One of the first things I made a point of doing when I joined the railway was to join the union ASLEF. Having been a student I had been automatically a member of the NUS and to be frank up to then I had never met such a bigger bunch of tossers - mainly rich kids playing lefty politics to annoy their parents. However having worked for nearly three decades where unions were a no, no and management did just what the hell they liked I saw why unions came about thanks to the Tolpuddle Martyrs in the first place. However I have realised that there seems to be no middle ground with unions and working against management, government and anyone else in authority seems to be a given instead of working together, as lets face it compromise is the best way of all parties getting their own way. Sadly in work the prevailing attitude of the union is 'Two legs bad' as far as management in concerned and if moaning were an Olympic sport then train drivers would be able to put a world beating team together just by pulling names out of a hat.
That's the background. Over the past few months there have been niggles in the way of the union allowing our overtime rate to be negotiated down from time and a half to a flat rate and they allowed our roster to be fiddled with to a point where we all work six weekends on the trot, despite them telling us we would be getting more weekends off. The last stitch up prompted a response whereby unofficial action of not working freedays was insisted upon. When one of the union bully-boys tried to get me to fall in line I asked whether this had been officially sanctioned by ASLEF and if so why hadn't I been balloted - that went down well. So I wrapped up this more than a bit flawed argument by saying 'So this is unofficial action to get ASLEF out of the hole they've dropped us in?' It went a bit quiet followed by leftie bluster. So I decided that there was no way I was going to cut my nose off to spite my face and work my freedays, along with others and - wait for it several members of the local ASLEF committee.
So to the person I refer to as the Misery Vampire (MV). He is one of the institutionalised drivers who have never done a days work outside the railway (consequently if you can imagine a very ugly version of Keith Richards that is what this whining oaf looks like). Anyway some weeks ago MV was spouting in the messroom that all the drivers that work their freedays are nothing more than back-stabbing bastards blah, blah, blah. I decided not to enter into it as getting into a blazing row and then taking a train full of passengers was not something we are encouraged to do as it is not safe, so I kept silent.
Fast forward a few weeks and I make a passing comment that to somebody that 'I am one of those back-stabbing bastards that work their freedays.' The very next day MV comes into the messroom at 4am and the following discussion takes place:
MV: Can you explain to me the comment you made the other day as I have taken exception to it.
Me: What comment was that then?
MV: The one about being a back stabbing bastard.
Me: Well you made it first a few weeks ago in front of me.
MV: Why didn't you say something to me then?
Me: What, and potentially start an argument that could potentially lead to somebody having a incident on track by making a bad situation worse.
MV: Well things are bad here as it is.
Me: So you are advocating making a bad situation worse - that's not very bright is it? Now let me explain a few things. One, I am not a bastard as per the dictionary definition and if you want to see my birth certificate as proof I am more than happy to do so. Two I have never wilfully stabbed anyone in the back, however I have been recipient of such treatment on more than one occasion. Finally with regard to ASLEF and it's diktats official or otherwise I would like to know why seeing that they have allowed us to be stitched up in my time in the job on our overtime rate and our rosters and no doubt will allow us to be stitched up on our paydeal. Bearing this in mind why should they have the temerity to demand that I cut my nose off to spite my face to get them out of the hole they, yes they, have dropped us in especially seeing as this is my sole form of income (knowing full well he has other sidelines) and I unlike a lot of others enjoy my job. I refuse flatly to do so as they are behaving no better than the bankers in asking innocent bystanders to sort out their problems to make them feel better! In addition to this I can not tolerate the hypocrisy of being told by ASLEF not to work my freedays when representatives of this branch are not leading by example by not working theirs.
MV then started waffling leftie gibberish that was the most feeble attempt to justify the unjustifiable I have ever heard. By now I had had more than enough and walked over to him proffered my hand and said 'Lets just leave it at that shall we, we both have opposing views and any further discussion will do neither of us any good.' We shook hands and I left - never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and beat you by experience.
