Despite earning an average of £45,000 a year (many far in excess of this) and having more holidays than Paris Hilton, fuel truck drivers explain that they want more money, more holidays, jobs for life and more days in cozy rural Carvery back rooms watching health and safety videos.

Militant Unite union pillock leader Len McCluskey explained 'It is about aggressive barely literate ex football hooligans holding you to ransom a simple measure, the creation of an industry-wide bargaining forum. It is about bringing fairness and stability back to an essential national industry.'

A spokemans said:

"@#$%& you, @#$%& the economy, and we're gonna @#$%& up your Easter too"

That story in full...

All union leaders should be called Len

Everyone should earn £45,000 a year.

Then we'd all be truck drivers or deputy head teachers.

You could be anything you want. You'd still get £45,000 a year though.

That's be the unions out of business then. Silver linings and all that.

I want to be a susurrus.

I'd like to be a French afternoon.

I want to be chelonian

Alien or mutant?

Huguenot Wrote:
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> Despite earning an average of £45,000 a year (many
> far in excess of this) and having more holidays
> than Paris Hilton, fuel truck drivers explain that
> they want more money, more holidays, jobs for life
> and more days in cozy rural Carvery back rooms
> watching health and safety videos.
>
> Militant Unite union pillock leader Len McCluskey
> explained 'It is about aggressive barely literate
> ex football hooligans holding you to ransom a
> simple measure, the creation of an industry-wide
> bargaining forum. It is about bringing fairness
> and stability back to an essential national
> industry.'
>
> A spokemans said:
>
> "@#$%& you, @#$%& the economy, and we're gonna
> @#$%& up your Easter too"
>
> That story in full...

Maybe you should try driving a tanker lorry full of a highly dangerous substance and consider the effects of stress and the responsibility the drivers have as well as all of the health & safety considerations that go with the job before pontificating. Don't you like people earning more money than you?

I think people should pontificate away if some lorry drivers earning £45k are trying to eff up the economy even more. What do bus drivers earn? They carry human goods on a daily basis. If it's £45k I'd consider a career change.

What, people earning over £45k trying to @#$%& up the economy, you say..?

I've never heard the like.

lol Rosie.....

I always thought of truck drivers as being highly skilled....not everyone could manoeuvre an articulated lorry with such precision (especially when motorway tailgating) and long distance lorry drivers spend days away from their families.....like errr soldiers! (do they get £45k a year?).

Tbh I have no idea is a lorry driver is worth 45k a year any more than a tube driver etc. I do know that the cost of living is rising faster than wages and housing inflation has been outstripping wages for almost two decades. So who can blame any worker for using whatever they can to get as much salary as they can. I think we'd all do it if we could.

--------------------
Gooooaaaaalllllll!

Huge in absolutely 100% predictability shocker.

Govt.sells access to PM, PM lies about stamping out lobbying? - no - men who Huge would cross the road to avoid want more money. The bastards.

Anyway why worry? The army are ready to step in to do the jobs of anyone who dares to strike. That's what they are for isn't it?

Alan Medic Wrote:
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> I think people should pontificate away if some
> lorry drivers earning £45k are trying to eff up
> the economy even more. What do bus drivers earn?
> They carry human goods on a daily basis. If it's
> £45k I'd consider a career change.


If a bus takes a knock the human goods don't explode!!!!! The human cargo explode with stinky farts anyway regardless of crashes! It is a stressful and skilled job full of responsibility-tanker drivers, not farting.

I think you've been watching too many Bruce Willis movies.

A train driver for Southern earns around £45K

A Euro Star driver around £60K

A kitchen designer for the company that fitted Cameron's no. 10 flat earns around £50k +

Take your pick at who's worth what


NETTE

"We'll need extra space for all the donors"

"You two are fond of kebabs?"

"Get this idiot out of here, Samantha."

Razors Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> If a bus takes a knock the human goods don't
> explode!!!!! The human cargo explode with stinky
> farts anyway regardless of crashes! It is a
> stressful and skilled job full of
> responsibility-tanker drivers, not farting.


"You're driving a coach full of flatulent CAMRA members who have overdosed on faggot and peas just outside Wolverhampton and a flask of norovirus is perched on the edge of the luggage rack in a precarious fashion. One jolt is all it will take and you're approaching a humpback bridge. What do you do hot-shot? What do you do!?"

Ted Max Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "We'll need extra space for all the donors"
>
> "You two are fond of kebabs?"
>
> "Get this idiot out of here, Samantha."

Cam Dine with Me...

Ha ha, I love this reinterpretation of truck drivers as selfless heroes running the gauntlet of death on a daily basis, single handedly holding the very fabric of our society together at inconceivable personal sacrifice.



Truck drivers - the new Ubermensch.

Could we elevate them to some sort of religious status, maybe worship them once a week in an act of communal gratitude accompanied by much wialing and gnashing of teeth, crippled by our own inadequacies? Oh, that we could all attain such lofty heights.

Huguenot Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
>
> Truck drivers - the new Ubermensch.
>
> Could we elevate them to some sort of religious
> status, maybe worship them once a week in an act
> of communal gratitude accompanied by much wialing
> and gnashing of teeth, crippled by our own
> inadequacies?

Can we include kitchen designers ?

I worship at their (corian™ surfaced) altar


NETTE

Of all the jobs I can think of, I would struggle to think of truck drivers as "highly skilled"! Although admittedly there is a certain amount of training/knowledge necessary. £45K sounds quite a lot to me, certainly not grounds for striking. If they don't want the job any more, I'm sure plenty of others would.

Saying that, I don't think the description of "aggressive barely literate ex football hooligans" is exactly helpful.

Daily Heil Strikes Again

We mustn't panic, but according to a front page headline in the Daily Mail we're being "HELD TO RANSOM BY 1,000 TANKER DRIVERS". What bad luck, that 1,000 tanker drivers have become Somali pirates.

Rather have them doing an essential job for 45k than this smirking bustard on many millions ....

"Saying that, I don't think the description of "aggressive barely literate ex football hooligans" is exactly helpful."

Oh, okay, I was just having fun

I don't think mental Len is going to be overly stressed by my little poke. He'd probably grin as he looked in the mirror.

It doesn't detract from my underlying message of WTF?

Seems like they do a skilled, dangerous and stressful job that is of vital importance.

Is £45k that unreasonable?

I was waiting to hear the usual suspects bang on about public sector workers till I realised these fellas work in the private sector - isn't this the power of the market in action?

The market only works well where no single participant has the power to set prices unilaterally, and there are no barriers to entry or exit.

Far from being the market in action, this is an example of the creation of a monopoly and price fixing.

As Len explains - the union is NOT currently strong in fuel trucking, this is an attempt to create a strong union that has a dominant market position and the ability to hold the nation to ransom.

The drive for yet more 'health and saftey' requirements is an attempt to INCREASE the barriers to entry, and would no doubt aim to ensure that only those workers IN the union would ever be able to work - thus preventing the labour market from functioning.

This move is absolutely transparent - this is a nasty little 'see you next tuesday' in action.

People are held to ransom by monopolies all the time and yet no one complains....

Water companies
Train companies

Price fixing by large multi-nationals regularly goes unchecked.

And yet a bunch of guys want an extra few grand for transporting dangerous, flammable liquids safely around the country and you start with personal attacks and name calling. It's getting tired.

This isn't going to bring the country to its knees as much as you'd like to pretend otherwise. In fact given your loathing of cars I'd suggest this would help futher your agenda to move people away from unnecessary journies.