London Underground Strike

Here's a little snippet of Christmas Cheer. Drivers for the London Underground are planning to go on strike on Boxing Day. The reason? They want triple time for working. Triple time! That would take their pay from £165 to £495. Behind this move is the enigmatic Bob Crowe. Every generation throws up a Bob Crowe. If ever there was an egoist on the make it was Crowe. They are all the same, apart from the ones who are genuine agents of Russia. Crowe supports vandalism and is a foul mouthed yob. Of course, in being such an egregious shit he appeals to the olchocracy; the dimwits who will follow anybody who can string a few bits of fighting talk together. Crowe has an ideological opposition to Capitalism. He cannot be reasoned with because he is not concerned with simple issues of workers pay and conditions, he wants to overthrow the Government.

In the end, he will fail, just as the Arthur Scargills, Jack Joneses, Red Robbos and Derek Hattons of this world have failed. But in doing so Crowe will have set back industry and industrial relations to a new low. Capitalism may be flawed, but at its heart is democracy - people choose which services and products they use and nobody can force them to do otherwise. Bob Crowe is doing very nicely on his £125,000 a year salary and generous benefits package. In ten years he will be selling timeshares in Marbella with the rest of the hucksters.

4 comments:

James said...

To be fair the unions are but a pinprick on society compared to what governments do. Whole swathes of industry gone in 10 years under Thatcher. Thousands dead and injured in fake wars. And of course people aren't really allowed to choose what they want to buy. They're brainwashed by the media advertising and fake celebrities on the tv. Green cars not selling cos they're pure shit ? No problem knock off £5K and charge it to the taxpayers. People not getting a new car ? Give them £2k for their old banger. Shopkeepers campaigning against a new Tesco ? No worries build the council a new library at the same time that'll sway it. Roads a bit icy north of Watford ? Never mind just don't take orders from the sweaty socks. People reluctant to cough up for windmills ? No worries just put the cost onto their lewckie bills ( Ed: ok got it that's enough )

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Stick to the topic please James. Red Robbo singlehandedly destroyed British Leyland. According to the BBC, "between 1978 and 1979 Mr Robinson was credited with causing 523 walk-outs at Longbridge, costing an estimated £200m in lost production".
Not only was he personally responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of man-hours and millions in revenue, the company ultimately failed because the product was poorly built and people got fed up of buying the bits that inevitably fell off. Instead of inspiring the work force to make something to be proud of, he demoralised them to such an extent that they no longer felt it was part of their job to make something that people appreciated.

This "pin prick" by the way, will impact on hundreds of thousands of ordinary working people, who may not have a job to get to if they are perpetually held to ransome by tyrants.

James said...

WW. British Leyland is hardly a good example to use. You do remember the cars they used to make and the sleeping bags taken into work for nightshift ?
While the Unions can cause unemployment it's govts that have the ultimate power to close down industries like coal and steel and shipbuilding ( mainly gone in Scotland and the rest of the UK).
Privatisation has shipped ownership overseas and been the real culprit in our demise.
Thatchers role From wiki..

British Petroleum was privatised in stages in October 1979, September 1983 and November 1987; British Aerospace in January 1981 and 1985; the government share in British Sugar in July 1981; Cable and Wireless in November 1981; Amersham International and National Freight Corporation in February 1982; Britoil in November 1982 and August 1985; Associated British Ports in February 1983; Jaguar in July 1984; British Telecom in November 1984; the National Bus Company in October 1986; British Gas in December 1986; British Airways in February 1987; the Royal Ordnance in April 1987; Rolls-Royce in May 1987; the British Airports Authority in July 1987; the Rover Group in August 1988; British Steel in December 1988; the Regional Water Authorities in November 1989; Girobank in July 1990; and the National Grid in December 1990.

In 1983 Thatcher also broke up and privatised British Shipbuilders, which had been amalgamated and nationalised by Callaghan in 1977 in the lean times following the 1973 oil crisis, and which still employed 86,000 people building naval and commercial vessels, many in the north-east of England.[92][93] Few of the privatised shipyards subsequently survived competition against East Asian cheap labour,[93] with the single largest private sector group, BVT, now employing a fraction of the nationalised group's number, just over 7,000 people working on Navy contracts in the Clyde and Portsmouth yards.[92]

Oh and the BBC believes in global warming, the EU, mass immigration, multiculturalism, the tooth fairy etc so don't use them for quotes.

Twig said...

There are millions of jobs in China that depend on british workers making themselves unemployable.