Unfortunately that was not the end of it, since then there have been more than a few snide comments from MV and on the day I went back to work I had to listen to him spouting even more drivel in my direction as he derided new drivers. I'll be honest when he isn't creating misery he is scuttling around the depot feeding off other people's irrespective of whether the poor individual concerned has had an incident or big-toe ache. Frankly he should know better as he a few years ago he was suspended after allegedly pushing a female driver (who he is know to hate) down the stairs, now both are not entirely blameless and the truth of what happened is inconclusive, but the more I have to work with him the more I think that it is highly likely that he did it despite his cronies putting it about that it was all the other drivers fault.
As you can imagine being exposed to that bombardment of negativity, blatant hypocrisy and dystopian leftie dogma when you go into work has been somewhat wearing and in addition to the other two problems was the last straw. Consequently I have now left ASLEF as I no longer wish to be associated with such leftie bullshit, I have however joined the RMT (Regularly Making Trouble) I know they are even more looney left than ASLEF, but I see union membership as nothing more than a work based insurance policy, but hopefully as they are predominantly a union for other rail workers I won't be expected to support their activities.
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
Friday, 25 September 2015
For this I shall bear no malice
Yesterday I did some nosing around on the internet regarding my Mum's cousin. He was a rear gunner in a Halifax that was shot down in May 1943 over Holland. When I was growing up my mother occasionally spoke of him as she remembered meeting him during the war (he grew up in west London & mother in south Wales) when he was in uniform she was eleven when he was killed aged twenty-two.
As I ferreted around I followed leads from the website of 51 Squadron that was based at Snaith near York. I found out the number of the aircraft he was in DT645 and searched for that and I came across this:
http://www.aircrewremembered.com/smith-watson-david.html
My mothers cousin is Sgt WJ Merrigan and from what I recall he was the tail-gunner on this Halifax. Bearing that in mind it dawned on me as I read that there was the very real possibility that as the plane was shot from the rear he was the first to die and was spared the horror of being in a plane out of control and heading for the ground at a rate of knots.
I then read about the pilot who shot his plane down - well he was certainly no amateur as this was his 25th kill and he had survived the Battle of Britain. Then I read on and found that he himself was dead the very next day! The next bit certainly surprised me - instead of thinking 'Serves him right the $#%£&*@ for killing a member of my family.' My thought was simply he was doing a job in the same way that my mothers cousin who was twenty-two was doing a job, he was thirty-three - no age really for either of them, I just felt sad that these people died as a result of one small group of lunatics who wanted to rule the world and they were nothing more than bystanders caught up in it.
As I ferreted around I followed leads from the website of 51 Squadron that was based at Snaith near York. I found out the number of the aircraft he was in DT645 and searched for that and I came across this:
http://www.aircrewremembered.com/smith-watson-david.html
My mothers cousin is Sgt WJ Merrigan and from what I recall he was the tail-gunner on this Halifax. Bearing that in mind it dawned on me as I read that there was the very real possibility that as the plane was shot from the rear he was the first to die and was spared the horror of being in a plane out of control and heading for the ground at a rate of knots.
I then read about the pilot who shot his plane down - well he was certainly no amateur as this was his 25th kill and he had survived the Battle of Britain. Then I read on and found that he himself was dead the very next day! The next bit certainly surprised me - instead of thinking 'Serves him right the $#%£&*@ for killing a member of my family.' My thought was simply he was doing a job in the same way that my mothers cousin who was twenty-two was doing a job, he was thirty-three - no age really for either of them, I just felt sad that these people died as a result of one small group of lunatics who wanted to rule the world and they were nothing more than bystanders caught up in it.
Saturday, 5 September 2015
Childhood Horse-Shit Trauma.
