Off Topic Bristol Airport Money-grabbing B’stards

There’s an article in the Evil Post which promoted me to write this.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-airport-passengers-turn-south-7217107

The Airport parking charges are ridiculous and scandalous - no wonder people find elsewhere to park. The Airport charges £5 FIVE F-ING POUNDS just to drop people off or pick people up. They employ security cameras to catch people dropping passengers off outside the pay areas.
I’m extremely lucky - my mate lives in Winford so I park at his house and he drops me and picks me up from the main road just outside the old school, but other people are getting screwed. shocking.
Off to Gibraltar on Tuesday (business) for 2 days - unless my flight gets cancelled of course….

 

wow promotion what rank are you now???

 

would serve people right if they returned and all the tyres were flat ... had no wipers and been written on with acrylic paint No parking ...

 

I can honestly say JGF that of all our conversations this is one that I absolutely 100% disagree with your opinion - at the strongest.
I pay my car tax, insurance and MOT - which entitles me to use her majesty’s highway. If part of that highway happens to be in your neighbourhood then TOUGH ****. if there are no double yellow lines or other parking restrictions - and my vehicle is legal - then I can park safely where I want - with the safe knowledge that the law will protect me against NIMBY Neanderthals who might decide to attack my perfectly legal vehicle simply because it’s parked near their house.

 

sorry .... its a bit tongue in cheek .....
realistically the problem is should there be an emergency like fire or ambulance access and road is restricted then ... a problem. Also should a recyling lorry care to try and work in a lot of roads around here after 5pm then they would struggle. In earlier "normal" working hours when people have gone to work it is easy. It is the way it is .... POPLAR ROAD encourages parking both sides but only 1 route through the middle!

 

Prompted - bloody predictive text!

 

I share your concerns about access for emergency vehicles - but that’s partly the local councils responsibility to put double yellow lines in the appropriate places to prevent congestion.
Some council traffic planners don’t even drive - the Swindon one is a car-hating cyclist living in Gloucester who has (apparently) never even been to Swindon.
My niece used to house-share with a Bristol planner who was exactly the same - a car-hating cyclist. it must be an employment requirement.

However, my main point was that if the airport parking charges were reasonable then people wouldn’t look for alternative parking.

 

By comparison I was picking up some visiting friends at Alicante airport recently, parked in the ALC airport multi-storey car park for 40 mins and paid €1.30.

 

there is loads of cheaper parking around the airport drove past the other day and quite a lot of the off site private had spaces bearing in mind airport is flat out that shouldnt be so?
There are signs on the roads around this area that states tow away zone and please park legally asn this is a 2 way road! Parking on pavement is "not illegal" ..yet! but police can issue a fine if you are due to obstruction! My road has gotten quite congested, In past 5 years as next door have 5 cars opposite them they have 3 and down the road "new neighbours" have 9 in 3 houses! ...... but mostly at my end for the past 39 years we have a respected regime of parking, without on the pavement and that includes next door with the 5 cars. I have a long wheel base Transit, when all home it is passable without concern. even for a wayward Fire engine a year or so ago !!!
Poplar road seems to parking half on half off pavement bothe sides

 

this country is greed orientated... sad thing is AIRPORT was owned by bristolians/ via council ... they sold it [labour run ] because their budgets and spending was *rap, still is. after being sold parking inside 2 years had doubled, then expanded again and doubled each year jumps by more than inflation ....... properties around the airport love it ... AIRPORT PUTS UP CHARGE, they just work at 20% + discount. there is about 10 minibus sites now that collect 3-4 families at a time ....

 

I can speak with some authority on this as my eldest step-son has a business property on Downside Road (the road to Brockley) and does airport for about 20 cars at around £6 a day. Their main business has been there for almost 40 years.

When the airport first expanded many years ago, 20 minutes grace was given for locals to buy a paper or a pint of milk (!) - obviously, that extended to everyone who dropped off/picked up. Over time, that has eroded to what it is now. £5 drop-off/pick-up for 10 minutes (I think!) which increases depending upon the time you're spent on site.

