East Midland has been forced to cancel trains or alter services in recent weeks due to a lack of drivers though it has promised that the shortfall will be dealt with by mid-December.  For those of you interested EMT drivers are on a salary of £41187 with overtime for working rest days.  As I mentioned on here back in the Summer EMT were in the news for trying to mess around with the train drivers pensions with the threat of a strike over the Olympics but back in 2009 they had more fun and games when they decided to stop paying double time for working Sundays.

 

As most Sunday working was voluntary it shouldn’t have come as a big surprise when on the first weekend they introduced the new rates of pay none of the drivers chose to work on their day off and they had to cancel the majority of trains.  It would seem they still haven’t quite grasped the idea that trains need drivers but as they received £46m of taxpayers’ money between November and June why worry about running a railway?

Chris Hooper has won the 2012 Rail Engineer of the Year Award, he’s the man who made it possible for us to hear Boris’s announcements on the Tube during run up to the Olympics telling people to avoid the Tube.   They were subsequently dropped after a week or so when they left the system half empty, the West End deserted and businesses howling about the lack of customers.

Well done, Chris, Jesus and your peer group loves you; everyone else……….