3906 days ago
Inevitably I start this weekend’s video postcard with the Rugby. I am sure that most of my English based readers were cheering for France yesterday. To my Celtic brethren who were rooting for Ireland – I am sure that you can share my joy. Gosh it was nerve wracking.
I then move onto the mysteries of my dead Great Uncles. If there is anyone out there who can track down Diana Norman, born 1915 who married (after the death of my Great Uncle Francis) a Mr Caulfield Stoker in 1947 (he then popped his clogs in Guernsey in 1954) I would be grateful. I can find no death certificate for Diana who would be 99 now but for reasons explained in the video and this article I am keen to track her down.
I then move onto Bob Crow. I celebrate no death. Equally I do not mince my words and Crow screwed the poor working classes and that should be noted rather than simply eulogising Saint Bob.
This is a wider issue: how and why the left systematically keep the working classes poor and that this the main theme of this video.
My weekly financial video covers shareholder activism a major theme of UK Investor Show which is now a day less than three weeks away. Tickets start to go out tomorrow. If you have not booked please do so at once HERE
You can watch my financial video postcard HERE
3909 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
3911 days ago
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.
3944 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
