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Wednesday 2 March 2022

Tube Driver Putin Smear PATHETIC

As part of its drive to blame current Mayor Sadiq Khan for Transport for London’s financial problems, and thereby deflect from the damage done by his predecessor, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the Government has demanded that there is a review of the TfL pension fund. Without that, further funds to keep London’s transport moving will not be forthcoming. Khan has no alternative but to, er, do the review.


The Tories’ excuse is that the scheme is “unsustainable”, for which read cuts. The RMT Union has taken one look at this and balloted its members on strike action. They have voted in favour. Yesterday there was a one-day strike; there will be another tomorrow. This has clearly caused some discomfort to those working in and around our free and fearless press. So the order has gone out for a hit job on those who work on the Underground.

Just how desperate the smears are this time round has been demonstrated in no style at all by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, where obliging creep Gordon Rayner, who styles himself “Associate Editor”, has brought forth a barrel-scraping tirade to beat the competition in the scramble to reach bedrock first. Cue scary untrue headline.

The enemy underground: how 'Putin apologists' brought London to a standstill … As a Tube strike causes travel chaos across the capital, we ask: just how close is the RMT union to Putin's Russia?” To which the answer is, not close at all. But do go on.

Workers trudging miles through the rain because of Tuesday's Tube strike in London would have felt that their troubles were as nothing compared with the horrors unfolding in Ukraine. Nor would they have been searching for any connection between the industrial action called by the RMT union and Vladimir Putin’s blood-soaked invasion of a sovereign country. Yet the RMT, and particularly its assistant general secretary Eddie Dempsey, have long-standing sympathies for the pro-Putin separatists who have been fighting government forces in the east of the country for almost a decade”. What sympathies are these?


Dempsey is one of the most high-profile signatories to a Stop the War Coalition statement last week”. So intercoursing what? “Dempsey visited the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2015, where he posed for a picture with Aleksey Mozgovoy, leader of the pro-Russian ‘Ghost Brigade’”. Again, so what? Then comes a smear of Mick Cash. And the late Bob Crow (natch). But the personal views of union officials do not call strike action.

But Rayner wants his readers to know that “While it may have failed to turn Britain into a socialist utopia, the RMT has had remarkable success in inflating the salaries of its members, who include the majority of London Underground staff”. Some of them earn almost half of what Rayner does! The horror! Fancy having a tube driver and their partner at the next table in that reassuringly upmarket restaurant! The shame!

What Rayner also misses is that TfL workers are central to keeping the capital moving, while he and his fellow smear merchants in the Buckingham Palace Road bunker are not. Also, as he concedes at the end of his screed, “The union does not support either Vladamir Putin or his actions in Ukraine, and we are backing global union pressure for a peaceful resolution to the conflict”. Another example of the Tel’s desperation.

The real culprits here are the Tories. But the Tel dare not tell its readers. What a shower.


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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Every now and then the mask slips with corporate media*, as it does with "centrist" politicians. This is one such episode. Another was the Daily Heil urging the murder of Jeremy Corbyn. Still another, much earlier, was the ineffable political traitor Shirley Williams absurdity that, "Labour Party policy is made by the Communist Party." There's an evil shape to it all.

It isn't necessary to support either Russian nationalism or Ukrainian nationalism/corrupt governments to say this horror is plain wrong and needless. Nor is it necessary to support the NATO protection racket or the worst of EU culture.

The fact is events such as this do not happen in isolation. They are a product of the past and a cause of what follows. This one has been looming for years and those who could have headed it off did nothing to stop it. In fact they made it worse. There's more than enough guilt to go round.

Rayner's action is typical of far right wholly owned corporate media propagandists. A disgusting piece of lying cowardice and tenth rate opportunism. McCarthyism for the 21st century. The true face of the British Establishment, shit scared and brutal whenever even mildly challenged. An unchanged 19th century mindset.

In these circumstances we must hope Eddie Dempsey doesn't suffer the same kind of "heart attack" as Bob Crow, Robin Cook and John Smith, or the fate of David Kelly.


*Not that it had far to slip.

Mr Larrington said...

's just the Right reclaiming the phrase “unwitting dupe of Moscow” from the liberal metropolitan wokerati elite. Nothing to see here. Move along now!

Blackout said...

I particularly like the aloof tone of "the RMT has had remarkable success in inflating the salaries of its members".

Along with ensuring job security and safe working conditions, this is literally why the union exists. It'd be more remarkable if the RMT *hadn't* done that.

Still, nice of the Tel to not-so-subliminally conflate socialism with communism in the minds of its readership, while doing the frowny-head-shake at a country which hasn't been communist for over thirty years...

Anonymous said...

It’s actually sickening the utter immorality and indecency of this so called ‘free’ press.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...

The 'Bob Crow, Robin Cook and John Smith' 'heart-attack' plot breaks surface!

Get your own YouTube channel, Anon 12.11, and Keep the Burning Flame of Truth Alive!
Wake up, sheeple!
Do Your Research!
Occupy the Admin Block!

Anonymous said...

To 13:13.

Bbbut Bbbertie...you left out David Kelly.

How odd, sheeple, always a screw-up.

Thank me later.

David said...

21st Century McCarthyism pretty much nails it. Turning Point UK, the TPA/IEA crowd with their "Stamp Out Socialism" rhetoric - all from the same playbook, whilst failing to realise that a Nordic-style high-tax state geared to good public services is NOT comparable to a Communist single-party state.