Rail unions pose as a friend to workers – but that claim is more risible than ever
Jingle bullies
IF the past two Christmases were ruined by a pandemic, this year’s looks like being spoiled by an epidemic of strikes.
Virus spreader-in-chief is Mick Lynch, who is presiding over rail strikes through Christmas — mere weeks after insisting he would do no such thing, and testily denying he was a “Grinch”.
Why rush to agree a deal when his members can now put their feet up in front of the telly instead of working?
Hang the inconvenience for anyone now consigned by his callous actions to spending another Christmas alone.
The rail unions pose as a friend to workers — but with a quarter of hospitality bookings in the make-or-break festive season already cancelled thanks to the transport chaos, putting businesses and jobs on the line, that claim is more risible than ever.
And yet Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has the gall to say this gleeful wrecker is “doing a good job”.
We wish this contagion was limited to the railways, but mail strikes have led to post offices refusing Christmas parcels over a fortnight before the big day, while even ambulance workers are abandoning their posts for two days this month.
Only last week we predicted unions would overplay their hand and shatter the remnants of their public support.
For once, we can’t say we’re happy to be proved right so soon.
Fool house
INCREASING housing stock is crucial to many core Tory values, from levelling up to opportunity for strivers.
How remarkably short-sighted, then, for NIMBY Tory MPs to have forced Michael Gove to water down housebuilding targets.
Our politicians of all stripes have been dogged by short-termism for far too long, whether it be energy supply, infrastructure or housing, and the problems that causes are mounting up.
We’ve had decades of talk. How about some actual action?
Had our fill
SO flagrant is the price-skimming by petrol and diesel retailers that they have now at long last wandered into the sights of competition watchdog the CMA.
It only confirms what The Sun, campaign groups and MPs have long argued: this is a racket in plain view.
The CMA will now trundle on to further investigate the industry’s “rocket and feather” price manipulation: hiking forecourt prices sharply when wholesale costs rise, but being painfully slow to lower them when the opposite occurs.
But drivers could already have saved hundreds of pounds a year each if we had a specific Pumpwatch regulator to stamp out such shady practices.
It’s time to put a rocket up the petrol profiteers, not tickle them with a feather.