Should Maude Resign?

[teamsaint]

And pay vat on their caviar! I bet with their extra-parliamentary earnings they'll benefit from the reduction fro 50% to 45%!

I love your eye for detail , Cloughie !!

[cloughie]

I love your eye for detail , Cloughie !!

They're all in it together!

[MrGongGong]

To answer the question

Yes

next

[Ferretfancy]

But my understanding was she stumbled while serving a trayful of drinks? I could be wrong there. I saw something similar in a posh West End bar I once worked in, where waiters were expected to carry trays of drinks aloft on fingertips. Blood everywhere!

If she stumbled carrying a tray of drinks, she would still have had a servant problem, wouldn't she ? It doesn't make Maude's dad any less of a pompous twit!

[Lateralthinking1]

I note that he hasn't apologised yet. It will probably be even less likely that he apologises if someone is killed because of the Government's advice. That is the nature of those in Government now.

Any risk, and the Government has not accepted that it has created risk, would arguably, if it had occurred, have emanated from a political strategy to stop the strike. Arguably, that was deemed more important than the absolute safeguarding of life.

Not that I have any real time for the tanker drivers. They earn £45,000 a year and are concerned that this will reduce over a number of years to £36,000. That still seems like about £6,000 to much to me. They are overpaid, unionised, high tax earners.

[cloughie]

I note that he hasn't apologised yet. It will probably be even less likely that he apologises if someone is killed because of the Government's advice. That is the nature of those in Government now.

Any risk, and the Government has not accepted that it has created risk, would arguably, if it had occurred, have emanated from a political strategy to stop the strike. Arguably, that was deemed more important than the absolute safeguarding of life.

Not that I have any real time for the tanker drivers. They earn £45,000 a year and are concerned that this will reduce over a number of years to £36,000. That still seems like about £6,000 to much to me. They are overpaid, unionised, high tax earners.

And if they are paid more will this add to the cost of petrol? By the by the government advice to top up and fill cans, with the increase in sales benefits the government coffers considerably at the end of the tax year! What muggers!

[teamsaint]

why would he apologise?
he did what was wanted of him.
Its how they work.

What's wrong with being unionised, Lat?
Wish there was a union for people doing my job !!

[handsomefortune]

[B]Not that I have any real time for the tanker drivers. They earn £45,000 a year and are concerned that this will reduce over a number of years to £36,000. That still seems like about £6,000 to much to me. They are overpaid, unionised, high tax earners.

too harsh imo lateralthinking1, it's a dangerous job. besides, it has experienced massive job losses, with many long established haulage companies going bust recently.

the problem is that western govts love petrol above all else - even consumerism. but lorry drivers striking threatens both - so a lot of bad publicity for striking drivers has to be regularly aired, to minimise public support for them.

maude might just be the fall guy, a distraction from the panic about petrol which personally i imagine roots back to corpo world and global oil prices....not maude, who admittedly is a complete idiot, but hardly the root of the problem. nor are the striking drivers themselves.

besides, it's taken the emphasis right off 'the times' dodgey video a treat. yet the grotesque contents only surfaced last wkend ... the coalition typically lurch from crisis to crisis and appear quite insane in this sense. people are coming to the consensus that it's not maude who has to go, it's the coaltion itself.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

he , along with gormless , dave , and the others on millionaires row, should be sent away to work on minimum wage with a particularly spiteful boss, for at least ten years.
and made to listen to spire fm, or its local equivalent, while they work.

Is Spire FM as bad as Yorkshire Coast Radio?

[Lateralthinking1]

What's wrong with being unionised, Lat? Wish there was a union for people doing my job !!

I don't have any problem with unions in principle. I was a member of PCS and its predecessors for 25 years. Mainly I just paid my dues but I was a delegate at one of its conferences in Brighton in 2010.

The difficulty with unions who represent very well paid staff is that they give the newspapers an opportunity to say how well off they are compared with everyone else. Worse, if there are several unions in one field representing different pay brackets, all of them get lumped in together. For example, the part time teaching assistant in an infants school finds herself described as if she were the Headteacher at a private one at the secondary level. That situation doesn't necessarily help her.

We also found that the better off unions sold out more easily. They weren't living from hand to mouth. Once they had got a few concessions, that was it, enabling Ministers to describe the leaders of ordinary unions as Welsh Che Guevaras etc. There was little sense in them of the Trade Union Movement. This created divisions within ours.

This is not to say that more well off workers should not have a union but it does mean that like the rest of the public I am more inclined there to assess their arguments.

Handsomefortune - You say that the job the tanker drivers do is dangerous and that is right. However, some of us worked with and at the UN to ensure that there was adequate legislation for transporting flammables, gases, toxic substances and explosives safely - in effect making sure they and the public were adequately protected, plus the same on trains and ships and in planes - and earned half of what they are getting paid, albeit in the 1990s.

[Flosshilde]

Not that I have any real time for the tanker drivers. They earn £45,000 a year and are concerned that this will reduce over a number of years to £36,000. That still seems like about £6,000 to much to me. They are overpaid, unionised, high tax earners.

No, the (possible) strike isn't about pay; it's about safety. The drivers feel that they are under increasing pressure & that safety (theirs, & consequently that of the load they are driving) is being compromised. They are carrying a highly dangerous cargo & safety, not the haulier's profits, should be uppermost.


An interesting letter in the Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/ma...nomy-recession - suggesting that provoking panic-buying could have been intentional.

[teamsaint]

Is Spire FM as bad as Yorkshire Coast Radio?

Is it coming up to the fifth anniversary of the last good record played on YCR?

do they advertise double glazing between every tune?

is it utterly useless even for finding out what is running on snowy mornings ?

If so, I think we are in a similar zone !!

[Flosshilde]

Handsomefortune - You say that the job the tanker drivers do is dangerous and that is right. However, some of us worked with and at the UN to ensure that there was adequate legislation for transporting flammables, gases, toxic substances and explosives safely - in effect making sure they and the public were adequately protected, plus the same on trains and ships and in planes - and earned half of what they are getting paid, albeit in the 1990s.

Driving the tankers is rather more dangerous & stressfull than drawing up safety legislation, & that should be reasonably recognised.

[MrGongGong]

So? Driving the tankers is rather more dangerous & stressfull than drawing up safety legislation, & that should be reasonably recognised.

Come off it
My dad can fight your dad

when I was a lad we lived in the middle of the M62 and gargled petrol for breakfast .............

none of these lightweights have the bravery and courage of Christine Balfa (ask Beefy)

[teamsaint]

Tankers ought to be driven very carefully and skillfully. In my Calor Gas days, 30 years ago, we apparently only employed the very best, and I was certainly under the impression that any kind of a serious incident caused by a driver was a sacking offence.

Not sure how things are these days, but this very morn I saw a calor wagon driver hurtling round a roundabout at what I thought was a reckess speed.
I would have sacked him.
And I would be a nice lenient boss, in general !!