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A footnote, I carefully researched train times for my daughter ahead. We had all the possibilities lined up. Plenty of Victoria to Three Bridges trains, if not a fallback of very late London Bridge to Three Bridges trains. Then very late Sunday they started disappearing in real time from the...

My daughter/mates saw newly boarded passengers falling out of the train on the Victoria platform, would’ve been about 11:25pm. Sheer weight of numbers, passenger pressure forced them back off. Apparently this Sunday evening Southern Rail Victoria carnage has been going on weeks, on dates...

Travel chaos from our friends Southern Rail tonight and they can’t even blame a strike. For some reason compared to other random Sundays, the Victoria to Brighton trains (we knew this all along) ended much earlier than normal. Bizarrely Three Bridges was still receiving tons of Victoria...

Decided that we’re driving to Abbey Wood underground station, the terminus of the shiny new Elizabeth Line near Plumstead. The 10 mile urban drive from the M25, will be the only nuisance. Just 26 minutes on the tube to Bond Street, later the line works for us to Stratford. I’ll only ditch the...

Including tourism. My son spends a lot of time in Brighton centre/seafront in decent weather. He said despite sunshine, the place was dead over a recent weekend when the mainline was effectively shutdown due to industrial action. That‘s not victimless. Thousands of jobs and small...

Great idea, thank you. The Anglo-French drivers seem content with life.

We've got a long anticipated fun trip to London tomorrow, including the meadows/park by the Olympic Stadium. I only cottoned on today that ASLEF are at it again. Only an overtime ban, but I envisage a combination of their spite and an Southern/Thameslink over-the-top reaction, making train...

A follow up comment. Some head teachers try to manipulate higher paid teachers out of the school, this has been covered on R4 or R5 (I wouldn’t have a link) and a poster here recently mentioned this happened (to his wife I think).

I followed this through, education authorities and schools provided the data to the civil service. On your last point my sister in law takes the full 13 weeks on foreign travel and in a holiday home in Spain. A standing joke in the family but literally, she’s collected from school on the last...

Teachers median salary is £39,000, pension contributions to their generous scheme are 33% and they receive 13 weeks holiday. In my family are a head and a teacher, they take the entire 13 weeks, not marking and preparing. The median salary shouldn’t be anything like £78,000. That’s 3x the...

They can be. ASLEF are demanding 10%, train drivers are not a role that has suffered real term cuts, R4 proved that in an interview with Whelan. Entitled by demanding/striking real term pay rises through economic cycles. ASLEF can take the £5,000 rise offered over two years. Separate to that...

Pre tax profits have been £310m in total in the last three years (sauce: The RMT), on industry income of circa £60b (two thirds of that comes from government, not tickets). Or 0.5%. I’d rather the cleaners and other staff on awful new contracts got significant pay rises, not drivers on £60k.

They’re already paid double the UK median salary, also far and away the highest paid train drivers in Europe.