Interesting Links for 11-07-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Can someone explain why train companies use overtime so much, rather than employing enough drivers?

(tags:trains scotland )

2. How would the election have gone if Reform hadn't stood?

(tags:UK elections politics )

3. What Labour's strategy was in the election, and how it depended not just on how many votes it got, but what kind

(tags:voting UK Labour Conservatives politics )

4. China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts

(tags:batteries china )

5. These rats could be the future of search and rescue

(tags:rats disaster )

Comments

Railway overtime

[guybles.livejournal.com]

Not by any means an expert on this, but I can see the extensive use of overtime suits all parties for a number of reasons:

1) Helps Train Operating Companies (TOCs) manage the driver recruitment and training bottleneck
2) Allows TOCs to maintain a relatively lean workforce and the costs that go with that
3) Stops TOCs from having to hire more trains from the Rolling Stock Companies (RoSCos), because there’s a finite pool of drivers able to drive a subset of limited trains
4) Allows RoSCos to realise the best return on the trains they do actually hire out, since you’re maximising use of the ones that are in use
5) Helps individual drivers earn an elevated salary for overtime
6) Gives drivers and unions a helpful tool to use in disputes
7) Potentially helps unions maintain a semi-closed shop, supporting 5) and 6) above

All in all, I suggest that it best suits every party involved in the rail industry…except us actual passengers, especially when the delicate web I propose above collapses.

I’m not suggesting that any of this is right or wrong, or that the parties involved are better or worse for it, but I can see a cosy arrangement having emerged through the middle of all of these things.

Also partly inspired by very recently rereading about the Wapping Dispute, about 40 years ago.

[pseudomonas]

The assumption that if Reform hadn't stood their votes would have gone 100% to the Tories is not really credible - protest votes don't work like that. Sure, some would, but I suspect that a lot of the voters would have stayed at home, some would have voted for Labour, and some would have voted for other fringe parties. Probably not a lot would have voted for LD/Green/SNP but who even knows.

[calimac]

3) Since this is obviously not a blog you read regularly, this being the first substantive post in it, I'm curious as to how you found out about this very useful and interesting article.

[symbioid]

on 3:
"The major political talent of Keir Starmer is his almost unique ability to not inspire an emotional reaction in anyone halfway normal."

Damn that is a sick burn. Probably one of the best and most accurate I've ever read.