Mind The Gap - Between Their Ears

Dear Tube Workers, 

You work for a transport system for one of the largest, most dynamic and international cities in the world - the only one that does NOT have a 24-hour service. 

Your drivers - that need the basic skills of a 14 year-old player of Grand Theft Auto - are under this misguided impression that they're civil servants in white shirts and red ties working 9-5 in an office. They're not. You are merely required to have spent less time in formal education than the average 6th former. They're train drivers. They push a button and operate a joystick. I know this because I spent 6 hours in a cabin with a train driver. He thought the capital of the USA was New York. We spent most of the time eating pizza, talking about Game of Thrones and number of women he has slept with.

What you earn in wages puts you among the 5% of top earners in the country- far more than firefighters, members of Parliament, most small business owners - who put in 60-70 hours a week at work, care workers, nurses, doctors, firefighters, police personnel and people fighting in the armed forces. You drive a train. On tracks. You don't even have to steer the goddamned things. Some of you show up drunk to the point where a little shit like me could lose my bloody licence.

London DEMANDS a 24-hour transport system. London NEEDS a 24-hour transport system. You work for London Underground. London Underground wants to offer the best possible service for its customers;  you know, those poor sods that PAY YOUR livelihood? Yeah, those customers. Some of them need to get to work at odd hours, so you know, they can afford to pay YOUR wages. Amazing how you want to bite the hand that feeds you.

The world changes, job specs change, and normal people adapt. Most people adapt - you know ones that wipe bottoms and bathe people, ones that befriend and read to people they know will be dead in two weeks time, people that care for feral kids they can't discipline, ones that will jump into a burning building because lives are at stake, ones that have to walk around wearing bullet-proof vests because they're the only ones that aren't armed while their adversaries definitely are, ones that can't call a spade a spade because it's un-PC. You have no idea how sweet you have it. 

We're one of few cities in the world that rely on people to run something a robot can do. My already outdated smartphone has more computing power than 10 of you put together. All you're doing is building the case for automation. Yep that's right, a computer can do what you do, far more efficiently and with zero tantrums.

For that, I thank you. You might want to start looking for proper jobs now.

While I'm no fan of swear words, this needs to be posted and shared...