I have been panned for criticising Bob Crow who died today. In that vein I apologise for that piece and have amended my original piece with the change in italics. See below.
You are not meant to say bad things about those who have just died…but for fat hypocritical selfish bastards like Bob Crow, the head of the tube driver’s union, the RMT, one can make an exception. Crow died of a heart attack this morning.
Crow lived the high life as a Union boss. He was paid a huge wage and his expenses bill for fine wining and dining was a disgrace. His lifestyle did not exactly show solidarity with the workers.
Moreover under his leadership, the tube drivers have held Londoners to ransom for years, blocking change when change was needed and negotiating wages which are thoroughly unjustifiable. By 2015 a tube driver ( who takes just six weeks to learn his or her trade) will, for a 35 hour week with generous holidays be getting a package worth £52,000 a year. That is just shocking and cannot be justified.
Crow has extracted such a package by regularly holding Londoners to ransom with strike action which causes misery for us all. And then of course he also launched strike action for purely political purposes, often on days when England were playing a soccer match, so the drivers could see the game.
While trousering £150,000 a year plus grotesque expenses Comrade Crow lived in a council house paying a trivial rent. That meant he was even richer and a really poor person was deprived of social housing. In practice, such was the solidarity this fat, selfish, greedy arsehole showed with the working classes. I apologise for omitting this fact from my earlier piece.
Britain is better off without this blackmailing bastard who grew fat thanks to inflicting misery on the rest of us. While his family may miss him and have my sympathies I would be a hypocrite if did not say that I – and 99% of the population – will not miss him at all.
PS I see that uber-scumbag George Galloway is to write a glowing tribute to Comrade Crow in the Guardian later today. That says it all.