Greedy Tube staff should try being a dairy farmer
COUNT yourself lucky if you live and work outside london. militant union bosses have called for another two tube strikes for the end of the month. so once again, the capital is likely to be brought to a painful standstill — all thanks to the greed and intransigence of Underground staff over the proposed introduction of a 24-hour weekend service.
Never mind that drivers get a starting salary of more than £50,000 for just a 36-hour week — or that they will get a bonus and a pay rise for agreeing to work nights. according to the Rmt general secretary mick cash, the ‘worklife balance’ of their members would be jeopardised by the new shift patterns. diddums! contrast their generous pay packets and cosseted lives with another group whose livelihood truly is under threat. in a last-ditch fight for survival, dairy f armers and their f amilies have launched the milk trolley challenge to highlight how rapacious supermarkets have yet again slashed the price they pay for milk.
campaigners have been leading cows through supermarket aisles and taking milk from the shelves to pour down the drain (having paid for it, so as not to break the law).
as one of the founders of the group, dairy farmer Becky Robertson, 26, explained: ‘Whatever we did it would need to be legal and not inconvenience the public.’
try telling desperate people like Becky about a ‘work-life balance’. it is not uncommon for dairy farmers to work a seven-day, 80-hour week, with most earning less than £20,000 and a third less than £10,000. half of Britain’s dairy farms have been forced out of business in the past 15 years.
Yet it’s the tube workers, not the dairy farmers, who are holding millions of Britons hostage with a strategy designed to cause maximum inconvenience to the most number of people.
so if you’re stuck at home during the looming strikes, cursing the selfish, grasping militants who are making your life a misery, why not show your support for a far more worthwhile cause by buying one of the fair-priced pintas that asda and morrisons have now agreed to stock.
i certainly know where my sympathies lie.