Tackling Tube Strikes

So, to put it simply, here are some of my favourite comments about this month's tube strikes in London.

1) Boris Johnson signed a petition in 2008! Boris Johnson promised this in 2010! 

Awesome! Let's base all our arguments on decisions, facts, and opinions that are 4 - 6 years out of date. That'll work like a bloody charm wont it. I presume the same people complaining about this make all of their life decisions on information from that long ago as well do they? Not to mention taking extra special effort to completely ignore ANYTHING that has happened since, or any more recent evidence to the contrary. You know, in the standard intelligent manner.

Run along kids, you're no longer qualified to use sentences. On the plus side there are some brightly coloured balls in the middle of the road for you to play with if you've nothing more useful to add.

2) Empty ticket offices will make life harder! 

How exactly? We've Bob Crow himself pointing out that he rarely, if ever, needs to use one any more. Personally I actually tried to use one the other day for the first time in about 18 months, only to find that, after explaining the problem 4 times to the guy at the counter, that he couldn't actually do anything, and I needed to call someone else. Someone not in the station.

That was helpful. Maybe we should do a quick software update to the machines instead to improve their accessibility and be done with it? Hell, we could even get the machines to work 24/7/365. But then someone would probably complain that they were being over worked, underpaid, and deserved better digital conditions

3) It's to protect the workers jobs!  

To a degree this is true. But after about 10 seconds thought you realise something else. Tube workers are VERY well paid for their work. Which is nice. Unless you're a teacher, a nurse, or one of countless other professions who get sod all for much more valuable work. But the problem is tube work isn't exactly the most highly skilled of professions. The Daily Mash's parody article about passengers discovering that they can learn to drive a train themselves in 5 minutes isn't exactly far from the mark. Instead what the workers are actually worried about is simple. Currently they get paid a lot of money for not having very many skills. Certainly not having many transferable skills at least. Losing their job on the Underground means that, assuming they get another job, they won't likely get anywhere near the same salary, as, put simply, they're not qualified. As such the RMT's constant demands for more pay have created little more than a self fulfilling prophecy of strikes and problems for them.

4) It's about safety. 

No, it's REALLY not. I'm not even going to make the point here, I'll just link you to this amazing blog post about the real impact of what happens in London when the tube's on strike to "protect Londoners safety". Be warned, you will not rest easily when you read it.

5) It'll turn tube stations in a muggers paradise.

No. Again, this is beyond moronic. Unless of course all thefts in tube stations take place under the watchful eye of the staff who are sitting in exactly the same position all day, and not, say, when there are lots of people moving around away from the ticket office.

The reality of this is simple. The world is moving on, new things are coming in, the old is being replaced. It started with the industrial revolution, and it hasn't stopped yet. It never will stop until the world does. To claim that you didn't see this coming, or that you need more time to adjust isn't good enough. We've been happily buying tickets from machines for over 10 years. We've had driverless trains for longer than that. Just how much notice do you need exactly?

Cleaning up the London protestors

Good god this has been a long time coming. Finally, after years of protests, riots, and petitioning (most of them nonsense) it's finally happened. Boris Johnson, and the wider Tory Government has taken notice of the plight of the nation's protestors. Most of them are, plainly, disgusting.

"Soap dodging on this scale hasn't been seen since the middle ages." A spokesperson for the mayor's office announced, echoing the voice of the people of Highgate, Hampstead, and Blackheath. "We've heard the voice of the people, and the people are desperate. These uprising's of the unclean need to be addressed, and today we're showing that we're listening, and we're acting."

Government cut backs have already impacted on the scheme with confirmation the protestors would still be required to bring their own soap. But the general consensus seems to be that even without soap in the water, the principal alone should see London move up the list of the worlds cleanest cities.

Personally over the years I've grown thoroughly fed up with seeing legions of angry people shouting about pretty much everything, without even having bothered to take a shower before heading to the streets. Finally this means that we can protect people's right to protest, and help the homeless, simultaneously.

Chastising Chuggers

I work in central London, I choose to do this, like I choose to go out and get my lunch, or go for a walk, or nip to the shops in my lunch break. At no point in this do I walk along so desperate for social interaction that I want some professional irritant leaping in front of me with a fake smile and a sob story.

Chuggers are one of the worst things about living in any modern city. I can't even go out for lunch these days without some idiot in a left over Shell-suit trying to convince me that I could single handedly raise Africa out of poverty, cure cancer, save all the children, and populate a small aircraft carrier's worth of Air Ambulances.

At their best Chuggers are blatantly lying to you. They work on the assumption that people think they're volunteers doing it for charity, and that you're doing a good thing by signing up. Bollocks. All Chuggers are paid just like any other job, and pimped out as glorified contractors to the charities. They're not working for those charities, they've just been given that colour jacket for the day and a sob story to go along with it.

But here's the real kick, on average, the typical monthly donation to a charity via a Chugger will take approximately a whole year before you've even paid for the Chugger! That's an entire year of your donations and good will going to help precisely NO ONE. And I'm pretty damn sure that that's not what you signed up for.

