Train Spotting

Don't you think Chris Hargreaves is coming over as a trifle stressed these days?

I bloody hope so!

I would not want it to get on top of me.

Me and Mrs C are off to (hopefully) Looe tomorrow on the train for a day out. If I remember I'll take some photos of the area and the trains we went on.

Earlier this year and at a time when business could least afford it , millions of people were forced to stay at home on the first working day after Easter due to a rail strike.

This sort of selfish behavior cost the economy an estimated £600 million, tipped companies over the edge and ultimately thousands of jobs were lost. Not theirs though so that OK. They are the best party political broadcast the Tories could wish for.


Bring back Maggie thats what I say

Do you mind if I ask two genuine questions?

1) Would you be able to demonstrate how a one day strike, on the day after the four-day Easter break, can cause the economy £600m?

and 2) by the same consequence, how much did the 2009/2010 winter snowfall cost the economy, and who's to blame for that?

Thank you.

Yes they will and for purely selfish reasons and not giving a damn how it affects anybody else. It's really only school playground and teenage Peer Group Pressure for adults. Twas ever thus

In 1991 I was a Union Committe member within the TGWU and was highly active in the industrial struggle between members of that union and the London Forest Bus Company which had been set up as a puppet project through the support of the Tory Party with which to gain a foothold in the Conservative project of de-regulating the London Bus industry. Not a policy to improve the bus service for Londoners in any way shape or form, but to confront the unions and to soften the Londonwide bus operation for privatisation in eleven different franchises.

London Forest was the first such company and it was deliberately aimed at the union stronghold of north east London and became fully operational in 1989. By 1991 the company was fully into it's politically driven nonsense and bid for a network of eleven of it's own routes at a rate so low they were driven to attempt to reduce wages by over 20% AND increase the working week by the same percentage................so much for putting the safety of the public first eh? So much for the employer's "duty of care" for it's employees and their families' welfare!

The entire staff of 1,300 walked out and stayed out for two weeks whilst the company were forced to surrender the network and dispose of it's confrontational manager Tom Young. Yes, the politicians were all too ready to provoke the carnage and all to ready to distance themselves from it once they got a bloody good hiding.

Being on strike for two weeks is a bloody financial nightmare and results in many, many people having to seek and pay off loans that take ages to pay off. It takes TWO sides to bring about a withdrawal of labour ~ never forget that. Everybody lost in the London Forest Bus Strike, the workers financially, the company got wound up and the management disposed of. The dogmatists of the Tory Party who caused it, Thatcher and Ridley;never used a bloody bus in their lives of course and sat smugly by.

Almost two decades later, London's buses are now fully regulated again as opposed to the mess you have in Devon in an unregulated, profit driven system that Dave has fully illustrated the shortcomings of on this very forum. London's bus workers are STILL the highest paid in the land and it's customers enjoy the lowest fares and highest frequency of service in the land too. A fully modern fleet of no vehicle over three years old and ALL fully compliant regards access for the disabled and wheelchair bound. Nowhere in the rest of the country can boast that.

To denigrate workers who withdraw their labour to secure their terms and conditions is as reprehensible as engineering disputes leading up to them purely for political expedience.

Workers do not lightly withdraw their labour although many political activists all too readily seek to bring about such confrontation ~ from BOTH sides of the political spectre.

Nowhere in England did bus workers make the ultimate sacrifice to such effect and the public owe them a mighty thanks. Had the bus workers of London Forest caved in and accepted those massive pay cuts and increase in hours, the services of East London would have remained under the operation of cowboys like Harry Blundred who Longeatongull worked for and a company set up by a former director of London buses who had his snout in the privatisation trough called Ensign Bus. As it was the aged and decrepit fleet these initial carpetbaggers operating the routes surrendered by the former London Transport subsidiary were soon dispensed with and the modern fleet and satisfactory service ensued within the network as we see it today.