Way back in the 1970's when stuff used to work when the country wasn't on strike or in the dark and things had colour schemes were based on pools of sick - I was a child growing up in Swansea. Swansea in itself is a shit-hole, it always has been and always will be, in fact when the Luftwaffe started bombing it from 19th Feb 1941, they stopped after three nights when they realised they could not manage to make the place any worse and decided to drop their bombs on somewhere more deserving.
Back to my childhood - well I say childhood, I was legally a child and my dufflecoat had a hood that was permanently up as it was Wales and it rained a lot. It was more of a forced apprenticeship for small people who had no choice as far as my parents were concerned. One of the many things I was forced to do apart from mixing cement from the age of three, was every year (usually around Feb/March time) we would have a trip to the Gower to collect sack-loads of horse-shit for the garden. Rarely would we go to the Gower in the summer as it was full of tourists and my family didn't want to part with any money to park the car at Oxwich, Langland or Caswell - or anywhere else for that matter. In any case why waste valuable concrete mixing time when the weather was so good as making the house and garden look like Soviet Russia would never happen whilst we were playing on the sand or paddling!
Back to the sack-loads of horse-shit. Every year as soon as one Saturday would offer the chance of light drizzle or even no rain we would all be loaded into the car (a Ford Corsair V6 which regularly conked out) along with a various plastic sacks and Mam would bring a picnic which was ideal for eating in the freezing cold and wet with the ever present pong of horse-shit everywhere! It was only made worse by the horrors that always will be the taste of tepid tea out of a flask, there are few things more vile! We would be there for hours, sometimes until it started to get dark, filling sacks with horse-shit and struggling with them to the car - if only the NSPCC had known! The boot would be so full that the back end of the car was distinctly lower than the rest of it and on every occasion it was so full that my sister and I would have a few sacks of the stuff between us to stop us squabbling. Frankly even now I still prefer spending time with a sack of horse-shit than my sister. However a row always broke out when my Dad tried to get Mam to carry a sack-load on her lap. Then when we got home we'd have to barrow the vile stuff to the non-concreted part of the garden, aka the veg plot (which would have fed most of the street every year).
Once this ordeal was over all clothes would be removed and instead of being burnt as they deserved were washed and we were put in the bath. It is hardly surprising that at school I found it difficult as I was probably ponging like a heaven knows what! I still break out in a cold sweat whenever I walk past the mounted horse-guards on Whitehall as when we went there one particularly hot summer in the 70's all I remember seeing was a massive pile of horse-shit the associated cloud of flies and the look in my Dad's eye that said 'If only I had a few plastic sacks and a shovel.'
Back to my childhood - well I say childhood, I was legally a child and my dufflecoat had a hood that was permanently up as it was Wales and it rained a lot. It was more of a forced apprenticeship for small people who had no choice as far as my parents were concerned. One of the many things I was forced to do apart from mixing cement from the age of three, was every year (usually around Feb/March time) we would have a trip to the Gower to collect sack-loads of horse-shit for the garden. Rarely would we go to the Gower in the summer as it was full of tourists and my family didn't want to part with any money to park the car at Oxwich, Langland or Caswell - or anywhere else for that matter. In any case why waste valuable concrete mixing time when the weather was so good as making the house and garden look like Soviet Russia would never happen whilst we were playing on the sand or paddling!
Back to the sack-loads of horse-shit. Every year as soon as one Saturday would offer the chance of light drizzle or even no rain we would all be loaded into the car (a Ford Corsair V6 which regularly conked out) along with a various plastic sacks and Mam would bring a picnic which was ideal for eating in the freezing cold and wet with the ever present pong of horse-shit everywhere! It was only made worse by the horrors that always will be the taste of tepid tea out of a flask, there are few things more vile! We would be there for hours, sometimes until it started to get dark, filling sacks with horse-shit and struggling with them to the car - if only the NSPCC had known! The boot would be so full that the back end of the car was distinctly lower than the rest of it and on every occasion it was so full that my sister and I would have a few sacks of the stuff between us to stop us squabbling. Frankly even now I still prefer spending time with a sack of horse-shit than my sister. However a row always broke out when my Dad tried to get Mam to carry a sack-load on her lap. Then when we got home we'd have to barrow the vile stuff to the non-concreted part of the garden, aka the veg plot (which would have fed most of the street every year).