The proof of this, straight from the horses mouth, is here here. My personal favourite is the line "Across the entire campaign, a charity can expect to break even (i.e. recoup the whole cost it spent on fundraising) in about 26-28 months." Do we really need a better reason to ban them than in excess of 2 years worth of helping nobody? If I donate a few hundred quid to charity I want to feel good about doing it. I don't want some clipboard warrior spending it all in Starbucks at the end of a hard days work pissing people off. I give money to help people, I do this reasonably regularly, I give none of this money so you can buy hair gel and fake tan. All this is before the spectacuarly arrogant statement that they genuinely believe that you're not entitled to walk down the street without someone stopping you. Apparently personal privacy and the right to go about your day without interruptions doesn't exist.

A friend of mine even had a Chugger for the Red Cross shout at her down the street "People will die because of you!" purely because she wanted to go about her business rather than waste her time talking to these filth.

So do yourself a favour, donating to charity is a great thing, so do it directly, don't give these professional irritants the time of day.

And if you are a Chugger, crying with outrage after managing to convince yourself that you're actually a worthwhile member of society? Here's an idea, why don't you go out and get a real job, then donate everything you earn over and above your Chugging wage to charity, and let's see how committed you really are to this. The charities will get a lot more money, waste a lot less, and for once you might be able to find out what it feels like to know that if you got hit by a bus, someone might actually stop and help you out for a change.

Peons on the Peasent Wagon

One of the benefits of recently becoming a North Londoner as that I can just hop on the bus to work, and not have to cram myself onto a tube carriage that's too small for anyone who continued to grow past their 10th birthday, and save some cash in the process.

One of the bad things about doing this is the number of window lickers you have to endure on a daily basis. Over the years I've all gotten used to the arrogant types who seem to think that because everyone else has paid to get on TFL must have loads of money, so why the hell shouldn't the driver let them on for free. I mean after all, they've been standing there shouting about it for long enough, surely that's going to have won someone over?

But they're not the most disturbing people you get on Buses, oh no, more often than not that get's saved for me.

I've long since considered myself to be something of a Mecca for the unhinged, so on the way home last night it was no big shock that once we'd extracted the afore mentioned hitch-hikers that life decided to serve me up with a new best friend to keep me company for the rest of the journey.

What followed for the rest of my journey was a short and concise lesson as to why people in London generally want nothing to do with each other.

Once my new mate clambered up onto the bus and dug around in what I'm relatively sure was a spare shoe to find his Oyster card, he turned to find and seat with that glorious almost vacant expression that inspires the universal prayer of public transport, as we all simultaneously reached out to the nearest convenient deity and said to ourselves, "oh for the love of God, don't sit next to me!"

Sadly being a card carrying Atheist, science doesn't pay much attention to the stray thoughts of a wayward Londoner, and as I'd clearly forgotten to remove the sign around my neck that said "Hi, I'm friendly and love meeting new and interesting people, it'd be awfully jolly if you came and started talking at me!" I had no option but to accept my fate as he came staggering towards me.

So, just as I was finishing up my mental calculations of exactly how long this pleasure was likely to last, and accepted that by having a huge box with me getting up and moving wasn't going to happen without throwing a hoover at someone, my new friend reached that magical final foot away from me.

And it was there, at the kind of distance where you've usually had to pay a lot of money to get someone in to, that I was greeted with the sight of an unwashed, unclothed groin, complete with dirt marks and overhanging stomach staggering towards my face. You see, while this guy had worked out the complexities of an Oyster card, and the concept of Buses, basic personal hygiene and the ability to complete the dressing process weren't apparently running a close second on his list of lifetime achievements.

Immediately after that fleshy wake up call he parked his thankfully mildly more clothed backside down next to me and started ranting.

It was a this point that I thought to myself, "Aha! I've got you on this one, that hairy groin stunt might have been a new one on me, but this talking bollocks insessently until I react will get you nowhere, for I've come readily equipped with ear phones and an iPod, so I can't hear you." At which point the album I was listening to immediately finished.

This however allowed me a few precious seconds to hear what the hell he was saying though, and it turns out I was having a mildly better time of it than whoever  he was speaking to, as he was talking utter nonsense at them and doing things like repeating the bloody place names that the automated announcement system was sayi..hang on, he's not repeating them, he's.....talking to them. He's sat there hiding his man parts under a t-shirt that looks like it was turned down by any self respecting tramp, and having a conversation with the sodding automated announcements that tell you what the next stop is. How the hell does these people get allowed out!

Fortunately for me that's when I got to my stop, got up, and made a hastey exit. Then I wrote about my horror, and at least some of you laughed at it. You bastards.

Finally some of you are mentally shouting at me for being a heartless dick as he clearly had mental issues. Well, you're right, he clearly did. Incidentally, the opposite seat to me on the bus had a girl who looked like she was about 7 years old sitting on it on her way back from school. Perhaps the reality isn't just that I might be using this guy for comic effect, but that it's also a damn good job he sat next to me and not her. I'm used to dealing with this kind of shit, that could have scared the living hell out of her.

Social Experiments, with Swords

Every Monday I engage in something of a social experiment on route to the London Longsword Academy at the Barbican. I make my way through London with my (nylon plastic) training sword in plain view of every Tom, Dick and Harry who happens to pass by.

