Makes sense. Seems to me that most TOCs who have both London and country depots offer a London weighting or some kind (do GTR?!).
ARL doesn’t but it is an exclusively London based TOC.
True.
As you say, you guys still have guards (for now), even on metro routes. It could always be worse! Just imagine if ASLEF had sold all your Ts and Cs for a few quid donkey’s years ago and had nothing left to sell (Southeastern, I’m looking at you

).