Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll. The responses to the question "How long does your journey to work take in the morning?" were as follows:
less than 15 minutes - 32%
15 to 30 minutes - 22%
30 to 60 minutes - 29%
60 to 120 minutes - 15%
more than 120 minutes - 3%
I foolishly forgot to include the option "I work from home", which (judging by the comments) would be about a third of the 32% who reported a journey time of less than 15 minutes.
There is no particular back story to this poll - I was just genuinely interested whether my assumption that the majority of people are prepared to tolerate a commute of 'about half an hour' was correct and what the spread about the mean (37 minutes) is.
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Staying with the travel theme, the British Airways versus Unite (the trade union) industrial dispute seems to me like one of those cases where you want both sides to lose.
As a privatised former public entity, BA was given enormously valuable landing slots at UK airports for free but inherited a hefty final salary pension scheme which it never bothered to fund properly. Even though it was privatised a quarter of a century ago, it never really shook off the public sector mentality - even now, salaries for BA staff are nearly twice what they are at other airlines (if they had taken lower salaries then the difference would have gone into the pension fund and all would be sweet and dandy).
The trade union is being completely daft - in economic terms (if you consolidate the airline and its pension fund into one entity), the employees already own about ninety per cent of their employer (or at least older members of the final salary pension scheme do). I am surprised that the union doesn't have an economist to quietly point this out.
Luckily, there is a way in which both sides can lose. All it needs is for passengers to stop booking with BA for a few weeks and the whole thing will simply collapse. All their slots can be auctioned off properly by the government (preferably on a leasehold rather than a freehold basis) and smaller competitors and new entrants can snap up the aircraft, infrastructure and most of the employees.
So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Would you be bothered if British Airways goes bankrupt and is split up between smaller competitors?"
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
A grim document
15 hours ago
9 comments:
What you say is of course quite right, however I do foresee a problem. Both sides losing will not have the desired result it is my contention that the union did no go into this strike to win particularly but if they do that's OK too, more there desire was to see BA go bust. There reasoning is that if BA go bust the government will step in to bail it out so a virtual nationalisation and a more compliant management. So for the union a win win situation.
(if they had taken lower salaries then the difference would have gone into the pension fund and all would be sweet and dandy).
Bollox!
It would have gone STRAIGHT into the owners pockets as "another nice little earner".
A, that's a depressing thought.
FT, BA's shareholders have done particularly badly since privatisation. Is it so terrible if they get a bit of a return?
I was talking about the OWNERS, not someone with his pocket money stashed in some useless paperwork.
You know, those that turn up at "share holders meetings", IF they bother, in their Rolls Royces, paid for by pocketing any profits a cut in pay may bring, whilst offering the "pocket money kids" a few hands full of pick and mix?
IF they bother, in their Rolls Royces, paid for by pocketing any profits a cut in pay may bring, whilst offering the "pocket money kids" a few hands full of pick and mix?
I see the same old clap trap is being trolley-ed out. How the working man is down trodden by champagne sodden Rolls driving bosses. Of course it is these same bosses who by their entrepreneurial skills ensure that these poor workers have a job in the first place, the poorer in society get their state benefits, the standard of living that is enjoyed today in the UK is what it is (in decline now of course because of the policies of lunes like Furor Teutonicus). I am wasting my breath of course lunes will always be lunes.
Of course it is these same bosses who by their entrepreneurial skills ensure that these poor workers have a job in the first place.
No. They are the same arseholes that were bosses when B.A was public. They inherited their positions, or were handed them as "favours".
There is a difference nbetween this scum, and someone who started out with a lathe in their garage, and now owns a company employing 5,000 people, or something.
See the recent story of British steel sacking all the workers somewhere in the U.K recently, to sensd their job to some third world dump.
Aye REALLY "ensuring their poor workers" have a job hey?
I'd like to think that BA would survive and prosper - from the national pride point of view. But the Swiss, Irish and Italians have had their flag carriers kneed in the groin. So too did the American's with the demise of the mighty Pan-Am.
I'm with Antisthenes on this... the unions are playing another game here. They know BA must make these changes to survive but there's no way the union can stand back and allow their members to lose their benefits. So its an all or nothing battle for the airline, with the union calculating that if the company folds they could still come out smiling. So win or lose to the airline. Win or win for the union.
If the workers have any sense, they'll refuse to play the unions game and work towards BA's survival (and their own jobs naturally).
JP, if it cheers people up to have an airline called 'British Airways' then so be it, that doesn't mean that we taxpayers have to bail it out - when old BA is split up and sold off, the trade name can be sold off as a separate asset to whomever wants to pay for it.
Fully agree Mark...
If the company cannot be made to run under its own steam then it should be broken up and sold off. The airline market in the UK is highly competitive, there's no reason for having a state supported one. This is something I believe the unions have overlooked... unless they've been promised something behind closed doors?
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