Daily Mail on the attack over driver wages

[Table 52]

There are two things here that don't make sense to me:

1) If there are thousands of applicants for every job, why not put the wages down for new applicants? Less people would apply, but you'd still have more than enough applicants willing to do the job for a lower wage.

2) I know it costs a lot to train a new driver. But surely, if a TOC is having to pay a premium rate to its current drivers for overtime or fines for every cancellation, in the short to medium term having more trained drivers should pay for itself?

 

[DarloRich]

This would be the same BBC which at various times has just recycled what the Guardian is peddling would it?

if I don't read the Guardian how would i know.....................

You stick to your beloved DM. It is clear you are unable to see it for what it is: Crap.

Clearly not everyone agrees with me if the DM is selling c.1.5m copies per day.

It's done several, but as you don't read it by your own admission and take the line which many anti DM'ers do you wouldn't know that.

Well done DM - what a campaigning force for good. So good know one notices.

So basically what you're saying is no, because there are low wages in the finance sector but they just don't get the coverage?

You seem unable to grasp a very simple point: The DM will never complain that bankers are paid too much, at least until the bad publicity impacts on the share price. They will complain, loudly and often, that public servants are paid too much and enjoy cushy terms. Why is that?

Why is it that the campaigning, wonderful, excellent DM hasn't taken up the cause of lowly paid banker tellers? Why? Because that is what they want. The workers to know their place and not dare complain. Increasing wages at the bottom might mean slightly less for the likes of Dacre to stash away somewhere. Cant have that can we?

 

[Bayum]

Unfortunately, I think papers like the Daily Mail will continue to write sensationalist news reports regardless of job, difficulty or education needed to gain employment in that industry. Eve seen it with doctors, we’ve seen it with nurses, we’ve seen it more recently with teachers - 1/3 of children ‘failed’ to reach expected standard, negative spin on the 3.5% increase in pay because we get six weeks over the summer period and therefore shouldn’t be elegible for pay increases...

As long as they can whip up and force out these negative views and create negative connotations to certain professions or group of people, they’ll be happy.

 

[Bromley boy]

1) If there are thousands of applicants for every job, why not put the wages down for new applicants? Less people would apply, but you'd still have more than enough applicants willing to do the job for a lower wage.

Thousands of applicants doesn't = thousands of suitable applicants. Just as with any reasonably well paying job.

2) I know it costs a lot to train a new driver. But surely, if a TOC is having to pay a premium rate to its current drivers for overtime or fines for every cancellation, in the short to medium term having more trained drivers should pay for itself?

Because paying some drivers a premium to do overtime is cheaper than employing a larger number of drivers overall, none of whom do overtime.

 

[Edgeley]

It's inevitable that this sort of thing doesn't play well when many members of the travelling public perceive that the railway system is offering a poor quality service.

 

[GB]

.

2) I know it costs a lot to train a new driver. But surely, if a TOC is having to pay a premium rate to its current drivers for overtime or fines for every cancellation, in the short to medium term having more trained drivers should pay for itself?

Theres more costs to think about than just the initial training...you also have to consider national insurance contributions, pension contributions, uniform costs, on going training costs, statutory sickness, annual leave etc etc.

If it were cheaper to employ more drivers then I am sure thats what TOCs would be doing.

 

[Moonshot]

Theres more costs to think about than just the initial training...you also have to consider national insurance contributions, pension contributions, uniform costs, on going training costs, statutory sickness, annual leave etc etc.

If it were cheaper to employ more drivers then I am sure thats what TOCs would be doing.

Indeed they would, a fact that is lost on a lot of posters. What is not also generally known is that on any given day , there will be a number of drivers and guards rostered as contingency, and if things are running fine and dandy on any given day, then that contingency would be sat around playing cards in the mess room.

 

[DarloRich]

Indeed they would, a fact that is lost on a lot of posters. What is not also generally known is that on any given day , there will be a number of drivers and guards rostered as contingency, and if things are running fine and dandy on any given day, then that contingency would be sat around playing cards in the mess room.

Which then generates the train drivers paid £X to sit around playing cards while trains are cancelled headlines!

It's inevitable that this sort of thing doesn't play well when many members of the travelling public perceive that the railway system is offering a poor quality service.

indeed - but the ire of the DM is wrongly directed. The wages of the drivers are not to blame for an inefficient system.

 

[Kite159]

So why does a national newspaper want to stoke up and incite hatred against train drivers?