Most big airports do the same and it is an easy way of recouping losses suffered during the pandemic. I do runs to Heathrow; their coach parking doubled to £54 on 1st July last year. The thing is, everyone HAS to pay the money or they're in **** street - it's as simple as that. In my view, yes, they are all really taking the piss and, at the mo, offer a crap service that leaves many people dis-illusioned with the whole concept of holiday travel.

As far as Bristol International (!!!!) airport is concerned, it has got to a point where a small minority of travellers are dumping their vehicles where they can to save a few quid. Where they stop often significantly impacts on locals who are now taking matters into their own hands and trashing said vehicles to show their displeasure as the Police seem un-interested in the problem.

 

Although I concur with BCRW comment chastising me for wishing "ILL " on the offenders, which was a bit of TIC comment, the areas where they park are not really designed for 24 hour parking as a fully loaded space. Already it seems people are putting others at risk by "transferring legit police cones" to try and deter parking. This puts a hazard where the police actually put them by there absence.

Talking about it to a relative in that area ... there was an issue at 2am one morning when 2 neighbours had parked nightly across their drives and thus prevented a vehicle from moving , which had been there for 2 weeks! Apparently they decided against knocking on the door of a second house after the first denied it was their car , apparently it wasnt, it was their daughters and she was asleep, but they didnt say that!! or tell them who it was belonging to ...lol ..... at 6am one of the cars drove off .. the parker had slept, all 5 of them, adults in the car ... and to top the lot had a flat battery come 6am .... had to wait a hour / couple hours for breakdown ..... no locals would help supply jump ...
2 sides to this I guess maybe 3 had they not been obstructed at 2am would the car have started? or did sitting in it and having interior lights on ... maybe charging phones lowered the battery ... or of course parked in proper car park where a jump start would maybe have been a 10 minute hassle! or not at all ...

 

As an aside [ dont want to start another post ] ..............


A series of strikes set to hit the rail network next week will "punish millions of innocent people", Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has said.

He said commuters and pupils taking exams would be among those affected.
But the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said politicians had prevented progress in talks.

Red KEN days again .. coal miners strikes et al ............ Unions acting on behalf of the Opposition parties causing disruption and chaos .. blaming the .gov.. [jobsworth's, the leaders do not loose anything!!! ] I did an exercise once when there was long running strike and workers were living on next to nothing for a load of weeks. when they finally went back to work having won a small conceesion of more pay they had to work for almost 3 years to earn back what was lost. Many took out loans to cover expenses or used their savings to survive .. this added more to what was actually lost ........... I only ever went on strike for 1 shift, it was a case of having to as the previous shift had shut the mill down and we were allowed on site for a meeting with reps told not work went home at 1230am [ 10 to 6 night shift ] next day shift 3 of the 4 started it all up again as company re entered talks we were the only shift to lose money .........

It is the wrong time to go on strike for more money, with all thats happened last couple of years.. everyone in the same boat. We would all like a raise but damaging the economy by striking is not good on those that dont/ cant strike.. or who get by until things improve.
I am very sad that todays population younger elements [ less than 60 ] are so greedy, wasteful selfish and want everything for nothing.

 

It’s a generational thing.. you are showing your age. Every generation has said the same about the next one, I’m a similar age to you, well a bit younger, but I know my parents said the same about our generation.

 

