The No Strike Deal… yeah right

One of the major election issues in the Mayoral race is that of tube strikes. Boris has made all Londoners a promise: He will sign a no-strike deal with the RMT in return for an independent arbiter to negotiate pay deals. What planet, exactly, is Boris Johnson living on? And more to the point who are the completely insane individuals who believe that he can deliver this pie in the sky? Far too many if the polls are to be believed…

Bob Crow is a Scum Bag of the highest order

Firstly, however, let’s get one thing straight. Bob Crow is the very lowest form of pond life known to mankind. He would make a Simon Cowell X-factor contestant cringe with his stories of being dealt a bum deal in life and hard done by routine. The man is scum. He claims to be a champion of the working classes; yet if he had it his way he would ensure he and his cronies would never have to do a day’s work ever again. He has continued to give trade unionism an unfair reputation and like the militant unions of the 1970s is doing his best to destroy the hand that is supposed to feed them – the Labour party. It was no surprise that clause four had to go with men like Crow about: Labour is unelectable with plonkers like this around, and that is something Livingstone may well come to learn in just over a week.

Now back to the point…

Some other great ideas

Boris Johnson is promising that he will somehow, miraculously, end strikes on the tube by simply asking the RMT not to do it anymore. What a brilliant idea! I have some more. How about we make petrol free by asking the OPEC countries to lighten up a bit and just give it to us by the barrel load. Or perhaps we could kindly ask Mugabe to stop being such a spoil sport and step down like an honest gentlemen would. While we’re at it, why doesn’t Chelsea do a deal with Manchester United to get them to stop winning all those games of football so they can lift a trophy for once? We could even get Gordon Brown to buck up his ideas.

The simple answer is why in the name of floppy blonde hair would they? What makes Boris think that the RMT are remotely interested in getting a fair deal? They haven’t had one for years, they aren’t about to suddenly want one from an upper class toff like Boris. No way. They want the most unfair, unreasonable deal possible; one that will ensure they do the very least amount of work for the most ridiculous amount of money.

Why it will never work

Getting in an independent arbiter would mean that Bob Crow and his band of lazy men would have to agree to the sort of pay rises associated with lesser beings such as nurses and policemen; the sort of person who risk their lives to save others on a daily basis rather than sit in a cabin for an hour or so a day, four days a week. Why would they vote for pittance when they could be getting a pot of gold?

It’s not that the Mayor is too weak, it is that Crow is too strong

In short, any promise Boris has about ending tube strikes is, what he would call, absolute rhubarb. If anything, we can expect to see even more under a Bojo Mayoralship than under a Livingstone one. There is nothing Mr Crow would like to see more than using his overinflated ego and power on a Tory Mayor for his own personal enjoyment.

Tony Travers, the director of the Greater London Group - a research centre made up of experts in various aspects of London’s government, has even said the Tory candidate would be easier for the RMT to beat than Livingstone, who had been “hard and canny” in negotiations. It has not been through Livingstone’s lack of strength against the Unions that has been the problem - far from it. He has been strong. The problem right now is that Crow is even stronger and has London by the short and curlies.

I have the perfect solution, however…

What would make me vote for Boris, or any other candidate for that matter, would be if they promised me this in their manifesto: Vote for me and I will string Bob Crow up by his testicles and hang him out to dry.