Strikes in the UK

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I was listening to the news on the radio this morning and as usual it was mostly about strikes. I started to wonder if the UK was on the slippery slope and had there been more strikes since Labour came to power. Using the power of google I decided to perfom a quick analysis. The results are below

The first analysis probably recorded to many misses to be that much use and probably only shows the growth in online news.

The second search is perhaps a little closer to show a real trend. Searches for "work stoppage" seem to give a better (cleaner) set of results.

The last set of searches give the most obvious trend. I searched on google.co.uk for only uk pages and quoted the search term. Maybe this rise is due to the growth of the internet maybe it isnt. I do find it strange though that (with only one exception) every single one of the years Labour has been in power there are more hits than any of the years the Conservatives .

Which way do I vote? No I am not Labour bashing. When I do vote it is not for either of the these two.

My conclusions: Yep looks like we should all abandon ship. But we have known that for a while now :o)

Where Searched		Regular google.com	Regular google.com	google.co.uk Only UK Pages
Searched For		strike YYYY uk	uk work stoppage YYYY	"work stoppage" YYYY
In Power	Year	Number of Results (approx)
con	1980	82000	1450	35
con	1981	55300	996	37
con	1982	61000	1080	28
con	1983	60000	1040	29
con	1984	76700	1320	43
con	1985	78500	1330	41
con	1986	83900	1510	41
con	1987	84000	1410	48
con	1988	96500	1660	44
con	1989	113000	1730	60
con	1990	150000	2200	62
con	1991	146000	2140	62
con	1992	151000	2360	76
con	1993	158000	2270	67
con	1994	180000	2710	104
con	1995	225000	2930	93
con	1996	240000	3250	83
lab	1997	258000	3460	99
lab	1998	304000	4060	101
lab	1999	351000	4400	156
lab	2000	469000	5890	227
lab	2001	493000	6450	199
lab	2002	749000	7720	353