In article , Roland Perry
scribeth thus
In message , at 10:35:44 on Tue, 11 Mar
2014, Graeme Wall remarked:

B----y hell, he wasn't that old. 52 according to the BBC

Mortality rate for a man that age is low, but not insignificant; around
7% of men will die in their 50's.


Jesus!, and I grumble about me arthritis at 62 ;(..

Poor sod .. that's no age at all..

--
Tony Sayer

On Tue, 11 Mar 2014 10:51:19 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 10:35:44 on Tue, 11 Mar
2014, Graeme Wall remarked:

B----y hell, he wasn't that old. 52 according to the BBC

Mortality rate for a man that age is low, but not insignificant; around
7% of men will die in their 50's.

He didn't, perhaps, have the healthiest of lifestyles...

"Recliner" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 11 Mar 2014 10:51:19 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 10:35:44 on Tue, 11 Mar
2014, Graeme Wall remarked:

B----y hell, he wasn't that old. 52 according to the BBC

Mortality rate for a man that age is low, but not insignificant; around
7% of men will die in their 50's.

He didn't, perhaps, have the healthiest of lifestyles...

http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/...tj.ehu033.full

PA

On 11/03/2014 11:34, Albert wrote:

On 11/03/2014 10:22, Paul Corfield wrote:
Recliner wrote:

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-...bob-crow-dies/

Interesting to listen to a decent set of comments from the BBC's
Norman Smith about Bob Crow. He recognised that Mr Crow was a shrewd
political operator and good in dealing with the media. I can't recall
when I heard anyone give a decent overview of the man rather than just
portray him as a villain.
Mr Crow's appearance on the Sunday Politics a few weeks ago was great
fun with him offering to take over from Andrew Neil - provided he got
Mr Neil's money for doing so.
I dread to think what the "rent a gobs" in the comments section in the
Daily Mail and Evening Standard will make of the news.

All in all, not as bad as it could be.

I love the quote from Bob about Thatcher: ‘I won’t shed one single tear
over her death. She destroyed the NHS and destroyed industry in this
country and as far as I'm concerned she can rot in hell.’

Actually, there must be people all over the country (but especially
among the commuting population of the Home Counties) who are ever so
slightly tempted to say something similar of Mr Crow - but are far too
polite and fair-minded to do so.

So they either stay silent or follow the widely-observed social
convention that "any man's death diminishes me" and extend sympathy and
condolences to Mr Crow's family, colleagues and friends.

And quite right too.

On 11/03/2014 10:44, Mizter T wrote:

On 11/03/2014 10:22, Paul Corfield wrote:
Interesting to listen to a decent set of comments from the BBC's
Norman Smith about Bob Crow. He recognised that Mr Crow was a shrewd
political operator and good in dealing with the media. I can't recall
when I heard anyone give a decent overview of the man rather than just
portray him as a villain.
[My comments snipped]

Mr Crow's appearance on the Sunday Politics a few weeks ago was great
fun with him offering to take over from Andrew Neil - provided he got
Mr Neil's money for doing so.

I dread to think what the "rent a gobs" in the comments section in the
Daily Mail and Evening Standard will make of the news.

Comments sections of newspaper websites are best avoided - for all the
egalitarian notions of new technologies giving readers a voice, the
shrill and vile nonsense that seems to all too easily flow doesn't
really do much for one's view of human nature.

I realise on re-reading this that when you said "comments section" of
newspapers of course you meant just that, the section of the paper with
columnists and talking heads, as opposed to my interpretation of readers
(often completely inane or just plain nasty) comments at the bottom of
the webpage.

JNugent wrote:
On 11/03/2014 11:34, Albert wrote:

On 11/03/2014 10:22, Paul Corfield wrote:
Recliner wrote:

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-...bob-crow-dies/

Interesting to listen to a decent set of comments from the BBC's
Norman Smith about Bob Crow. He recognised that Mr Crow was a shrewd
political operator and good in dealing with the media. I can't recall
when I heard anyone give a decent overview of the man rather than just
portray him as a villain.
Mr Crow's appearance on the Sunday Politics a few weeks ago was great
fun with him offering to take over from Andrew Neil - provided he got
Mr Neil's money for doing so.
I dread to think what the "rent a gobs" in the comments section in the
Daily Mail and Evening Standard will make of the news.

All in all, not as bad as it could be.

I love the quote from Bob about Thatcher: ‘I won’t shed one single tear
over her death. She destroyed the NHS and destroyed industry in this
country and as far as I'm concerned she can rot in hell.’

Actually, there must be people all over the country (but especially among
the commuting population of the Home Counties) who are ever so slightly
tempted to say something similar of Mr Crow - but are far too polite and
fair-minded to do so.

So they either stay silent or follow the widely-observed social
convention that "any man's death diminishes me" and extend sympathy and
condolences to Mr Crow's family, colleagues and friends.

And quite right too.

Many of those commuters are Telegraph readers. Here's its surprisingly
rapid obituary (lots of readers' comments, quite a few of which support
him):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...-obituary.html

Bob Crow, who has died aged 52, reportedly of a heart attack, was for more
than a decade the uncompromisingly militant leader of the National Union of
Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), and a target of public, media
and political anger through his belief in strike action as a first step
rather than a last resort.

