No-one's nostalgic, but 23 years after the Winter of Discontent, Britain could well be heading for another season of industrial strife.

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In equities markets, when is the winter of discontent over?

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For years the Conservatives used the Winter of Discontent to warn voters not to trust Labour again. they hope to do the same with debt, the banks and that obscure rate few of us understand, called LIBOR.

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The analysis shows that national income per head dropped much more sharply in the four years to mid-2012 than it did after the recession which came in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and the 1979 oil shock.

BBC: National income per head 'down 13% in four years'

With the opening of spring training less than three weeks away, the winter of discontent for the New York Yankees is quickly coming to a close and no one is happier to see pitchers and catchers report to camp than Brian Cashman.

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But - within almost the same breath as insisting the firefighters were too sensible to think they could return to 1979 and the winter of discontent, or 1984 and the miners' strike - he repeated his message that "industrial militancy to pursue political ends is not on".

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In the end, it was the unions themselves who put her into office by smashing up the James Callaghan Labour government in the winter of 1978-79 the so-called Winter of Discontent enabling the Tories to win the election the following May with a comfortable majority.

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The hot summer weather during the early stages of the 1984 strike meant Britain did not suffer a second Winter of Discontent.

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Without ditching his arsenal of ironic inflections and his nonpareil ability to make knowingness hilarious as well as smarmy, Murray takes Phil all the way through a prolonged winter of discontent and into a pixillated serenity.

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Inevitably, there has already been talk about a "winter of discontent" similar to the public sector strikes which helped demolish the 1979 Labour government.

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Boycott pointed to England's winter of discontent, where they struggled on and off the field, as a major reason for their difficulties.

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When I first became a journalist in the mid 80s I was asked to research a film on a new winter of discontent.

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