The EU is only going to consider a return for the UK if 1. the overwhelming majority of the population want it,
Well, that's not the case is it. The EU doesn't - and I suppose can't - overly care what "the overwhelming majority of the population" want. The overwhelming majority of the population doesn't create legislation. We left in the first place due to the actions of one person.
The EU doesn’t – and I suppose can’t – overly care
Having been through Brexit, I think the EU will certainly pay attention to what the population of the UK broadly think. I think even it’s it’s the policy of both the Tories and Labour but isn’t very well supported by the public, the EU would be hesitant
Making Brexit work means allignment with the EU on standards, legislation, human rights, tax havens, anti-trust etc. so the barriers to trade are as low as possible. It means a Norway or Switzerland type deal and making whatever concessions and payments allow that.
Lynch operates in a microcosme and fails to recognise the importance of the interconnections between countries depsite representing people who work in the industries providing those connections.
Other union leaders have been guilty of the same errors. I briefly worked in Longbridge in 78, Red Robbo and his mob weren't into collaborating and contributing to efforts to produce cars to compete with imports and other brands, they were intent on sabotaging the company that paid their wages with over 500 walkouts and indeed straight sabotage with more than just a spanner in the works. Then he got lynched. Scargill was as responsible as Thatcher for the mine closures, he went head to head with the government and lost, or should I say his members and the industry lost as a result of his lousy leadership.
I reckon Lynch is heading the same way, he'll precipitate changes that would have been a slow evolution towards technical soulutions with natural wastage due to retirement and people moving one. It's curious that the strikes concern the industry where he has more or less absolute power as Robinson and Scargill had, but his real leverage lies with trucks, but that's another union. He should be patient and wait for a non-Tory government but is leading his members in what I predict is a self-destructive struggle as Union leader clashing with Tories before him. Learn from history Mr Mick.
Red Robbo and his mob weren’t into collaborating and contributing to efforts to produce cars to compete with imports and other brands, they were intent on sabotaging the company that paid their wages
a bit of convenient rewriting of history there. Robinson understood that the company needed to be successful in order to be able to share its success with its workers; it was the bosses, backed by the government that failed to recognise this.
"If we make Leyland successful, it will be a political victory. It will prove that ordinary working people have got the intelligence and determination to run industry".
-Derek Robinson
What chance did the bloke have when bloody MI5 were deployed to discredit and disrupt him? FFS.
Having been through Brexit, I think the EU will certainly pay attention to what the population of the UK broadly think.
Perhaps. But, then do what?
It wasn't unknown within the EU that there was at best a sliver of a majority in favour of leaving and that almost certainly vanished pretty rapidly. Yet we still left.
I think even it’s it’s the policy of both the Tories and Labour but isn’t very well supported by the public, the EU would be hesitant
Same argument. The EU was and is never going to attempt to overrule domestic policy. They'll follow the rules because we have a representative democracy; what matters is what our Fuhrer Du Jour thinks, not the populace.
a bit of convenient rewriting of history there.
I was surrounded by people who worked at Longbridge, my mother worked there, my neighbour had a side line selling parts he nicked off the track, my uncle worked there, my father worked for a parts supplier. Until I was old enough to read a paper for myself I believed the shop steward to be my father's boss because it was he who ran the workshop. I worked there myself in the Summer before the Winter of discontent, if anyone is rewriting history it's not me. I had the union messages direct, first hand, and the last thing on their minds was producing quality automobiles efficiently, I could see where it was leading.
I went on to do "labour economics and industrial relations" as one of my university courses and studied various international models as well as the British story. The British partucularity was the fragmented UK union landscape which divided its members and made negotatiating with business leaders unduly conflictual and problematic. Multiple unions fighting their own little corner in a confrontational manner to the detriment of the general workforce. The status given to shop stewards and union leaders led them to feeling self-important and part of a political movement rather than servers of their members and the workforce in general. This inevitably led to politicisation of issues so pragmatism and cooperation gave way to idealism and a failure to compromise - and conflict that was destructive to all.
A union's first duty should be to its members, present and future.
There’s three that affect the poorly paid/provided for. If I could be bothered I could probably find causes behind the other items but these are the three main ones.