Once this ordeal was over all clothes would be removed and instead of being burnt as they deserved were washed and we were put in the bath. It is hardly surprising that at school I found it difficult as I was probably ponging like a heaven knows what! I still break out in a cold sweat whenever I walk past the mounted horse-guards on Whitehall as when we went there one particularly hot summer in the 70's all I remember seeing was a massive pile of horse-shit the associated cloud of flies and the look in my Dad's eye that said 'If only I had a few plastic sacks and a shovel.'
Saturday, 10 January 2015
Rusty's Rubbish Railway. Part 3.
The other trains that Rusty owns are class 143's, 150's and 158's or as everyone else calls them 'Nodding Donkeys' or 'Burger Vans.' These are just the polite names.
Sometimes Rusty has to bribe people to let him borrow their trains due to some of his being condemned as unfit for human use. This makes other peoples trains very frightened as they don't want to end up broken and smelling like an old tramps vest. Sometimes they get so frightened they hide at the back of the shed and refuse to come out. If they do come out they have been known to have oil-leaks because the sight of one of Rusty's drivers coming towards them has frightened them that much.
Sometimes Rusty has to bribe people to let him borrow their trains due to some of his being condemned as unfit for human use. This makes other peoples trains very frightened as they don't want to end up broken and smelling like an old tramps vest. Sometimes they get so frightened they hide at the back of the shed and refuse to come out. If they do come out they have been known to have oil-leaks because the sight of one of Rusty's drivers coming towards them has frightened them that much.
Rusty's Rubbish Railway. Part 2.
One of Rusty's best friends is Sleepy the Signalman. Rusty gives Sleepy lots and lots and lots of money to ensure his trains run no matter how late or decrepit they are.
Day after day all the other trains get held up to let Rusty's trains past. This makes the drivers and the passengers very angry and you can hear them calling Rusty's trains rude names as they amble through places like Bristol, Exeter, Salisbury and Portsmouth.
Sleepy doesn't care as Rusty bought him a nice big comfy chair to sleep in.
Day after day all the other trains get held up to let Rusty's trains past. This makes the drivers and the passengers very angry and you can hear them calling Rusty's trains rude names as they amble through places like Bristol, Exeter, Salisbury and Portsmouth.
Sleepy doesn't care as Rusty bought him a nice big comfy chair to sleep in.
Thursday, 27 November 2014
Rusty's Rubbish Railway. Part 1.
This is a story about Rusty who owned a railway company. His grubby dark blue trains ran (occasionally) to London, Wales, Bristol Cornwall and all the way to the south coast of England.
To make sure that he made as much money as possible from his trains Rusty only made sure that the posh shiny HST's ever got any maintenance. All his other trains were held together with string, duck-tape and occasionally self-tapping screws found on the track. From time to time passengers had to link arms from carriage to carriage to stop the detaching whilst in service.
As well as this he always made sure that passengers never received any more than £2.50 in compensation for any delay or disruption caused by his trains.
To make sure that he made as much money as possible from his trains Rusty only made sure that the posh shiny HST's ever got any maintenance. All his other trains were held together with string, duck-tape and occasionally self-tapping screws found on the track. From time to time passengers had to link arms from carriage to carriage to stop the detaching whilst in service.
As well as this he always made sure that passengers never received any more than £2.50 in compensation for any delay or disruption caused by his trains.
Friday, 6 September 2013
Feels like the naughty step to me.
