Rail union has done the impossible and made Southern’s bosses look good
HEY – good news, for once!
You might just about get home from work before midnight tomorrow.
The RMT union has called off its exciting five-day walkout, which has caused havoc and misery for hundreds of thousands of commuters in the South East.
But don’t hold your breath — because the strike is only suspended.
They’re going to have a few more talks in order to prise concessions from their bosses.
If they don’t get them, they’ll be out again.
Meanwhile, staff working on Eurostar go on strike from Friday — so even more fun than usual getting to France.
It’s usually mental French pickets throwing stuff at travellers.
This time it will be good old British pickets.
None of them give a monkey’s about the people they are inconveniencing.
They don’t care a toss that you might lose your job, or not be able to kiss your child good night, or have to scupper your holiday plans.
This is pure selfishness in action.
The RMT was “taking action” — ie not doing any work — because it objects to train operator Govia Thameslink Railway, which owns the Southern franchise, changing the way in which the doors on its trains are opened and closed.
It is hard to think of a more fatuous case for industrial action.
The pickets were out.
Like sacks of meat with mittens.
Holding up banners claiming the strike was about passenger safety.
Yeah, right.
Is there anything more enraging than being stuck on a station platform for hours and being told that all this is being done for your own good?
The strike had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with safety.
It was all to do with keeping increasingly pointless jobs that make the train travel ever more expensive.
They think you need someone to open the door for you when you want to get off.
The automatic doors.
The ones with a couple of buttons that say on them “open” and “close”.
I think even Joey Essex could navigate his way around that little problem, no?
The big irony about this strike is that it will do exactly the opposite of what the RMT wants.
It is likely to make passengers a little more sympathetic to the train operator, Govia Thameslink Railway.
And that’s frankly incredible — because it has proved to be a staggeringly useless franchise.
I’d trust SpongeBob SquarePants to run the trains more efficiently than Govia Thameslink
Even without the strikes, Govia inflicts misery upon its passengers on a daily — nay, hourly — basis.
Indeed, so utterly inept is this Geordie-French conglomerate that some passengers weren’t even aware a strike had started.
They are used to trains being delayed for ages, or cancelled without prior warning.
Govia has a calamitous record of management.
It should have had the Southern franchise removed from its grasp by the Government ages ago.
Frankly, I’d trust SpongeBob SquarePants to run the trains more efficiently than Govia Thameslink.
None of this, though, justifies the way in which the rail union has behaved.
Far from hurting Govia, this walkout actually helps them.
When they are hauled before some committee to explain why the service is so useless, they can immediately point to the industrial action.
Look what we’ve had to contend with, they’ll say.
The strike hurt only the long-suffering passengers.
The RMT knows this but it could not care less.
GUESS how long it takes men to look at a woman’s breasts upon first meeting?
Go on, take a stab in the dark.
It’s not an enormously long time.
Yep – you got it.
An average of one second.
One bloke who was part of this little study managed it in 0.4 seconds.
Perhaps he was only 4ft tall.
Or maybe the woman he was introduced to had many more breasts than usual.
Or perhaps she was as outstanding as Kelly Brook, pictured, or like the woman in the limerick above.
Anyway, staring at a woman’s breasts for ages is considered rude, especially if they belong to someone like the Queen, or Diane Abbott.
Best to just close your eyes when saying hello.
There was a young girl from Devizes,
Who had breasts of differing sizes,
One was quite small,
Almost nothing at all,
While the other was large and won prizes.
GOOD GRAMMAR
THE Government may be about to re-introduce grammar schools across the country. Good. I was always a supporter of comprehensive education, but I changed my mind.
There’s no question that grammars helped a lot of bright working-class kids make good. Of course there’s been a wailing and a gnashing of teeth – from the middle-class liberals.
They’re terrified their awful brats won’t pass the 11 plus and will end up in a bog-standard secondary school.
Tough. You’ll always find the well-off middle classes in the front line of the battle against social mobility.
And never more so than on this issue. They can’t bear to see little Oscar and Hermione falling behind the lower orders because they’re as dense as a block of tungsten.
A giant security breach
POLICE are hunting an evil giant who tried to break into Buckingham Palace.
John Bolton, 47, is almost 7ft tall.
He made his attempt, presumably via a beanstalk, back in June.
He was arrested and has now gone on the run.
My guess is he’s not quite right in the head.
But then a drunken yobbo from Croydon tried to break in a few days back – and spent 14 minutes in the grounds.
They should step up security a bit, maybe arm the corgis.
It’s only a matter of time before some jihadi maniac tries to scale the wall, isn’t it?
UBER DRIVERS TO PASS THE TEST?
THE dodgy taxi firm Uber is getting in a right old state.
Transport for London has introduced a plan to make all taxi drivers take a written test in English.
Uber is screaming blue murder and says this will put thousands of drivers out of work. Good!
There are three things you need to be able to do if you’re a cab driver in London:
1) Drive a car, 2) Speak English, 3) Hate cyclists.
People who can’t speak our national language shouldn’t be working in a public service. Mind you, having said that, I wonder if there are more than 100 people left in our capital city who speak English.
Give livid mob the kiss-off
UH-OH – BBC Olympics commentator Paul Hand is in trouble.
He made a mild off-the-cuff quip, implying he did not want to see a shot of two men kissing.
Cue a furore on the social media sites. Horrible homophobia!
There are an awful lot of people out there determined to be outraged. It seems to put a little bit of meaning into their sad and desperate lives.
I don’t particularly want to see TV shots of blokes kissing, either, for that matter. It doesn’t mean I dislike homosexuals.
I also don’t want to watch shots of a fat man eating a large steak and kidney pie.
But that doesn’t mean I’m pie-o-phobic.
CLASSY BIG KIDS
IT’S good to be back, by the way. I was off for a couple of weeks, mainly near my old home towns of Guisborough and Middlesbrough.
While I was there I attended the fortieth reunion of my old comprehensive schools’ Class of ’76.
Lovely event, brilliantly organised by two old friends, Julie and Angela (it’s always the lasses who do this stuff, isn’t it?)
The remarkable thing was how we all slipped back into the roles we had at school.
So my mate Cardy wasn’t a senior exec for a pharmaceutical firm, which is what he is now, but the school captain once again.
And I reverted to my old persona too.
“Mad F****** Liddle”, as I was known – the school mental. We never really change, do we?
I KNOW I’m pretty much alone in the country. But, whisper it quietly, I find the Olympic Games about as interesting as walking round a carpet shop with the missus trying to buy a rug for the downstairs loo.
I know they’re all terrific athletes who are trying very hard. But sometimes I just wish they’d do it in private. Truth is, I’ve been a bit sported-out this year.
And in any case, the football season has started again. Rather that than a bunch of burqa-clad hags playing volleyball, or a pair of moppets trying not to splash too much when they dive into a swimming pool.
WISE NOT WORKSHY
DO you spend a large amount of your time lying around on your fat a**e doing next to nowt?
Good news, then. This sort of behaviour suggests you are highly intelligent.
Scientists have found a link between being bone idle and cleverness. Very bright people tend not to do very much.
They spend their time “thinking”. Such as, is it too much of a trek to walk to the fridge for another beer? Whereas people who are always on the go are usually as thick as mince. They don’t think enough.
I reckon these new findings put me somewhere between Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.
Now, I wonder if I can persuade the missus to go to the fridge for me . . .