As a retired railway employee with 49 years service, my experiences in dealing with management, at both consultation and negotiation levels, beggars belief.

I was in my whole employment a blue collar worker who, until the age of 38, received no sick pay.

Even when I had Asian flu, with a wife and two daughters, I was forced to work half dead.

From that time in 1938, when footplate staff and some senior signalmen obtained better salary and conditions, guards, shunting staff, platform staff and dock workers had to wait several more years for their full sick pay and enhanced pension conditions.

There has been a constant policy to erode those benefits.

The strikes that Aslef have had these past 20 years all over the country are evidence of this.

A lot of people who use these trains are the very people who are responsible for bringing this country to its knees.

They are never sorry for what they have done to the millions of people they have got into debt.

Many have lost their jobs, lost their houses, lost their pensions. The poorest two and a half million pensioners (that does not include me) are scraping the begging bowl again while the City have, and are again going to have, their heyday.

From the thousand of commuters I have taken into and out of London, I have never ever had one thank you.

G W Turner
Rectory Road
Little Oakley