It is indeed surreal to be living, for the first time in my lifetime, with a government who seem to be devoid of any vision, but at the same time keen to be destructive *and* laughing at the population at the same time. Whilst the Major years were chaotic, at least there did seem to be some idea what to do.
Things are coming to a head and that is rarely a comfortable time.
There is of course the oft-quoted myth that the railway was dead for much of 2020. The few weeks after March 2020 might have been dead, however this didn’t last.
As a point of order, there were of course people shielding who were paid to stay at home, however this was the case across the entire workforce, by no means unique to the railway.
In that case I may have fallen for that "urban myth".
I don't think this is a sensible line to go down from either side, because to be honest I'd rather have been out working the railway than sitting at home bored on furlough. A free holiday is only any good if you can do anything with it. (I did enjoy the best of both worlds as my job is home based, but spending months at home in lockdown would just have been tedious in the extreme).
People moan about going to work, but really being unemployed and stuck at home is far worse even on the same money. Employment gives routine and self worth.
Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Too much of one thing or the other is bad for people.
Work does provide an important social function not just for the result but for the worker.
Given the dispersed nature of the signalling system on the UK railway, there will be a hard floor where the service utterly collapses.
If you need people in four places to run a line - you can't run it with three people even if the amount of workload could notionally be handled by them if the service was somewhat cut or simplified.
Really highlights the potential advantages of ROCs doesn't it ......
As it is, I think we ultimately have to try to be sanguine about this mess.
I don't think the existence of the railway itself is in significant jeopardy, but I think it will have to change to survive in the post strike world.
I agree it must be the ROCs (Regional Operating Centres ?) that can be kept going the easiest.
EH? What planet are you on mate? It was the rail staff forced to go out to work everyday (without decent PPE) whilst you were safely locked at home. We very nearly lost a young healthy colleague at Plymouth to covid so spare us the bull about nurses please.
As Yorksrob points out, its the "squatter governemnt" that's the issue here , and the county as a whole is in limbo until they are gone.
The railworkers are not the enemy here. What reasonable person can come up to a 4th year with no payrise and still afford to pay the bills when inflation is at 10 percent?!!
My bold. Well I had not one single day off apart from some of my holiday entitlement. I also had over 10 days off recovering from Covid, no need to isolate I was down !. I spent all day wearing PPE including a mask even though many around me did not and would shop some of us for not wearing a mask. The most stupid thing is I was not allowed to give my closest colleague a lift home in my car every day as it was considered a risk to spread of Covid - so stupid as he was therefore on the bus with total strangers and could bring Covid to me as we worked together !. We had to do extra work (cleaning, getting furniture to home workers, juggling/corralling lorries that could not leave for Europe etc) on top of our normal factory maintenance.
But I do get the impression that I am incorrect about how many rail staff were sent home.
Only one website, GWR. And it was only up for a few minutes or hours before being taken down again. Still nothing on the record...
It seems possible to me that TOCs and Network Rail are trying to keep it out of the public domain for as long as they think they can get away with, so as not to prejudice negotiations and put people off travelling if there's some kind of deal.
I agree. There is no point scaremongering unless a TOC/government think it will force someones hand.
I think the confusion here is that we are talking about the 13/12/2022 - 07/01/2023 blanket service restrictions being planned to aid planning for both rail staff and passengers. But the TOC info seems more restricted to smaller ranges of dates (that might be the actual Union reported/threatened strike days).
If they announce, the majority of the public will simply make alternative plans, not demand trains be run. Once they've made those plans, they won't be changing them this christmas. Many of them won't come back to the railways for a very, very long time.
The government wants the revenue. It's not going to scare everybody off until it has no other choice.
The damage could well be worse than the actual dispute would cause.
For heavens sake this is not going to spell the end for the UK rail network. Some people here need to stop panicking!
Could it drive many people away from the rail network for good? Yes. Are Network Rail overreacting? Possibly, yes. But it won't spell the end for the network nor lead to any permanent closures bar possibly a few basket cases like Teesside Airport (which is 'temporarily' closed anyway!)
This'll get sorted out either when the government have their hand forced or when there's a change of government, which is at most 2 years away.
There are of course those who think it is the unions that need to have their hand forced. One factor is how much money the government want to pour into a loss making industry. The balance is what the unions feel their members should earn. I believe that the railways have a social purpose but I can see the money is not there to fund everything we would like.