Could be that one of the bigwigs of the Mail got caught out by Sunday trains getting cancelled due to drivers not wanting to work their rest days, maybe they are a long suffering GWR passenger

 

[DarloRich]

Could be that one of the bigwigs of the Mail got caught out by Sunday trains getting cancelled due to drivers not wanting to work their rest days, maybe they are a long suffering GWR passenger

We are told the DM is an investigative journal of unparalleled brilliance who seek to do unchallenged good for society. Surely it wont be something so selfish that drove their reports?

( lots of the Finsbury Park reporting was driven by such experiences!)

 

[NSEFAN]

Paying a nurse a train drivers salary would have the effect of increasing everyones tax contribution. Bit of a conudrum is that one.

Not really. If people want more/better nurses then they need to pay for that. You get what you pay for.

 

[dctraindriver]

So which "independent" source do you get your news from then?



The Mail was also the only paper on Fleet Street which stuck its head above the parapet on the Stephen Lawrence killers - and that was driven by Dacre following a meeting with Paul Condon who basically said they (the Met) weren't inclined to push it - so enraged was Dacre that he basically went for the 'publish and be damned' approach.

The only other papers I think have done anything comparable in the last 10 years were the Telegraph with the expenses scandal and The Times with the Rochdale Child Abuse stuff.

Please do a bit of research before hailing Dacre as the saviour to The Lawrence’s. After the 97 headline the Mail was extremely vocal against the family....


“It is ... disingenuous of Dacre to claim that the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign would have petered out if his paper had not ridden heroically to its rescue. The "Murderers" story appeared in February 1997, almost four years after Stephen was killed. For much of the intervening period the mainstream press, including the Daily Mail, were openly hostile and suspicious of a family that so vocally criticised the police”....

 

[bspahh]

I like the Kitten Block plug in for Chrome.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/...ker/ghjadbffkapbnlbccfjoljfhgolbofhi?hl=en-GB

If I really want to read something on the Daily Mail, I can copy the URL to another browser.

 

[Moonshot]

Not really. If people want more/better nurses then they need to pay for that. You get what you pay for.

The conundrum is that voters in general do not want to pay more tax. Train drivers at my depot do moan when they get there payslips and see a chunk of tax taken out, in effect for every £1 they are earning on a rest day, 40p goes straight into tax payers coffers

 

[al78]

The conundrum is that voters in general do not want to pay more tax. Train drivers at my depot do moan when they get there payslips and see a chunk of tax taken out, in effect for every £1 they are earning on a rest day, 40p goes straight into tax payers coffers

Fine to complain about it, as long as you never use any service or infrastructure, either directly or indirectly, that is funded from taxpayers money.

 

[Moonshot]

Fine to complain about it, as long as you never use any service or infrastructure, either directly or indirectly, that is funded from taxpayers money.

And does the same apply for those who dont pay any tax whatsoever?

 

[theironroad]

I saw the front page in the BBC news online segment where they show the front pages of a variety of papers and I was prepared for the worst.

While I hate the DM for a variety of reasons, it is a long standing critic of the railways and wasn't really surprised.

The article is pretty much what I'd expect. It some of their friends comments from tory MP's which are ignorant. Saying drivers hold passengers in contempt because they won't overtime is risiible. Every day drivers do bits of overtime across the country they often don't want to, just to get a train to its destination to avoid disrupting passengers.

However, many drivers do not want to work on their rostered days off and for that they are blameless.

As a driver for a toc that has Sundays and bank holidays as normal working days in the roster, I don't get the option of not working them unless I can do a mutual swap with another driver.

I do agree there is an argument for all tocs to bring Sundays inside so that a timetable can be guaranteed, but that is for negotiation.
I also believe that the disparities in driver pay need to be addressed, but that's another issue.

 

[dctraindriver]

The conundrum is that voters in general do not want to pay more tax. Train drivers at my depot do moan when they get there payslips and see a chunk of tax taken out, in effect for every £1 they are earning on a rest day, 40p goes straight into tax payers coffers

Err, I don’t moan. I earn more I pay more.

Maybe you should rephrase it with ‘some people at my depot moan when they get their payslips and see a chunk of tax taken out’

Low tax with social care and health services stretched isn’t working. Tax rises are coming.

 

[al78]

A basic summary would be that they believe drivers are already paid too much, don't work enough days/hours and the amount they already receive means they should be driving trains any day of the week.

This sounds like the typical gutter media strategy of picking a minority and demonising it to stir up public anger and direct it at that minority, thus deflecting unwanted attention away from those who are truly responsible for the cock ups or crap behaviour which inflict costs on the general public.

