The London Tube strike has unleashed a whole lot of nastiness. And I don’t mean the ‘misery for millions of Londoners'(of whom I’m one) who are deemed too weedy to undergo 48 of limited public transport.
Welcome to the world of class hatred, hysteria,pathological unawareness of self,and greed.
One by one then. Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator was first. In a tweet yesterday he yelped that the Tube drivers earned on average £52,000 with overtime on top,’yet still they strike’. He was quickly followed by the Mayor of London castigating the RMT and Bob Crow, its leader, for their ruinous behaviour in a city that earned 25 percent of the income of the UK(a nonsensical figure quickly challenged by the financially literate).
Up hurried David Cameron calling the strike ‘shameful’ and threatening to curb the power of mass transit workers to strike at all. Then there are the media, rushing to take pix of Bob Crow having a holiday and examining his £140,000 salary and -the horror!- the fact that he lives in a council house.
One of the business papers even ran a snotty piece about Crow’s income alongside- this is beyond parody- a news item about Antonio Horta-Osoria , head of Lloyds(partly owned by us, and coughing up gazillions for misselling useless products) getting a £2m bonus.
If we take a deep breath we can examine the facts. Which are these.
1. The RMT(the union) is striking in protest against the proposed closure of ALL Tube ticket offices and the loss of 1,000 jobs.
2.The strikers will lose two days pay for this strike.
3.The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, signed a petition to Transport for London, before his last Mayoral election, protesting against these plans.
And lets put a contrary, fairer set of of principles against the rabid ones above.
1.We like to be safe -well paid Tube drivers are essential.
2.Trade unionists can take nice holidays.
3. Council houses are part of communities and charge quite hefty rents. Why should people who have always lived in a place, have to move to satisfy Associated Newspapers?
And most important- we have a choice here. We can support an inconvenient strike that has brilliantly showed up the staff slashing that will make our Tube less safe and certainly less agreeable to use. Or we can sing the tune that the neoliberals who hate anything in the public sphere , want us to sing.