Redistribution at work

In the light of my immediately previous post about the mantra that equality = happiness, Wat Tyler's review of the delightfully named Warwick Lightfoot's newly published book Sorry, We Have No Money is very apposite. I was particularly struck by the following:

We must abolish national pay rates and welfare scales pdq. And we should also note that shipping all those heavily unionised public sector jobs into the depressed regions hasn't done the local work culture any good at all. Consider Lightfoot's very striking chart on strikes:

So, the very areas where jobs are most difficult to find - Scotland, Wales, the North East - are the very areas where those lucky enough to be in work are most likely to strike. A strike record like that can only exist where the biggest employer is the public sector. And if you were a private employer looking for a new base, would you want to enter a maelstrom like that?