At 10am today the fireman will go on strike again for 24 hours. The video above was shot during the last strike on 23rd October. The RMT banner on display will confuse and worry many Londoners who are heartily sick of Bob Crowe’s RMT. Hey, we thought secondary action was illegal. The idiots at RMT and TSSA are taking the Tube system out on Tuesday and Wednesday and then the firemen are going out on Friday November 5th, the busiest day of the year, for two days.
Both of these groups of workers are very highly paid and very secure. They both think that they can get what they want by throwing their weight around. Unfortunately we are going to have to put up with much more of this rubbish or pay a lot more in council tax and Tube fares.
This graph, reproduced from the Lancet, is the picture that killed the national fire strike in 2002/3. Back then the firemen were holding the country to ransom to secure a £30K pay packet on the grounds that what they did was particularly dangerous. This analysis in the Lancet showed that firemen were in only the 23rd most dangerous job in the country and doing a relatively safe job compared to labourers, builders, farm workers and lorry drivers. Note policemen come in at 24th.
Just so you are clear where Labour’s candidate for London Mayor in 2012 stands this is a picture of the premises he shares with TSSA at 10 Melton Street in London. Nothing on his website about either strike. What a waster? Ken “I’m a Londoner first and foremost” Livingstone. Yes, quite. We know whose side you are on and it is not ordinary Londoners’.
Phil Taylor 