They're all problems that can be fixed outside of EU membership. It may be more expensive to do so, it may be more difficult, but they're all things we can fix.
We're the 6th largest economy in the world. We can afford to independently organise our society and look after our people.
@Edukator you are displaying the same attitude that the management in the 70's and 80's did. Co-operating is not something British management do. Instead of looking at the process in Germany and adopting something similar they went all in on winner takes all.
Ironically Kaizan has a place for worker engagement but British management sought to ignore that too when implementing quality solutions in the late 80's. It's no wonder UK is going backwards fast as managers see that the workforce has no business in decision making and don't engage all of the talent that is available to them, nor do they see that they should pay for it.
Multiple unions fighting their own little corner in a confrontational manner to the detriment of the general workforce.
I’ve come across this sort of behaviour from time to time. Disappointing when a union rep can’t seem to understand the concept of ‘United we stand’, but failing to see the big picture is not a uniquely unionist trait.
I have far more frequently come across the adversarial approach TO unions being demonstrated by management though. It’s like they see them as the enemy automatically, rather than representing the work force that they espouse to value so highly (in words if not in actions).
@Edukator I don’t doubt your educational credentials; but your resulting opinions seem to have swayed somewhat to the right. Other opinions are available; see @sandwich ‘s excellent post above.
I have far more frequently come across the adversarial approach TO unions being demonstrated by management though.
Its odd how often the allegedly adversarial unions arent when its a foreign owned company and the senior/midlevel managers are from the companies home country.
USA companies obviously exempt from this.
<span style="font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; font-size: 16px;">"The ECML is getting new signalling now to allow this to happen too. Once it has been proven on a main line, it will be rolled out across the Country, they are doing away with physical signals, and doing it all via radio links. Capital cost is around half of the cost of new signalling.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="font-family: Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, 'Noto Sans', sans-serif, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; font-size: 16px;">Even heavy freight engines have driver assist functions that tell the driver to accelerate/slow down etc. It was found some drivers used 10% more fuel on a trip, and their driving style was causing this, so the aids give a definite financial incentive to the Companies."</span>
A lot of that is not really correct.
Dedicated lines with dedicated, near homogeneous rolling stock (such as Docklands) can indeed be set up 'autonomous' (but near always still with a staff member to step in in case of fault - so not a massive ££ saving really). If enough ££ and time is thrown at it.
ECML resignalling (East Coast Digital) which will go as far as Grantham (so only 1/3 of ECML) , will NOT be autonomous. Its having ETCS installed, and with ETCS the driver still controls the train. ETCS is only a supervisory system to step in if/when the driver ****s up. The signals are displayed in the cab rather than lights on sticks. The ££ saving for NR is getting rid of maintenance on those lights on sticks signalling.
Throw in the massive complexity of a mainline (compared to say a single tube / metro line), inc different turn outs / crossing routes, different lengths of stations, level crossings where stupid people do stupid things, and the massive variability of the trains that will run over it (multiple units, loco hauled passenger trains of different lengths, masses, braking characteristics, power / traction effort, tampers and other maintenance trains, old, new, and a myriad of permutations for freight, and its waaay more complex.
NOBODY has the political balls or will to spend the £££ to introduce fully automated mainline trains because it'll take a lifetime (FFS ETCS started to be be kicked over 30 years ago yet all we have is the Cabrian Line 'trial' so far with a small fleet of old disels units i stalled, and a few even older diesel locos). Or go through 15 years of continuous industrial unrest that will make the current strikes look like a small localised squabble.
So - train drivers driving trains are with us for a lot longer than anyone on this forum will be alive.
We’re the 6th largest economy in the world. We can afford to independently organise our society and look after our people.
That's a curve which tapers off fast. Once you get past the USA and China it pretty much flatlines. And in any case, we aren't tending upwards.
If we can do that then, why aren't we?
If we can do that then, why aren’t we?
Because "tories"
of course we have plenty of money to have a fair and decent society with our GDP per capita. the netherlands does, The Scandi countries do
Because “tories”
of course we have plenty of money to have a fair and decent society with our GDP per capita. the netherlands does, The Scandi countries do
this is exactly it, and lots of embedded wealth/ownership/tradition.
