Two reasons why I didn’t post yesterday, firstly the blogger site was unavailable and secondly the big toe on my left foot is swollen to the point that walking is uncomfortable and wearing my LUL issue DMs downright painful. Consequently I phoned in sick and will have to go through the tedious “return to work” process at some point next week.

I can’t remember the last time I was off work due to sickness, I think it was back in the autumn, but this will effect what happens next. LUL’s sickness policy is based on a suitably Byzantine equation of how often you take time off in a given period and for how long though to be honest I can’t remember the exact details so I will explain more after I’ve had my “return to work” interview.

In the meantime LUL have amended their pay offer, up from the "fair and affordable" 4% they tabled a month ago to a "very fair and affordable" 4.5%. As I mentioned before the normal starting point for pay negotiations is RPI in February which this year was 5.5% so at this rate we’ve got another two months to go before proper negotiations commence.

Then the LUL management will announce that they are off on their summer hols so talks will be delayed till the autumn.