Friday was as quiet as Thursday, it had a sort of Saturday feel to it, not the last minute rush the shops were hoping for. Tomorrow I will be on strike for the first time in all my years on the Tube and I’ll be manning the picket line at my local pub on the High Road watching West Ham v Fulham. As I said yesterday this could all have been avoided if LUL had offered to reduce the number of TOps working Boxing Day at any time over the past month and when they made the offer on Wednesday morning they knew full well it was far too late to do anything.

So if I wanted one thing for Christmas I would ask Santa to bring us senior management with a bit of imagination, a bit of vision, with an actual desire to provide the best service we could for our passengers and to treat the staff as a valued resource rather than something to be defeated at every turn. As I think I’ve mentioned before things definitely seemed to be improving under Tim O’Toole who worked in US rail freight before he came to LUL so maybe we need to attract the brightest and best from the railway industry rather than simply promoting from within.

LUL is part of TfL and the chairman of TfL is the Mayor of London so if you want real change on the Tube then in May 2012 you need to vote for a Mayor who is actually committed to improving the Tube. I’m not going to suggest one person or one party but have a good read of the section on transport in each each candidate's manifesto then ask yourself does what they say seem reasonable and more importantly is it possible. If all they talk about is buses, bikes, cable cars across the Thames, airports on islands and smashing the RMT then perhaps they aren’t really that interested in the Tube.

Merry Christmas, everybody.