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The rail strike – the vast majority aren’t affected – politicalbetting.com
The rail strike – the vast majority aren’t affected – politicalbetting.com
Rail strikes tend to get a lot of coverage in the London-based media because it is only really the big cities that rely very much on rail for commuting. The capital is something of an outlier when it comes to the importance of rail. Also this comes after the pandemic when a very large proportion of office workers operated from home without the need to commute.
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Not saying you should, not very different from stuff Terry G has been doing since God was a boy. But you can.
"Vote for me cause I've never sexually assaulted anyone".
Well that's a winner."
https://twitter.com/pete_nicoll/status/1531327463896530944
Noticeably it is the triple lock generation who object to the strikes most, even if they're plans are unaffected, while youngsters of working age are more sympathetic...
Last night an aged Dutch taxi driver from Schiphol to anonymous hotel somewhere, I mention queues at the airport, he “the problem is the Young people today are lazy. They don’t want to work”.
This is the key point that keeps being missed. When they say they are striking to protect jobs, ask what the jobs are. The government have directed Network Rail to make massive cuts to maintenance and inspections. Which will literally leave people dead. Again.
I'm so old I remember last year when the PM and many Tories were boasting about higher wages and delivering on that.
They don't allow Wicca chaplins, though, again IIRC."
That sounds right -- and I should have remembered that.
On the general subject: In 1993, Congress passed, and Bill Clinton signed, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, with this purpose: "Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability." The Supreme Court ruled that the provisions binding states were unconstitutional, but it still applies to the federal government. (And many states have passed their own versions.)
What inspired it? This: "In Smith, the Court upheld the state of Oregon's refusal to grant unemployment benefits to two Native Americans fired from their jobs at a rehab clinic after testing positive for mescaline, the main psychoactive compound in the peyote cactus, which they had used in a religious ceremony." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Freedom_Restoration_Act
(It has since been applied more broadly.)
So, to all intents and purposes, 10% when she arrived, 10% when she left.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/datasets/consumerpriceinflation
'The mean monthly pay packet in the finance sector in February was 31% higher than in December 2019 in cash terms, compared with 14% across all sectors. Pay growth was driven by high earners, reflected in the higher mean figure. However, median pay in the finance industry was also significantly higher than for the economy at large.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/04/city-london-bonus-boom-risk-driving-up-inequality-institute-fiscal-studies
Union strikes for money. Tory turns out to be sleazy. Labour leader is boringly worthy. Eggs go with bacon
The pay stuff is of course what will drive public opinion but the key issue is getting reform that does not lead to unecessary redundancy or safety short cuts.
If that affects the Me of 2025, that's not my problem. What has future self ever done for me anyway?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22070491
Shouldn't you be calling for restraint?
“Back when boomers were in their 30’s, they owned about a 3rd of America’s real estate equity. Millennials control just 4%.”
I believe the RMT is “justified” in strike action, as long as their members agree, and it is within the law. That is the whole point of unions, to act for the common good of their workers, and get a better deal, especially in a time of high inflation
Equallly, the government is justified in telling them to sod off, and face them down, if it so wills, and if it can
Is it possible that an older age group is more tolerant of the way the world is. To an older group the language of justified/unjustified may be polemical nonsense anyway. The strike is part of the endless struggle between groups to get an advantage. The idea that it is some sort of fight between right and wrong should be kept for better causes.
Should a train driver be paid more than care workers with dementia sufferers? Or physics teachers? I very much doubt if the rail union spokesmen really want to think across the sectors, or indeed across the globe. They are the mirror image of bankers. Like nearly all such causes right and wrong, good and evil does not enter into it.
And the media discussion (eg R4 Today this morning) is shallow beyond belief.
Insane.
*and trade press https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/biggest-rail-strike-in-modern-history-planned-in-response-to-maintenance-cuts-25-05-2022
I think many people asked to work from home today.
And of course, we* now can do that.
As I said a couple of days ago, I think the RMT are at real risk of overplaying their hand.
*As an economy. Not me personally or the likes of say @Foxy.
Should people who work have a pay rise of only 3% at a time of 11% inflation? And a labour shortage.
Or not?
That's the issue.
Truth is, I don’t know. I also suspect you don’t either.
A majority says they are according to ComRes.
Both times it led almost immediately to fatal accidents, one caused by a rock fall at Friog between Tywyn and Barmouth, and another time when the Llangollen canal breached and washed away a long stretch of track.
Both times they were reinstated...
And BTW, you said 'half of their safety colleagues fired'. So source for that, please.
Ridiculous difference
A YouTuber and academic made a video where he trained a GPT style approach on 4-Chan to see what the computer would horrid stuff it would spit out if you train it on terrible input and then deployed it on 4chan to troll them....Stanford university academics have organised a pile-on at the outrage of somebody even considering doing this demanding he is censured for it.
Once seen in that light actions like the current one can be seen as fights not just with an employer, but fights seeking an advantage over other, often less well paid, workers.
It is essential to the doctrines of the left that this particular discussion doesn't take place. The media largely connive with this.
Railtrack did. For profit. And I do know (far too much) stuff about the railways. There absolutely are track recording equipment that can scan rails on the go. Network Rail has several such trains - but they act to supplement the visual inspections that remain critical.
Last time we went down the "just cut the cost" route we ended up with people dead. Repeatedly. They simply did not know the condition of track and signalling equipment. So had to do emergency inspections and blanket speed restrictions until they could check and then repair everything. So we know where cutting the maintenance regime leads. This proposal has them double routine maintenance periods. To save money. They aren't even proposing to replace mk1 eyeballs with the inspection train on the same basis. Its half the maintenance the network needs now.
