24 January

The train strike interests me, to see how people respond. The government in this case has been trying to create an impression in the public mind that recent chaos on the trains is due to lazy drivers calling in sick. As always in modern idiot management, when things go wrong, screw your staff first, ask questions second. When the facts show there was less sick leave than average. The real cause is likely the enormous change that was made to the timetables, which was always going to have teething problems. This is the only way working people ever get justice. To fight. We’ve lost the stomach for that fight and too easily fall on the side of ‘peace and harmony’, or at best empty protest. Unions or other types of organised working people really are the way back to peace and harmony in our societies. People voted for Trump and Brexit because nobody was looking out for them, in the way unions used to. It really is as simple as that. If you think the freedoms and good lives we have came from good will in the past, rather than from actual muscle and fight, that’s worse than delusional.