cant agree whatever generation thing you want to attach to it ... none of the last 2 generations have had coupon rationing [ so everyone gets to tighten belts and share, without free hand outs] nor have they had to experience what is coming .. interest rates over 8% ... there is now plenty of jobs... 1.37 jobs for everyone unemployed .. would be more but so many illegal black economy immigrants is taking the edge off the true figure .. said it before some of the food banks supply more to those that gratefully recieve it than a normal working household can afford ... Ive mentioned on here at least 1 if not 2 or 3 known cases of blatant mis use...
as for same age?
Families today waste more food than ever was wasted in the past .... either dont use it, cook it dont eat all of it, supermarkets had a system ... dates of ... and a waste skip in every yard.
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE .. I used to do courier work for Somerfields, on one occassion I went to a town in Derbyshire at one end of the carpark was a Co op the other a Somerfield both sort of not quite medium size about 8 aisles maybe 60 odd foot long with shelves along back. as you went into road for access there was a Co op on the corner, and you had passed a medium size Tesco about 1/2 mile or less away!
In the yard of the Somerfield was about 20 or more boxes of Bananas [ boxes you get 2 of what goes on some shops shelve ] all in date. next to them were skips 1 quite smelly! I said to the person in charge "thats not very healthy stacked up on a dirty floor in the open amongst rubbish next to a smelly skip" He explained " we have about 10 boxes in the warehouse and the shelf is full, Somerfield buy x number of containers of bananas on a weekly basis? they then allot them to divided by store size we get / got 40 boxes .. will struggle to sell those in store" "can I have a few then?" "We cant have any without paying for them, and they must go in bottom of the skip, not in boxes, which is coming soon and will have all sorts of organic waste on top of them ....
NOW supermarkets freely give it to food banks, as a manager explained [ local supermarket] "you have to pay more for your food now because people who used to pay for it expect it in the food banks so we have lost custom, if you like shamed into donating it rather than it goes to feeding pigs. this means pig breeders have to pay more for commercially produced pig food and that is reflected in bacon and pork products being more expensive"
do people really need the amounts they get from food banks? my weekly shop is about £70 and we eat well, some things we dont really need so could be £60. if we just relied on the pension from .gov we would struggle, but of course there is pension credits etc ..

on social usually rent paid council tax reduced "living wage thing" ... oh and food banks and 2 weeks holiday and new computors for kids new nike trainers at £120 every 3 or 4 months new clothes .......

 

still working it out?

 

the blackmail scenario .. holding the country to ransom at a time when they have amongst all other industries been paid full wages over the past 2 years ... for doing basically nothing as very few trains ran and unlike airlines no one lost their job
The unions tried before to bring the country to its knee's with the miners strikes etc ... now trying it in with the railways ...

Mr Shapps is mostly right on these figures, which come from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (see table 14.7 here).
For 2021, the median salary for train and tram drivers was £59,189 and for nurses it was £31,093.
His figure for care workers is a bit high. The median for care workers and home carers was £16,502 and for senior care workers it was £20,105.

How many on here get that for less than 40 hours a week ....

I reckon this is more of a political strike! ... we wonder why train fares are so expensive well here is part of the answer drivers rates... what about other people in Rail...

• Rail travel assistants - £33,310 - includes ticket collectors, guards and information staff
• Rail construction and maintenance operatives - £34,998 - they lay and repair tracks
• Rail transport operatives - £48,750 - includes signallers and drivers' assistants

We did a back-of-the-envelope calculation reflecting the numbers of people in each group of workers - travel assistants, construction and maintenance, and operatives, but excluding drivers and cleaners - and got to an approximate figure of £37,500.

Mr Shapps is right that the figure is above the median pay for all employees in the UK, which was £25,971 last year.

 

No , my post didn’t work for some reason.

I have several siblings the same age as you. When they left school they had a choice of well paid jobs, in their early twenties they had their own homes ( mortgages ), and we’re starting their families. They’ve now retired, own their own houses, and have good pensions. They aren’t unusual, they are the norm. The cost of houses, if my memory serves me correct, we’re 2 or 3 times average salaries. Kids today would love those opportunities.

My parents generation, (probably yours too) had outside loos, no central heating, actually fought in a war, had to deal with rationing, not just be on the end of it, and made damn sure your generation didn’t have to suffer the hardships they had. The Baby boomers were the lucky generation, and look at the mess they’ve left the planet in for future generations,

in seriousness it really is a generation thing, each generation has its issues to deal with, for instance we didn’t have to deal with the pressures that social media brings.

 

Lynch is asked what makes RMT members special when the whole country is suffering.

"We're not special," he says.

"We have got a membership that is prepared to fight for what we've got. What the rest of the country suffers from is lack of power, the lack of the ability to organise and the lack of the wherewithal to take on these employers that are continually driving down wages and making the working class in the country poorer year on year on year, while the rich get richer."

THERE YOU GO the rich get richer.. of course they do, they lose money or jobs because they demand more wages ... most of the richer people deserve it ... Lynch will see his members lose money, lose savings, lose out on holidays watch the rest of the country suffer as they strike and cause chaos ... at the end of the day he will get richer, have a posher house and a real good pension whilst the workers will live the losses and a road that took some to a poore standard of life.