Switch Hitter

Watching Cricketer Kevin Pietersen the other day switching from a right-hander to a left-hander in the blink of an eye reminded me of the beleaguered boss of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.

Really? Well maybe not right then and there! But the unsuspecting bowler certainly got a shock when he was hit for six by the cross-hitting batsman.

No sooner had the ink dried on King's warnings of an imminent slowdown in the economy and the implication of Interest Rate cuts, than the switch hitting banker was warning us that rates may rise because of runaway inflation.

"So don't you all be asking for big pay rises this year" admonished School Master King. "They are bad and will lead to wage and price inflation. And if you let that happen you will be sorry."

Except for tanker drivers.

"No...No.. Don't look at the tanker drivers deal" says King. "They're different"

What, different to Nurses and Teachers? Nurses and Teachers don't deliver tanker loads of Opium to addicted drivers ever day do they?

We've been here before, and to the best of my memory, we didn't like it. It was grey and bleak and miserable and it was called the Seventies. Competitive pay bargaining with any deal being done under the rate of inflation being regarded as a defeat for the workers. An antagonistic, gladiatorial contest played out on our television screens nightly. No, please....not the Seventies again.

Maybe the seventies nightmare is our just deserts for the go-go Eighties, the bang-on Nineties and the debt-drenched Noughties.

But what to do? The fact is that it is low paid workers who can least afford the spiralling increase in food and fuel prices. It is this group, the backbone of the work force in small business that will feel the pain of the squeeze first. And it is this group that will expect to be looked after by their employer by at least keeping pace with inflation. These workers are rarely members of powerful unions like the tanker drivers, they have only the threat of withdrawing their labour as a weapon. And that, as any employee of a small business knows, is not an option.

Let's hope that Mervyn King can be as dexterous as Kevin Pietersen at maneuvering through this sticky wicket.