Strike

[thessalian]

Oh, please. Not another Tube strike. I'm just not getting what the hell LU staff want at this point. Are they just striking to be ornery or something? It's either that or how I summed it up to Michael this morning, which goes along the lines of: "The directors raise Tube fares, and the money seems to go straight into their pockets via obscene bonuses they haven't earned. Meanwhile, no improvements are made on safety, comfort, staffing or anything else to do with the Underground, which is left to decay. The system is sporadically held together and / or patched up by an increasingly frustrated group of employees who don't understand why they can't have lots of money for no work like the directors have, particularly when they're being increasingly overworked in unsafe conditions that include but are not limited to being assaulted by customers. So they go on strike and the directors go, "Hey! I know! We'll raise fares higher and say that money's going to all those improvements we keep saying we make, but really it's more money for us! The public won't know, because they're as dumb as a sack of hammers! Huzzah! Bonuses all around! Meanwhile, the customer gets increasingly delayed, harrassed and frustrated."

Fuck a bunch of that; I'm taking Monday off.

Meanwhile, pseudo-reviewer states that no one wants to see gay men getting their sexuality on. Apparently gays are fine out of the closet so long as they 'play nice' and never even hint at the fact that they actually have sex with these men they love, because that's gross. This from a self-confessed homophobe. So explain to me how even these self-confessed homophobes tend to view two women getting sexy with each other as something to get horny over instead of something gross. I noticed no complaints when Alison Hanigan and Amber Benson started snogging on-screen. Besides, I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet (because it's not out here yet, I don't think) but Captain Jack snogging the Doctor? Yay! I don't see anything particularly gross about that. The reviewer does state that it's the anal sex idea that he finds gross. Which is fine, it's his opinion, but he tacks it onto everyone else while he's at it. "No one wants to see that", he says. "Women don't want to see these men kissing", he says. Like hell I don't; I'm as curious about what goes on between two gay men in a bedroom as most men are about what women do. I get that some people find receiving anal sex stimulating. I'm not into the concept myself, personally, but I can't really get upset about the concept of it if that's what gets you off. It's not hurting anyone, it's all consensual and I'm sure there's a certain level of hygiene involved, so how is this gross? I'm so confused.

Two more days. Then a three-day weekend as I avoid the Tube strike. I can handle two more days. I think.

Comments

[cholten99.livejournal.com]

> The system is sporadically held together and / or patched up by an
> increasingly frustrated group of employees who don't understand why they
> can't have lots of money for no work like the directors have, particularly
> when they're being increasingly overworked in unsafe conditions that
> include but are not limited to being assaulted by customers.

And yet despite the extreme annoyance when it doesn't work the tube, when it does work, seemlessly moves millions of people around London every day. I don't think many people (myself included) really appreciate what a great job it does on average...

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

While I would never describe moving around London as 'seamless', there is a certain element of taking it for granted when it works and bitching when it doesn't. The fact is that it's a public service and we pay through the nose to keep it running, so of course it's aggravating when the same Tube station has signal failures that shut down an entire branch of the line for hours at a stretch every other day and that's never fixed while some high-up in the board of directors for LU gets sacked and takes home a bonus calculated in the millions. Besides, Montreal public transport is cheaper and runs better than the London one ever did -- fine, it has slightly less ground to cover, but it's also not shut down entirely because of adverse weather conditions up to and including 'leaves on the line'. As public transport goes, this is not value for money and I think people do have a right to complain about the overcrowding, the lateness, the signal failures, the announcement boards never working right, the overcharging, the complete shutdown just because it's a bit damp or leafy or 'the wrong kind of snow', warping tracks, haphazardly maintained escalators and drivers who strike just because they're not geting paid as much as the board of directors and said board sacked a guy who was reputed to be drinking on the job.