Militant unions were branded selfish as they kickstarted the biggest rail walkout in decades during one of the busiest sporting weekends of the year, with 50,000 train workers walking out across the country.
Members from the Aslef, RMT, Unite and TSSA unions are striking for 24 hours in a dispute over wages and working conditions, leaving just 11 per cent of services running.
The disruption will severely impact the 50,000 people who are expected to trek to the London Marathon on Sunday, with runners now being permitted to sign in the day before in an unusual bid to sidestep delays.
One Twitter user branded the strikes as selfish for impacting the marathon, while another added that it was a really important fundraising event for numerous charities and that it would be a shame if they suffered because of the walkout.
Another said that they thought the railway walkout was impacting one of the biggest charity fundraising events, and that it was poor timing and that it would boomerang on the unions.
However, RMT boss Mike Lynch rejected claims the unions were targeting the marathon, saying they were instead targeting the Conservative Party Conference.
Mike Lynch said it was essential to keep the velocity of the pay dispute going and pointed to members of the public who were supporting the union, adding that there were people who were inconvenienced who were supporting them every day on the picket lines.
The travel chaos will also hit football fanatics as the Premier League returns on Saturday, even seven fixtures expecting to see more than 200,000 spectators flock to stadiums across the country.
It’s the first time on record that major rail unions have joined forces to organise walkouts simultaneously.
Pop star Machine Gun Kelly and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli might also be left with quite a few empty seats at their concerts in the capital on Saturday.
Representatives heading to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham for the weekend will also be affected.
RMT General Secretary Mike Lynch said it wasn’t his intent to target the London Marathon.
He told BBC News that they haven’t targeted the London Marathon, they’ve more targeted the Tory conference if they were honest, and that they were the people accountable for this mess.
He said that whenever they put walkouts on it’s going to inconvenience people and they don’t want to do that, and they would much rather have a settlement and get out of this dispute, but greedy unions are responsible for fare increasing all the time and pricing poorer workers off the rails.
And how precisely is the average earner meant to use already overcrowded and overpriced rail services which are unreliable at the best of times, yet they want to be paid more money for basically doing a poor job? But they don’t care because it’s all about money, power and control.
So, now ends the summer of discontent, and now brings the long, cold, dark bleak winter of our discontent.
And what is the point of trying to improve the railways and even re-open closed lines and stations if these political thugs can just hijack them and hold passengers to ransom any time they like?
These Union bosses create mayhem, cost the country billions and go home taking their enormous pay packets, and then tell their supporters that they’re one of them. It’s a total farce and they’re doing nothing for the working man.
Apparently, this was aimed at the Conservative Party Conference, but it’s also hit the London Marathon, but people don’t actually care because they’re worrying more about heating their homes – bet the Union bosses don’t have to worry about their bills and heating their homes on their enormous salaries?
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 