The Virtual Gigolo

It is completely unreasonable for the world to continue with groups of people taking irrational and immature offense at every little action by outsiders. There was no need for Muslims to have become offended by cartoons, there is no need for Christians to be up in arms about Jerry Springer the Opera and there is no need for Muslims to be offended by the comments by the pope. Of course individual people can be offended by individual behaviours, personal things, smoking near by, reading religious texts in one’s presence, door to door sales (both secular and religious), these are very different from the situation where large groups becoming irrationally angered and behave like spoilt children as a result of some activity that might be something that some of the members would avoid. People need to learn to thicken their skins, and more importantly to stop following like sheep the leadership of people who have no obvious aim in life other than to concentrate the sensitivity of their social group to the level of insanity.

What makes these situations even worse is that the cultural sensitivity is garnered by people who appear to feel that their way to power is to make people believe that the rest of the world hates them. These leaders know what they are doing, and the group members need to learn to see through the facade.

Here in the UK we have become used to strikes on the railways. In the past there were many strikes in all sorts of areas of work, then there were few thanks to Margaret Thatcher’s government. Now it seems that in certain areas, rail and (worryingly) fire services there are many again.

So we think to ourselves, why are these people striking. What can we do to allay their grievances? It turns out that usually they are after pay rises, one might consider this fair if they are under paid – on this I make no judgement. Sometimes their strikes relate to safety, they feel that the companies risk customer safety, although in reality it seems that such strikes come down to pay (“if you believe that you’ll believe anything” is a phrase that comes to mind).

The latest strike, however, surpasses all others for evidence of arrogance among those gracious few, dedicated enough to drive the trains on the British rail network. Is this strike related to safety? No, of course not. Is it related to pay? No, even that appears to be above the latest strike organisers.
This strike is in fact about South West Trains (SWT) using managers to drive trains during the last strike. That is to say that SWT used common sense as relating to business activities and tried to reduce the suffering of their customer base, something that many of us might suggest is a wise long term strategy. To the unions, however, using managers to drive some of the trains reduces the power they have to irritate the general public, and therefore the power they perceive that they have to blackmail the rail companies, and hence is a strikeworthy offence.

In all honesty I think the train drivers are pushing their luck. If they general public start to become aggressive I very much doubt that they will blame their union (and therefore themselves) for this. No, they find some reason to blame the train companies, presumably for not protecting them well enough, and go on strike again. Round and round we go.