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11:18am on Tuesday, 21st June, 2022:
Anecdote
So, it's a national rail strike today. The benefits of working from home instead of commuting are evident once more.
I was walking down Regent Street last week behind a group of three or four men in their late 20s or early 30s. One of them asked the others what they thought of the rail strike. Immediately, the man on the right became very animated and announced he was all for it. Apparently, a friend of his dad's was a train driver and someone had jumped out in front of his train to commit suicide. They were successful in this endeavour, but one of their teeth smashed through the train's windscreen and severed a vein in the neck of the driver's friend. He almost bled to death, needed major surgery and still isn't right ten years later. The man relating this anecdote announced that for this reason he believed the railway workers should get a pay rise and he supports the strike.
Hmm.
OK, so I can see how it's an argument for making train cabin windows out of bullet-proof glass, but train drivers are in a different union (ASLEF) to the one that's going on strike (RMT) and they're highly-paid anyway (median £59,189 per annum according to the Office for National Statistics; this is almost exactly £14k higher than the mean salary for a university lecturer). Saying that drivers can suffer industrial accidents therefore ticket collectors ought to be paid more is a strange argument.
If the man had presented this rationale on social media, someone would have had a go at him for its lack of logic. He said it in real life, though, so no-one did.
Angry public spat avoided.
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