We need to tax massive trades in the city where a huge wealth is generated, we need to ban offshoring and just tax at source end of story. Then we would have enormous tax receipts and a burgeoning health education and transport system.
However the people in charge would be a bit less rich so it will never happen. Humanity is screwed.
Before coming back to the farm I worked as a project coordinator on a multi-nation, EU-funded, research project. Of all the countries involved (9 EU States) only 2 of them were constantly adversarial and unable/unwilling to compromise on almost every aspect of the project. Of those, 1 of them was far worse than the other. The 2nd least able to compromise was the Netherlands. I probably don't have to tell you which was the worst! As a nation of Empire building and 2 party FPTP politics, I guess we have such a high degree of exceptionalism and no experience of rule by compromise that it should come as no surprise really.
We left in the first place due to the actions of one person.
Who was that, then? If you say Boris you will have to show your working out.
The fact this thread is named "Lynch for PM" when a more rounded view shows him to have serious flaws, but can argue with soft southern shandies on the tv shows that populism is everything these days.
Instead of one dimensional characters we should look at all sides of people and take a closer look at all, not just whatever three word slogan they are peddling this week.
but your resulting opinions seem to have swayed somewhat to the right.
You can lean to the left and still prefer a system with fewer unions. The unions are then bigger stronger and represent all/most of the union members in a company rather than just a few. And also be opposed to the closed shop.
For the record in the most recent elections I've voted:
European elections: green
Local town elections: socialist
Législatives: en Marche/Renaissance
Présidentielle: Macron both rounds.
You can lean to the left and still prefer a system with fewer unions
that’s not what I was basing my throwaway 10 second opinion on though; it was where you readily placed the blame for the destruction of British industry in the 80s. It’s a complex and multifaceted subject for sure, but you seemed to be quick to blame unions wholeheartedly, rather than recognise the greed of the owners of the means of production and the ideologically driven Tory government who were prepared to use MILITARY INTELLIGENCE to undermine working class people daring to want to be recognised fairly for their part in wealth creation.
rather than recognise the greed of the owners of the means of production
Longbridge was state owned by a Labour government for the period I've referred to up to the Winter of discontent
British Leyland was partly nationalised in 1975 and shortly afterwards in 1979 Margret Thatcher started the process of fully re-privatising it again. Very little of BL problems stemmed from the short period that the government was a major shareholder.
It 1975 when BL was a complete mess and the government stepped in to save it from total collapse it had been under private control for decades.
The human body didn’t evolve to handle impacts into solid objects at speeds of over 5 or 6 mph
Have we only recently learned to run? Our ancestors didn't fall off things?
A fairly balanced centre left view of the Red Robbo years:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/01/derek-robinson-obituary
Have we only recently learned to run? Our ancestors didn’t fall off things?
At 6 mph you are running, I think evolution accepted that if you fall off a cliff or out of a tree you might die. Our ancestors a hundred thousand years ago didn't really need bodies that could take 20mph impacts to pass their genes on. So it is probably advisable to wear head protection to reduce the risk of serious injuries to your brain. IMHO
Madame and I ride horses just like our ancestors. Madame has fallen off at about 25mph a few times but only broken anything once when past child bearing age.
Madame and I ride horses just like our ancestors
Riding is a pretty recent thing in the grand scheme of things though.
Serious injuries (eg those which would mean the person is unable to look after themselves for several months or possibly years/lifetime) is an area studied in prehistorical archaeology. Since it probably means the groups have got to a certain size/sophistication in order to support them.
I don't think humans evolved two or three hundred thousand years ago to have a symbiotic relationship with horses.
I believe that the relationship between humans and horses is post-hunter gather, a point by which time modern humans had already full evolved to the level they are now.
But I might be wrong. Try not wearing a helmet and see what happens if you hit a tree headfirst at 20mph, your skull might be thick enough to deal with it.
Indeed dissonance. But there's evidence that even in very early civilisations people were cared for and survived. Atapuerca is the site with the oldest fossil remains in Europe and there's a patella to prove someone survied a serious knee injury about a million years ago. An interesting place to visit by the way with an excellent museum in Burgos nearby.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631068316300641
Ernie, we’re just talking about our “ancestor’s” with no absolute time frame.
