Tube Strike planned for 9th June

Remember the re-ballot for the strike by RMT members over pay, job cuts & working conditions? Unfortunately for us commuters, the union voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action & will be going on strike from 7pm on Tuesday 9th June for 48 hours.


Transport for London (TfL) said that instead of engaging in "meaningful talks" about pay the union had submitted "a wildly unrealistic claim".

However Bob Crow who also accused the London Underground of failing to stand by an agreement over job security & redundancies, is pleased by the outcome "This is a magnificent result which underlines the anger that has been provoked by management in their confrontational approach on pay and job security. London Underground seems to think that observing agreements is optional, and its plan to cut jobs is simply unacceptable".

TfL said in a statement:

"The RMT leadership has failed to engage in any meaningful talks on pay, instead submitting a wildly unrealistic claim - demanding a five per cent pay rise for fewer hours in the middle of a recession.

"On jobs, the RMT leadership knows full well we are seeking to end the duplication of back office jobs and that no front line staff will be affected.

"No responsible union should be asking hard-pressed farepayers and taxpayers to fund jobs that are no longer needed and vastly inflated pay demands."

The strike's likely to bring most of the network to a standstill, so unless it's resolved in the meantime, you'll need to come up with alternative travel arrangements on the 9th, 10th & 11th of June.

First Baby Boy Born on Tube

There must be something in the air on the London Underground, last week a woman went into labour on the Central Line, but managed to have her baby in the hospital. Now I've heard through Heather that the first baby boy has been born on the Tube a few days ago. Well not exactly on the Tube as they managed to get the poor woman into the staff room at London Bridge station where she delivered the little chap just after 2pm on Tuesday.

Dawn out of EastEnders waters break on the Tube

Last December, Julia Kowalska became only the second person to have a baby on the Tube after her waters also broke on the Jubilee line. She went into labour on the platform but her baby was born in Kingsbury station. Then there the time 84 years ago when Marie Codery was born at Elephant & Castle Tube station.

Although Jerry Springer still contends that he was born in a Tube station. First he said it was East Finchley, but recently on Countdown he said he was wrong and it was at Highgate! Maybe he's just trying to get in on the Tube births limelight, although he's got more than enough claims to fame without needing to add this to his Who's Who entry.

No idea yet what the boy at London Bridge is called. Shame it wasn't a girl as she could have been Bridget.

Tube Classical Music Trials

TfL have re-started trials of playing classical music on the London Underground in an effort to soothe stressful journeys and ultimately cut crime. However, the canned music doesn't seem to be going down well with residents of Camden Town, who are more used to the Nutty Boys than The Nutcracker. A newspaper vendor poses outside the Tube station with his hands over his ears.


Nigel Rodgers who set up a campaign to can canned music called Pipedown, believes the scheme isn't going to work. He began the campaign after a similar trial was launched in Piccadilly Circus Tube 15 years ago.

He said "Piped music mutilates anything it plays. They play it through a PA system designed for the human voice and it's meant to be acoustic Prozac. Frankly, it always sounds horrible. The answer is to try and fix the many problems with the Underground rather than try and make people numb to them by playing music. It is an abuse of people's freedom to get around without being pacified. What is wrong with having buskers?"

Thanks to Jon Justice, who sent me a picture of Camden New Journal who also aren't wild about the music. They suggest that tunes with more local relevance could have been chosen. Obviously there's Madness's Camden Town. "Belle and Sebastian's 'Mornington Crescent' might be confusing, while The Clash recorded 'London Calling' in Camden Town, and their song 'The Prisoner' is about the area. Even Mancunian miserabilist Morrisey got in on the act: he wrote 'Come Back to Camden'.

What do you reckon? Should we have classical music piped through stations to keep us pacified? What about having tunes which match the station or the local?

London Transport Museum - Show us Your Suburbia

If you managed to get out in the sun & take some pictures this weekend, you might be interested in submitting some photos to an exhibition the London Transport Museum are setting up, called "Show Us Your Suburbia"

"The exhibition on suburbia will tell Londoners stories of the shaping of their city. How transport has influenced the suburbs and continues to do so. It will explore how local identity, lifestyles and architecture come together to form the reality of suburbia."


The photos should fit one of the following three themes:

1. Postcards from Suburbia
Houses, shops, parks, streets, cars…what does a typical suburban 'postcard' look like to you? We already have an historic collection of postcards of suburbia but we'd like to add yours to it.

2. Suburban Gardens
Show us your suburban garden in all its green fingered glory you could even include the odd gardener or cheeky gnome. Make sure you've got permission from your neighbours if you snap their garden!

3. Suburban Interiors
What does suburbia look like behind your net curtains? Photos can be architectural or domestic, posed or informal.

To find out more join the Flickr Group for full details.

More Station Master Animals

Regular readers will remember that an ailing station in Japan managed to turn round its fortunes by introducing a station master cat. Tama was followed by a station master dog. Thanks to Jon Justice, I learnt that a number of other stations a lot of other
Japanese stations have been trying to get in on the game with their own animals.

The latest is a station master goat called Koma at Uzen-Komatsu station


The Japanese stations also trying to arrange get togethers, perhaps like union meetings where the feline staff from different stations meet to discuss policies. This inaugural meeting didn't go too well. The cats hated eah other. Although one rather strangely is called Bus, even though it is definitely the stationmaster of a railway.


Like Jon I'm think we should get our own animals to act as station masters on the Tube. He said: "One wonders where this will all lead. I would like to see it done on the London Underground, but what animals would be best suited? Perhaps we could have a surly, spitting camel for one of the Northern Line stations. Maybe a swan for St James's Park. Blackhorse Road is too obvious. Finchley Road and Frognal is just crying out for an amphibian surely".

Any other contenders for animals running Tube stations?