Are you sending him a bottle of scotch too mate, he'll be able to set up his own market stall at this rate.
Free take aways at Bobbys bountiful bistro. Free sweatshirts and designer goods when his private jet lands in china
They drive trains mate. Some might not acknowledge it as a skill, but obviously the train companies value those skills or they wouldn’t pay there current salaries?
And every single penny of that is paid for by the union membership that elects him, unlike the £29M the unelected Michelle Mone purloined of taxpayers' money
He made claim to that the train drivers were more skilled than I acknowledge and that he was going to enlighten me, so I'm waiting to be enlightened. But train drivers are not striking or something. In regards to salaries the train companies are being held to ransom over them along with the paying public. More strikes planned for January.
Unions should just take anti strike ****ers hostage and shoot one every 10 minutes until demands are met. Power to the workers!
I'm fine with that mate, but I'm getting pulled up on what I wrote, when I'm merely waiting for people that made specific claims, to enlighten me. It appears from what I've read on here so far, it's either Jesus' fault, all a myth or something, Cabbies are right wing facists, we all read the Malice, and as long has you travel before 6pm on Christmas Eve your journey will be fine, oh, nearly forgot and poor people don't travel on trains! It's not difficult to work out there's a lot of untruths in there. So the Unions need to stop hiding behind the skirts of nurses and get back to work. Have you sent a bottle of scotch to Mick Lynch as well?
Nah...just a list of anti union mofos and their addresses ... knew my hate list would come in handy one day
Keep up the good work mate, do you do train driving part-time or own a Horby railway model set by any chance.
Just stop being a tory and ill have a word with them mate. See what i can do as people's champ and forum saviour No promises tho
My twat of a mother was a nurse, I read Thomas the tank engine books when I was a kid, watched postman pat and fireman sam with my kids, worked as a residential social worker in a kids home, worked in a library, worked in council pest control and noise teams and work in schools...I am basically public sector groupie ... Also watched Ivor the Engine as a kid, bought my eldest a Bob the Builder record when she was a tot and have seen casualty and the sweeney. Been a union member since 1985 Was a shop steward from 1990 til 2010 True working class hero me... ONE OUT ALL OUT!
Did I? I mean it wouldn't be difficult to counter your assertion that all train drivers do is press buttons and look out of the window (that is, seriously, what you've claimed) but I'm trying to think of way to describe 18 months of training on practical handling of driving locomotives, the complex and bewildering (to some) railway signalling system that allows trains to function on what is mainly a Victorian infrastructure, the theoretical and practical assessments that must be passed in dealing with out of course situations miles away from any immediate emergency services, and the engineering and technical practical skills required in driving vehicles ranging from one to fifty years old. The fact is that there are many vacancies in train driving despite the high wages, thus allowing drivers to hold the network to ransom whenever they want anyway simply by refusing overtime. That is because at least 50% of both internal and external applicants don't make it through the pre-assessment anyway, and a further 15% of those that do fail the 18-month course. But most of all, privatisation caused this situation - it created a completely artificial internal market for train drivers. At the top are the freight companies, heavily subsidised and can offer wages in the £80k+ region, so just poach drivers from other TOCs without going through the expensive tasks of training drivers (and all the recruitment costs that go with that). Eventually, the chain goes down to the former Regional Railways companies like Northern and Central and suchlike, that have to recruit off the street with all the cost that goes with that. Yet all you have to do to drive a train is press buttons and look out the window... gee, how could anybody fail that? THAT SAID, my daughter took three years to get her degree in nursing, then a further year specialising in mental health to become a forensic nurse. I don't think train drivers are more qualified than her, but I think she should be paid more, not train drivers paid less. She's a band 6 on @£42k. Her daily routine is bedevilled by staff shortages and vacancies, as is her mother's, who is an ICU nurse. They too can write their own overtime cheques, but the difference is that if they don't do overtime the system still creaks on and they can use agency nurses to partly fill vacancies at 5 x the cost of an NHS nurse - which is a bonus to the Tory-donating Agencies involved who take 70% of the fees involved. Anyway, as I'm retired now I can't get my hands on the syllabus for driver training, but I'm Whatts Apping former colleagues to see if I can get it. It won't change your mind, but I'll try anyway. But I'll just leave you with one story I have from my days when I used to train Personal Track Safety to new starters. I was having a similar conversation that I I'm having now with my sister and she said "What do those navvies on the track do? Every time I pass them on the train they're leaning on their shovels and waving at the train". This, of course, is what they're trained to do when a train passes - stop work and acknowledge the driver so that they know you're aware of their passing. She really thought (wanted to think?) that is all they did all day. But after all this yapping, I'll do this for you: ^^^^^^^ Didn't read.
It's nothing to do with being a Tory mate as I previouly highlighted, it's merely about the disingenious claims, that refuse to adapt to the future, afterall the technology is already here...
Of course this will one day come, as will pilotless planes. But a lot of our infrastructure can't even take driver-only trains yet, let alone driverless trains. Put it this way, I joined the railway 1979 and they were saying driverless trains were two decades away. I even passed up on the chance to become a driver in '83 and instead became a supervisor (**** it) because we were assured that the driver role would be phased out over time. Ironic that when I went back into station management and Control ten years ago that they're still driving the 40-year-old trains in some instances that they brought out in the 80s. As two guys in our 60s, let me give you this honest assurance - we'll never see driverless trains on the main, overland routes in our lifetime. We could see them on London underground and parts of self-contained systems like Merseyrail though.
I meant compared to a bus. Aye best thing about getting about in mcr is the trams. Even on match days.