Which will get people killed. Because you really do make things less safe when wazzocks without a clue about engineering make decisions for political and economic reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayrigg_derailment
"The RAIB report noted that the Network Rail New Measurement Train ran over the site on 21 February. This train uses lasers and other instruments to make measurements of the track geometry and other features such as overhead line height and stagger, and the track gauge, twist and cant. It is not used to inspect points, but it does make a video record of the track which can be reviewed later. Responding to the suggestion that the train's video might have been used to detect the points damage and thereby prevent the accident, a Network Rail spokesman said:
The [inspection] train runs at speeds of up to 125 mph, or 95 mph on this stretch. There would be no point somebody watching it at that speed as they wouldn't be able to pick up any faults. It has to be run in super-slow motion to spot faults. The train runs for up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week. It would probably take someone most of the month to watch one day's worth of data. It's not what it's there for. It's a backwards reference tool.[24]
Network Rail admitted it failed to carry out a scheduled visual track inspection in the area on the Sunday before the derailment.[25] "
The film would be great for quickly looking at the location of recorded anomalies, but you need to know where they are, and if the train can't pick them up ...
The doctrine of the left is that all workers should be in strong trade unions that can win decent pay through unity against (where necessary) their employers or the state.
In the current circumstances, all workers should be getting a decent pay rise, even though that is unlikely to match inflation.
If in doubt, join a union.
Also, we would note things like trees growing too close to the line, and where there was too much undergrowth that would need to be burnt back later in a controlled manner. And a host of other things that would need fettling.
That was old joined sixty foot 95-pound per yard bullhead rails, on timber and concrete sleepers. Most Network Rail lines have much more modern track systems - heavier flat-bottomed rail, continuously welded on concrete (or sometimes steel) sleepers.
The stuff the NMT trains can recognise are quite amazing: and it should be noted that visual inspections often fail to detect problems as well. Whether track inspections are still needed, or at the same regularity, very much depends on the details. According to (1) from ten years ago: "Traditional inspection of rail condition consumes 1.3 million man hours of work each year." The NMT will remove 520,000 hours of this.
Without the details, IMV it's impossible to say whether reducing the amount of manual inspections would impact safety.
(1): https://www.railengineer.co.uk/track-inspection-at-125mph/
No, you can't. This is the problem. The DfT are directing both Network Rail and the rail operators what to do. DfT wazzocks don't have the first clue what they are talking about. Ministers definitely don't. But they are directing NR and saying "cut the staff, save the money".
People will die. Again.
Its just possible that the RMT are telling the truth. The lack of denial from anyone does leave that possibility open, does it not? As NR have had to go to the RMT with their proposal of how many jobs they are cutting as part of the modernisation they speak of?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Early-Japanese-Railways-1853-1914-Engineering/dp/0804849730/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1655842399&sr=1-1
As always the exact numbers are open to negotiation. But the only person seemingly denying the plan is you. And the rationale? Budget cuts - as NR says in the article I linked to. We don't preserve jobs made redundant with new technology - that is stupid. But that isn't this. And we have very live examples from recent history as to why this is a bad idea.
This time truly tragic and sad.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/21/man-arrested-for-stealing-sausage-rolls-killed-himself-after-police-labelled-him-a-paedophile
A lot of the gig economy exists by pitting worker against worker to bid down pay and conditions. They desperately need unions.
"Nobody has said they are removing them" you will say. Again, DYOR. Channel 4 News. Last night. Live TV interview with the minister literally saying that.
I am not 'denying' the plan. I am asking *you* what *you* are basing your claims on, because they sniff wrong to me. That's not to say you're not right; it's just that they smell wrong. And so far you haven't been able to back them up.
Railway unions have a long and sad history of using overwrought safety claims to preserve jobs: from the secondman nonsense to their opposition to Driver-Only Operation. At times they are correct to do so; at others (as with the two mentioned), they're ridiculous.
Can I believe that removing manual inspections might impact safety? Yes. Can I believe they might not impact safety? Yes. The devil will be in the details.
How about, 'more useless than a stone's brain cell?'
The stupid shortcuts which rail privatisation led to resulted in people being killed. Let's hope the same won't happen again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018ljt
But whilst the police acted with perhaps criminal incompetence, I'd argue that the neighbours and locals who subjected him to the abuse also share some of the blame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWHK87qltY
Hence the attempts to spark a wokery battle last thread.
If we wished to be truly cruel, we’d run a fortnight of AV threads.
If there are accidents then Network Rail will be accountable, but if the unions want to start managing the safety record they should quit the union and join management. Or maybe they're just Luddites trying to preserve their own jobs and feather their beds.
But OGH is right. If the media weren't obsessing about it, I'd have no reason to know the rail strikes were even happening. Doesn't affect me an iota.
Why this is bad is that the DfT directly mandate all the spending of all the elements they control - Network Rail, "nationalised" franchises and management contract franchises. So impossible ideas get proposed as real solutions and when they turn out to be fantasy the request is "so do something else then".
Does Shapps want to create another Grayrigg or Hatfield? No. Not deliberately. But are they both ignorant and zealous enough to force the changes to the industry that allow them to happen? Absolutely. As you say, the devil is in the details. And we know from their public utterances - like on last night's C4 News - that the people making the decisions are clueless about reality...