The reporting narrative in the current industrial disputes is set by the Mail/Telegraph axis. Keywords, to be included bigly in every report, are "disruption," "strike," "chaos," picket line," "inconvenience," "delay," "union bosses/barons" (add your own). You might just hear that it's a dispute about "pay and conditions." What you'll have to dig and delve for yourself are the exact reasons for desperate people being forced to lay down their tools. What you won't hear too much of is the 12-year suppression of pay and the rapidly deteriorating working and living conditions of many of the striking workers in a time of high inflation. You won't read about the privations of those withdrawing their labour, the only weapon they have, as they lose hundreds of pounds a week in pay. But you will hear plenty of platitudes and downright lies from ministers about how the paltry offers on the table are "fair and reasonable" which were decided by "independent" pay review bodies (the biggest lie of all). And then, of course, the downright lie that pay settlements above the parsimony currently on the table will "fuel inflation," or "embed inflation in the economy." Well there's already inflation in the economy that has nothing to do with pay settlements, and giving nurses, carers, ambulance drivers and teachers a decent pay rise can't possibly fuel inflation.   You'll hear ministers telling us that they can't intervene in negotiations when, every time they open their mouths, they are intervening. You'll hear some minister or other who's been wheeled out to tell us that the nurses' 19.2% pay demand is "unreasonable and unaffordable," which can't be negotiated, even though we all know that that is merely an opening bargaining gambit and not an all-or-nothing stance. We all know that unions almost always ask for more than they eventually settle for. The government wants us to think that the unions are our enemies-within and that the NHS can't be fit for purpose and should be broken up. They lie to us about the "investment" they've put in (which has been paltry in historical terms for over a decade). For many people who don't spend hours a day studying the political situation, gleaning what they know from the headlines or the first five minutes of the news, it's easy to dismiss them as gullible. The government controls the narrative that invites us to be gullible and most of the media connive in that. We need a damn sight more Mick Lynches articulately and confidently giving us the real, unadorned truth about how we are being manipulated.