3208 days ago
After six months training you are qualified to be a bolshie, greedy bastard who makes life a misery for poor people, that is to say a train driver on the London Underground. And the wankers are having another strike on August 5.
A driver's starting salary - which follows about six months of training - is £49,673, according to Transport for London (TfL), which adds that this "doesn't alter depending on length of time in role". They typically work a 36-hour week and get 43 days of leave every year, including bank holidays. Six of the days off are compensation for working 36, rather than 35, hours a week throughout the year. The UK average household income is £26,000 and most of us get about 30 days leave including bank holidays.
Now the bastards are up in arms
3699 days ago
“You disgusting man. You won't have many tears shed over your demise. Rip Bob!” So came the comment from Michelle Ryan after my piece on Bob Crow. She may well be correct about the reaction to my demise whenever it happens. Michelle: do you think I give a flying fuck? After a lifetime of getting abuse from those who disagreed with me, when I am ambling up to meet St Peter on that fateful day of judgement (the outcome of which I am not optimistic about) the amount of tears shed by the living will not be my concern.
St Peter will accuse me of many things and I shall accept my sins. One thing he will not accuse me of is mincing my words. In life I viewed Bob Crow as an appalling man and in death I view him the same way. Why pretend otherwise?
The arrogance of the left is to describe Crow as a man who fought for the working classes. This is simply not true. When the tube workers went on strike investment bankers simply travelled by taxi and felt no impact. It was the genuinely poor, working classes that suffered as they walked to work/shared minicabs at great cost. Equally Crow remaining in a Council house when he could on his gargantuan wage have afforded better, ensured one more working class family suffered homelessness.
The London metro is far more expensive than Metros in other major cities. Part of the reason for this is that its drivers are paid far too much and because it retains structural inefficiencies such as manned ticket counters. For an investment banker tube travel is a small portion of his disposabale income. It is the genuinely poor workers who are screwed by the system. And Crow
3711 days ago
I found this on the internet...maybe if you are not London based it is not quite as funny. Clerkenwell is between "More lawyers" and "Start up Twats" London Underground stations which is about right. Well, at least, I found the map very funny.
Click for large image in new window
3734 days ago
For the second day the complete bastards in Bob Crow’s RMT Union have paralysed the London Underground with industrial action. The time has come when someone needs to deal with these greedy and selfish complete and utter bastards.
This strike is over plans to phase out manned ticket kiosks and replace them with machines. Most folks already use machines out of choice since they are quicker and more efficient that the folks who man kiosks who are almost without exception grotesquely overweight, utterly surly and spectacularly unintelligent. Those who currently use kiosks will not struggle with the machines. We live in 2014 not 1914.
This mechanisation will cost 950 jobs. But other roles are to be expanded so creating 250 jobs on the tube while 1,000 staff have actually applied for redundancy. So there will be no forced redundancies. Yet the tube drivers are on strike.
To be a tube driver requires six weeks training. It is not like learning to be a heart surgeon. Yet tube drivers earn an average of £45,000 for a 35 hour week and get perks like free travel for the family which are worth a couple of thousand more. They are set to get a wage hike to £50,000 in 2015. They have managed to secure such great packages