Since Black Monday's little episode I have had a day off and then I went into work on Wednesday, not that I actually did anything as when I got there I felt decidedly unwell and stressed, so much so after I got my road learners pass I walked over to the platform where the train I wanted went from, sat there, watched the first train come in and then go. I knew something wasn't right as I became to get the warning signs for a migraine - I thought (as I usually do) that it was my imagination, then the second train came in and the warning signs go more noticeable. There was no way I was going to be able to do a 3hr plus journey to London and back and not be in severe pain by the end of it. I decided to cut my loses and head for home.
So yesterday I headed off for my shift at midday. Booked on, but didn't see anything of my instructor so I just headed down to the train. He was already on board and I let myself into the cab. He was in the driving seat with a look of surprise on his face. In point of fact I was supposed to be route learning until the manager sorted out another instructor for me next week - apparently he told me that on Black Monday - However after what happened Black Monday he could have told me that I could retire on full pay immediately and it would not have registered, mind you, past experience of 'communication' at SWT makes me think he never said it to me in the first place, I also have to wait for a call from said manager to confirm arrangement for my new instructor - somehow I can't see that coming unless I develop mind-reading abilities in the near future.
Once this initial surprise was over my (former) instructor said I could come along with him down to Exeter and back. Exeter is not one of my favourite routes as it is in First Great Western territory and as anyone who has had the misfortune of travelling with them will know, delays are their business, including delaying trains that aren't even theirs!! In for a penny etc I thought, so off we went.
How can I describe this, but the journey to Exeter was mainly composed of a somewhat embarrassed silence, with us both trying to make polite conversation that seemed to end as quickly as it started. I did however manage to get one point that was raised on Black Monday straightened out and it seems that everyone breaks coming into stations completely differently and rendered what I was told fairly nonsensical as I would end up stopping with the back of the train hanging off the platform. It's a bloody nightmare believe me! Anyway the drive back was a bit better, the ice having been broken when I saw a bloke walking past Exeter St Davids in a leopard skin frock - very strange.
Now we come to today. As I knew I would not be driving and I could not be doing with another cab trip, I went into work and just revised my drivers rules. Had a chat with another instructor, mentioned braking and got told a whole other way of doing it - this really does not make any sense to me now, I might as well just ask the passengers to take a vote on it and see what I can manage!
However if this is my imagination, it is just paranoia backed up by my history!
So yesterday I headed off for my shift at midday. Booked on, but didn't see anything of my instructor so I just headed down to the train. He was already on board and I let myself into the cab. He was in the driving seat with a look of surprise on his face. In point of fact I was supposed to be route learning until the manager sorted out another instructor for me next week - apparently he told me that on Black Monday - However after what happened Black Monday he could have told me that I could retire on full pay immediately and it would not have registered, mind you, past experience of 'communication' at SWT makes me think he never said it to me in the first place, I also have to wait for a call from said manager to confirm arrangement for my new instructor - somehow I can't see that coming unless I develop mind-reading abilities in the near future.
Once this initial surprise was over my (former) instructor said I could come along with him down to Exeter and back. Exeter is not one of my favourite routes as it is in First Great Western territory and as anyone who has had the misfortune of travelling with them will know, delays are their business, including delaying trains that aren't even theirs!! In for a penny etc I thought, so off we went.
How can I describe this, but the journey to Exeter was mainly composed of a somewhat embarrassed silence, with us both trying to make polite conversation that seemed to end as quickly as it started. I did however manage to get one point that was raised on Black Monday straightened out and it seems that everyone breaks coming into stations completely differently and rendered what I was told fairly nonsensical as I would end up stopping with the back of the train hanging off the platform. It's a bloody nightmare believe me! Anyway the drive back was a bit better, the ice having been broken when I saw a bloke walking past Exeter St Davids in a leopard skin frock - very strange.
Now we come to today. As I knew I would not be driving and I could not be doing with another cab trip, I went into work and just revised my drivers rules. Had a chat with another instructor, mentioned braking and got told a whole other way of doing it - this really does not make any sense to me now, I might as well just ask the passengers to take a vote on it and see what I can manage!
However if this is my imagination, it is just paranoia backed up by my history!
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