We see it all the time, it was immigrants framed as responsible for the country's problems all the way up to Brexit, now it is train drivers in the face of all the ongoing chaos on the rail network. Wait until a cyclist crashes into a pedestrian and they will be the next target of hatred with the standard blowing out of all proportion. I'm surprised we haven't had benefit claimants come round again, they are long overdue for projecting the country's woes onto.

 

[theironroad]

This sounds like the typical gutter media strategy of picking a minority and demonising it to stir up public anger and direct it at that minority, thus deflecting unwanted attention away from those who are truly responsible for the cock ups or crap behaviour which inflict costs on the general public.

We see it all the time, it was immigrants framed as responsible for the country's problems all the way up to Brexit, now it is train drivers in the face of all the ongoing chaos on the rail network. Wait until a cyclist crashes into a pedestrian and they will be the next target of hatred with the standard blowing out of all proportion. I'm surprised we haven't had benefit claimants come round again, they are long overdue for projecting the country's woes onto.

+100.

 

[Bromley boy]

Saying drivers hold passengers in contempt because they won't overtime is risiible. Every day drivers do bits of overtime across the country they often don't want to, just to get a train to its destination to avoid disrupting passengers.

Absolutely.

It also plays into the hands of the TOC: focussing on overpaid lazy drivers “refusing” to work overtime etc. takes the spotlight off TOCs’ incompetent management, failure to employ enough staff etc.

I don’t do rest days. Why should this be considered to be “refusing” to work overtime? I simply work my contracted hours (including bank holidays and Sundays for no extra pay). If the TOC runs out of drivers that’s on them.

The railway gets more than its fair share of this. You never see headlines attacking NHS staff or teachers for “refusal to work overtime”.

 

[GB]

And does the same apply for those who dont pay any tax whatsoever?

As the cost of medical and social care continues to increase, surely every adult who has a job should pay some sort of tax...even if its just £1 per month.

 

[Moonshot]

Absolutely.

It also plays into the hands of the TOC: focussing on overpaid lazy drivers “refusing” to work overtime etc. takes the spotlight of TOCs’ incompetent management, failure to employ enough staff etc.

I don’t do rest days. Why should this be considered to be “refusing” to work overtime? I simply work my contracted hours (including bank holidays and Sundays for no extra pay). If the TOC runs out of drivers that’s on them.

The railway gets more than its fair share of this. You never see headlines attacking NHS staff or teachers for “refusal to work overtime”.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you are happy just working flat week, then fair enough. You still have the choice of whether you want to earn extra cash or not, which is exercised by a good number of staff. Its a nice choice to have, and is a benefit of working in the industry

 

[Moonshot]

As the cost of medical and social care continues to increase, surely every adult who has a job should pay some sort of tax...even if its just £1 per month.

Thats probably for a thread in general discussion. But in any event, there will always be people who think taxation system is unfair.

 

[DarloRich]

This sounds like the typical gutter media strategy of picking a minority and demonising it to stir up public anger and direct it at that minority, thus deflecting unwanted attention away from those who are truly responsible for the cock ups or crap behaviour which inflict costs on the general public.

We see it all the time, it was immigrants framed as responsible for the country's problems all the way up to Brexit, now it is train drivers in the face of all the ongoing chaos on the rail network. Wait until a cyclist crashes into a pedestrian and they will be the next target of hatred with the standard blowing out of all proportion. I'm surprised we haven't had benefit claimants come round again, they are long overdue for projecting the country's woes onto.

Is the correct answer. It is all, in my mind, designed to deflect attention from the real villains.

And does the same apply for those who dont pay any tax whatsoever?

I wonder how much tax Mr Dacre or Viscount Rothermere paid last year?

 

[WelshBluebird]

And does the same apply for those who dont pay any tax whatsoever?

I assume you just mean income tax there?
As because we have things like VAT, you'd be hard pushed to find someone who doesn't pay "any tax whatsoever".

 

[Esker-pades]

I wonder how much tax Mr Dacre or Viscount Rothermere paid last year?

They have tax havens for that sort of thing. They've avoided/evaded tax for years.

 

[Fredtheshred]

Hate, Immigrants; weather; hate; benefit scroungers; brexit traitors; cure for arthritis/dementia; hate; divide and conquer; race to the bottom; hate; hang em and flog em.

Deep breath........

.......and repeat.

 

[Fredtheshred]

They have tax havens for that sort of thing. They've avoided/evaded tax for years.

Aint that the truth.

 

[Moonshot]

I assume you just mean income tax there?
As because we have things like VAT, you'd be hard pushed to find someone who doesn't pay "any tax whatsoever".

yes i do.