It seems that London under Boris Johnson has developed into a warzone. On one side you have Boris Johnson and on the other you have the rest of the population. We don't have one strike, we have two. In both cases they are about Boris and his plans to make London a more dangerous place. He wants to remove staff from tube stations. The Unions say this makes the stations more dangerous. Boris doesn't care. He wants devastate the fire service, the Unions say this will cost lives. He doesn't care. Sadly many people are unaware of the reasons for the strike. People have said to me "Damn Unions, always striking for more money". When you explain that neither dispute is about pay, they are surprised. When they hear the disputes are about keeping London safe, even Union bashers concede they have a point. Some people then say "We've all got to cut our cloth accordingly". Tell that to the boss of TFL who gets £340,000 a year. As ever it's the station staff on low incomes who pay the price
If you can't get to work or have a nightmare (courtesy of our nightmayor), you've been Boris'd.
With the M25 also closed today is a nightmare. The Northern Line is also only running a special service with most stations closed.
ReplyDeleteI think that the fares going up by nearly 10% every year for the last 10 years has also miffed the travelling public.
Though Boris seems to have his head in the sand it is fair to say that the problems go back many years before Boris became Mayor. For instance the move to have no one working on station ticket offices began around 10 years ago under Ken and Labour. This is the root cause of many of the strikes that have blighted the system in the last 10 years.
I can only see things getting worse with the Fire Service out this weekend and more strikes planned by the Tube workers.