Where I was working at the time (constructing filtration and propagation buildings in a major brewery) they were putting 'beer making heroes' stickers and signs up all over the place. Because, even in a pandemic, Britain needs its Stella. Desperately! Not sure they gave out badges though tbh.
You know the top 5% pay 50% of all income tax. You’re acting like the poor pay all the tax bro. Hope you’re good btw.
The BOE printed £500bn to tackle the worst pandemic in living memory, against advice from the government. Each and every one of us knew there would be a catastrophic global economic fallout from the pandemic, yet here we are acting like the pandemic shouldn’t have affected us one bit. That’s before Putin started stirring up ****. Economic analysts predicted up to three decades to recover, yet people think we should be thriving less than 12 months after the pandemic come under some sort of control.
Whilst I agree in the main I would add that many of them weren't just working like normal through the pandemic so your comparison is a touch lacking. There was a point in 2020 where my wife worked 47 consecutive days as her juniors were all being used in A&E and she had to cover. They weren't all just "going to work as normal". Note: I'll clarify that they weren't all full shifts, sometimes it was full day Friday, then a couple of twilight covers (4hours or so) but still many hours more than in normal times and waaaay over her contract.
Did they get no over time for this? I wouldn't expect anyone to do this for free. However, my point still stands on the blanket sweeping statement of 'they worked through the pandemic' as justification. Loads of people in various walks of life did. The idea that everyone sat at home during it is bollocks. Although plenty did indeed put their feet up of course.
It's not about the level of qualification or the job, but what its value is to society and the quality of service we not only benefit from but we risk losing if we're not careful. The same ppl you hear on radio phone ins moaning about not getting a train to see aunty Berol who they probably haven't given the time of day to all year, will be the same ones who are quite happy not to support the very workers of the service they deem essential. And at the same time too dumb to realise the change in workers terms and conditions is ultimately going to strip the railway until there's no 'service' left. And then they'll be bitching about that.
Why should they continue to get all the perks they were getting when they were state owned and haemorrhaging money?
Why should it bother anyone that they do? Why in this country do we always want to pull people down? Anyway hopefully in a couple of years they'll be state-owned again and we can get a decent, more reliable, and modern service. Not the type we used to 40 years ago, but the kind many countries are delivering successfully across the world now.
The bit I've bolded is surely part of what the railways are fighting against? A modern service of the future, much like our automobiles will be automated, the ticket offices will no longer exist and probably replaced by vending kiosks in tourist areas. I think @BobbyD mentioned something about live lines, but other countries are already running semi automated systems. I think even Gatwick already runs an automated system between terminals, it's merely about moving it to a larger scale surely - I think part of Japan has already done that. If the systems are automated, the drivers can have an extended Christmas off every year, and the mierable platform guards that grunt at you will be replaced by consumer friendly robots.
Mick telling it like it is again. Some will find this simple honest message hard to swallow, of course…
How rich is Mick Lynch? How much does he earn annually? I don't know, so enlighten me, to someone that is poor, I'll assume Mick is rich, so should we be taxing him more, we had this with Arthur Scargill and his net worth, pot, kettle. I hasten to add, taxes is certainly the first thing I would be starting on if I was in power, and the minimum tax would be 25%, protect the poorer workers with personal allowance. The cutbacks of manpower are going to happen, unless you stop automation, but a lot of other businesses and industry have turned to automation for well over a decade now. So for me it's a bit late to be shouting. Companies like Amazon, Ocado as well as the Car Industry have had robots for a long time now at their distribution and manufactoring plants.
