and that is why your dissenting opinion is worthless. YOU MUST support YOUR posties in protecting YOUR service.

Steve wrote: "On the other hand, I don't support a pay rise for a group of people who are already ridiculously well paid for doing an unskilled job and still can't manage to deliver my mail to the right address."

You're an awful ignorant pillock. My brother in law's a postie and works like a dog, up at 4am, humping sodding great sacks full to the brim with as much junk mail as post around for 8 hours or more in all weathers, and gets far less than the national average wage. Even if they were "ridiculously [what counts as "ridiculous" pay, Steve?] well paid", you should support them, the same as you should support any group of workers taking action both to safeguard and improve their own terms and conditions, to preserve jobs, and to safeguard a public service. You may not be old enough to remember, but the miners were slagged off by Kinnock et al for getting £20-odd grand in their pay packets back in the 80s, and now, as a direct result of scabbing, and of course the openly declared class war prosecuted by the State and Capital, they're all out of work or stuck in McJobs.

As for your mail not being delivered to the right address, has it occurred to you that perhaps, just perhaps, that's a structural issue to do with management, infrastructure, underinvestment, and the rest of it? That perhaps the worsening postal service is a direct result of the stealthy privatisation being carried out by management with the behind the scenes support of the NuLabor regime? Or do you just prefer to blame the poor bloody worker stomping the streets in all weathers because they're visible targets, unlike the suits in management offices far away?

However, even if you hold all posties in contempt, as you plainly do, you should support the action so as to preserve a vital public service from which we *all* benefit. The whole point of the management "reforms" (and we know that that word means under NuLabor) is to cut staff, cut pay and conditions, and force higher levels of productivity so as to make the tasty bits of the service sellable. Once the lucrative bits have been sold off, and no longer cross-subsidise the loss-making parts (in particular, universal delivery for a single fee regardless of destination), we the public will be left with a seriously crap service which we'll have to pay through the nose for. Fancy paying a couple of quid to get a letter from London to Glasgow, say, or even further afield? That's what you'll get, as well as the closure of thousands more high street post offices.

So, even if you look down your nose at the workers, like so many of Thatcher's Children these days, you should at least look to your own long-term self-interest and support the *only* group of people who can halt or even reverse the ongoing privatisation of the postal service.

Gerry