Naturally I get even more odd looks than normal (measured by the fact that I actually notice them) as people stare wondering what the hell I'm holding. Which is of course the problem. As every Monday what I'm actually doing is experiencing just how deluded people are.

Now, they don't know it's a sword, I deliberately remove the cross guard so it looks less scary, and it's White, and it's not made of metal, and I'm holding it by the "blade". Making it pretty obvious that it's either not sharp, or I'm an utter moron and desperately trying to relieve myself of a limb. But gradually it tends to dawn on most people what it is.

This however, just doesn't compute for the average Londoner. People will literally stare at it as though there's something deeply weird and odd about a man holding a long plastic thing. Turn up at midday Gothed up for the night with spikes all over your clothes and it's unlikely anyone in London will notice, rock up at the end of the day with a training sword and some sports gear and they think you're about to embark on a one man crusade down the Victoria Line. The point of course is simple; the other day I sat next to a guy on the tube with a bag of Golf Clubs. No one batted an eyelid, the same goes for Tennis Rackets and other sports kit. Sit there with a guy wearing his army gear on the way home and nobody cares that he's been well trained in various forms of armed and unarmed combat. Someone walks on wearing clothes that marks them out as a martial artist and nobody minds. But sit there with a plastic sword and they think you're mental, and you can see them weighing up the options about calling the Police.

So for those of you who get scared by that, here's a quick lesson. Practically everything is a weapon in the wrong hands. Sports gear, your weekly shopping, a rolled up magazine, a mobile phone, jewellery, literally anything. And lets not forget the afore mentioned martial arts crowd (who NEVER get questioned at airport security by the way). So, the point is, if you want to give me worried looks on a weekly basis fine, but you might want to contemplate if it's ever worth leaving the house again afterwards as well. Because if what you can see in plain sight scares you, then the stuff you can't see clearly must keep you awake at night.

Anyone who wants to know more about European Martial Arts / Sword Fighting in London, please point yourselves in this direction: http://fightmedieval.com/

Guide to modern life in London

No doubt this is going to be one of those things that grows over time, but for now...

Consider this a cut out and keep guide. Feel free to add your own rules.

1. You shall never, under any circumstances take a giant wheely bag onto any form of rush hour transport. Anyone caught doing this will have their bags kicked over and their possessions trampled on. There are no exceptions. There are no excuses. And at no point will you have a legitimate reason to be annoyed when it happens to you.
2. Discounting the blind, it might be wise to notice that the other 7.5 million people in London have figured out that you’re supposed to stand on the right of the escalator. Not being able to grasp this concept is up there with offering tap dancing lessons in a suspiciously empty field in Cambodia, and should be punishable by death.
3. Never, EVER, stop dead in the middle of a train, tube, or bus station, on Oxford Street, or anywhere else with more than 5 people around. I will be moving faster than you, and I won’t be stopping to compensate for the fact that putting one foot in front of the other and getting out of everyone’s way is a concept too complicated for you to grasp.
4. Cyclists. If you want to cycle in London fine. Just understand one thing, owning a bike does not make you Jesus, although apparently it might make you blind. You do have to stop at traffic lights, you don’t get to cut corners, and if you get hit by a bus I can guarantee you that you won’t be coming back to life 3 days later! I also won’t care. Think of it as natural selection.
5. Chuggers; have some free advice. Get a proper job, donate everything you earn over your chugging pay to a charity, keep that warm fuzzy feeling that you get inside by working for the greater good, and watch as your popularity skyrockets with the knowledge that the rest of London no longer wants to see you flayed alive and fed to the Queens Corgi’s!
6. Beggars. There’s no such thing as a homelessness hostel in the entirety of the UK that you have to pay for. Fact. Just admit that you want the money for drink/drugs or, on a rare occasion, food. I’m still not going to give you any, but at least I’ll think better of you for it.
7. Tube workers. The only people in London who make cyclists appear popular. 35 days holiday, 4 day working weeks, 300 strike days a year, and the combined intellect of a brain damaged Chihuahua. Incompetence isn’t a competitive sport, but thanks for trying!
8. Train/tube passengers. You bought one ticket, ergo you get one seat. It doesn’t mean you can dump your bags, lunch, Taiwanese mail order bride, or your fat over lapping arse on the seat next to you as well! And while I’m at it click here . Get it?
9. Chav’s playing music on their mobile phones. Do you honestly think that playing anything out of cheap shitty speakers into your crotch is going to sound good? You’re already wearing a baseball cap over your hoodie, in the summer, with your trousers down by your ankles. We can tell you’re a cunt by looking at you, you really don’t need to advertise it any more.
10. Street Preachers. On average, how many people do you think are converted to any religion via the medium of irritation?

“You’re going to hell”

“No I’m not”

“Convert to [insert obscure, probably child molesting, branch of otherwise generic religion here] and be saved”

“No”

“Heretics will suffer for all eternity”

“No they won’t”

“Yes they will!”

“Crikey. Where do I sign?”

NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!

And while I’m here which bastard keeps selling you those damned megaphones?