I wasn't when I brought up the original point about our evolution. My ancestors were French and Italian, as you will know from another thread, they were fully evolved human beings, I believe.
It’s what you do and it’s unpleasant and provocative.
Sorry that you think me changing the discussion is unpleasant and provocative. I didn't mean to upset you.
The vertical fall off a bike is basically the same as when you trip, walking or running doesn't really matter, the horizontal speed makes you slide or roll and may prevent you from cushioning the impact with arms etc but it's the vertical fall that creates the impact that kills you (when you fall out of a tree or a Russian hotel window).
Yes I know it's possible to ride at 25mph headfirst straight into a solid object if you really try. It's a very rare form of impact.
Sheesh, came to see updates on Mick Lynch and it has taken quite the turn, even for STW.But I will join in; early humans actually used running to catch animals. They would choose a distinctive animal and keep it moving until it collapsed.
Yeah, came to see what the latest news of ML was only to have wondered in to a completely different thread!
They would choose a distinctive animal and keep it moving until it collapsed.
Maybe, although there's no evidence it was widespread. They probs mostly jabbed at them with pointy sticks and bits of sharp rock. Humans can get to 20mph (That's not even a sub 12sec 100m) I think if we started to do real damage at 6mph I don't think we'd have lasted long as a species.
without checking I think horses have been domesticated for about 5000 years or so. I think the 3rdC BCE version of Mick Lynch was trying to get extra pay for riding the things as opposed to making them pull things along.
We're constantly evolving, whevere the time frame, Ernie:
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/genes-discovered-in-unlikely-places-study-finds
Within homosapiens from the holocene there are many adaptions to environment including bone density and strengh in populations that have survived using different strategies.
Just as the horse has evolved by selection to the variety domesticated sub species we know today (I ride an Appaloosa which is particulary happy in human company) humans have no doubt adapted to riding horses in that those who haven't killed themselves riding or been kicked/trampled to death before reproducing are our ancestors in Europe.
Is this the thread I saw yesterday?
Get a room you two...
Yes I know it’s possible to ride at 25mph headfirst straight into a solid object if you really try. It’s a very rare form of impact.
I've managed to do it, car pulled out in front of me when I was 14 years old and I was doing at least 25mph downhill, without a helmet. Obviously I survived thereby completely undermining my theory.
Mind you I did have a fractured skull and obviously had a stay in hospital, so my chances of surviving such an impact 300,000 years ago wouldn't have been great.
Indeed. How did a thread about a union leader drift to helmets and horses?
How did a thread about a union leader drift to helmets and horses?
You said something about pedestrians should wear helmets if cyclists do.
That's when it went on a tangent.
You "derailed" it by getting onto your usual topic of helmets, TJ and then Ernie replied with the comment that the human body hadn't evoved to crash into things at more than 5-6mph or soemthing like that.
It all seems very much on topic to me, horses are transport and Mick's union accepts members from transport.
Edit: we not only have helmets when riding but an air bag too. 😉
They would choose a distinctive animal and keep it moving until it collapsed.
Persistence hunting, humans are good at it because we're better at regulating body heat than our prey.
Not sure of the hunting bit but some have evolved to astounding levels of persistence
Persistence hunting, humans are good at it because we’re better at regulating body heat than our prey.
sounds good. Is a myth. It’s an evolutionary “just so story”. We have this set of traits; what did we use it for? Its arse backwards silence. The Kalahari hunters that practice now have something like a 1-2% success rate.
like I said there evidence of sharp sticks and rocks. We don’t need to make up stories about our early development
How far or for how long would your ancestors have to chase Mick Lynch until he collapses?
Persistence hunting, humans are good at it because we’re better at regulating body heat than our prey.
An 8 hour hour hunt condensed into 7 minutes:
Just popped in to see how the ML thread is going and it’s all horses and head butting trees.
Confused
I've heard Mick Lynch is trying to get all RMT members to wear helmets when walking, running and cycling for their safety so there is a link here. I also think RMT members are from a different gene pool where their skulls are thinner due to not needing to hunt due to be on trains and all.