A bull-necked London docker’s son who gathered around him a cadre of class
warriors, Crow came to prominence resisting John Major’s privatisation of
the railways. Denouncing it as “vandalism� intended to put money into
shareholders’ pockets, he was hard put to explain the unexpected doubling
in passenger numbers that followed.

Both before and after his election as the RMT’s general secretary in 2002,
Crow dismissed any new government initiative toward the railways as an
attack on his members that would maximise profits while putting passengers’
lives at risk. Renationalisation was his panacea, and for a time he sought
to bring it about through coordinated strikes, once disrupting seven train
operators out of 25 over local grievances.

Crow rated himself a “Communist-Socialist�, belonging in turn to the
Communist Party, its hard-line successor based around the Morning Star, his
idol Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party and finally no party at all.
He opposed the EU and the monarchy (wanting Tony Benn for president as a
“true representative of working people�), and believed in the death
penalty.

His relationship with Labour was even worse than with the Tories. Crow
accused Tony Blair of having “squandered a massive landslide from an
electorate hungry for change� and of pouring “billions of public pounds
into private pockets and [accelerating] the growing gap between rich and
poor�.

He had John Prescott, a former official of the union, expelled for failing
to renationalise the railways, then resigned from the board of Transport
for London after the exasperated mayor, Ken Livingstone, urged workers to
cross the RMT’s latest picket line. In 2004 Labour expelled the RMT from
the party.

Crow personified his union’s motto of “Agitate, Educate, Organise�, but
also shared with his beloved Millwall FC the unofficial slogan: “Nobody
likes us, and we don’t care�. His industrial tactics – learned from
Scargill – were crude. Negotiators from other unions would look on in
despair as Crow opened a meeting with Network Rail or some other employer
by leading his acolytes out before the talking had begun.

Often his first step was a strike ballot, with negotiations only on the eve
of disruption, if then. He once told West End retailers who warned that
another Tube strike would put them out of business that they would be
“casualties of war�.
Yet rail industry managers acknowledged that once Crow had driven a
bargain, he kept his word. And on his watch, friction between the RMT and
the other two rail unions, Aslef – whose members it had tried to poach –
and the Transport Salaried Staff Association gave way to cooperation.

Despite his public face, Crow was a man of considerable intelligence, and
his strategy bore some fruit. Membership of the RMT rose consistently
during his years in charge, as the headcount in other unions continued to
shrink. Tube train drivers’ pay topped £50,000 a year by 2012, and wages
across the industry increased faster than the average. And though the
railways were not renationalised, Network Rail did bring track maintenance
in-house after a couple of fatal lapses, and a government-backed company
took over the East Coast rail franchise after two private operators handed
back the keys.

Opening the union’s education centre at Doncaster in 2012, Crow said: “The
RMT is sending a warning to both the boss class and the political class
that this trade union is building for the future with plans to train up and
tool up hundreds of new militant activists who will drive the RMT’s brand
of industrial trade unionism deep into workplaces the length and breadth of
the land.�

That militancy originated not just with Crow but with a number of others
who had infiltrated the industry – and especially London Underground –
during the 1980s, the far Left groups they belonged to having concluded
that British industry was now too weak for there to be any point in
subverting it.

Key lieutenants included Pat Sikorski, a Trotskyist university graduate and
Tube guard whose attempted sacking in 1993 brought chaos to the Central
Line; and Greg Tucker, secretary of the RMT’s Waterloo branch which in
British Rail days had stood almost alone to block the operation of trains
without guards.

Crow sought to spread his brand of activism across the entire trade union
movement. He consistently backed any group of workers with a local axe to
grind in the hope of heightening militancy and creating fresh opportunities
for action.

Never possessing a driving licence, Crow travelled everywhere by public
transport. He continued to live in his council house at Hainault,
north-east London, despite enjoying a six-figure pay package and lavish
union entertaining. His lifestyle occasionally made the headlines, notably
earlier this year when he was photographed on a luxury winter sun cruise
from Barbados to Brazil. Three days after he returned from the three-week
jaunt, 10,000 of his union members walked out on strike, causing chaos for
commuters in London. The RMT’s appointment of Crow’s wife to run its credit
union also caused consternation; he explained that she had been the only
applicant.

Robert Crow was born at Shadwell in the East End of London on June 13 1961,
the son of George Crow and the former Lillian Hutton. The family moved to
Hainault when he was small. He determined to be a footballer, but gave up
after having “a really hard time getting into the school team� at Hainault
Forest High School.

He left at 16 to join the Underground, whose Central Line depot is the main
local employer. He began watering plants in the chairman’s office and
making tea for maintenance workers, but by 18 was working on one of the
Tube’s track gangs which have traditionally produced rugged and colourful
personalities.

When Crow fell out with his foreman, he took his case to a union meeting;
before long he was making his name in the National Union of Railwaymen as a
compelling speaker and canny organiser of strikes. By 1990 when it merged
with the National Union of Seamen, he was on the NUR’s national executive.

In 1994 Crow was elected the RMT’s assistant general secretary, and his
influence grew as Jimmy Knapp, the union’s long-serving leader, wound down.
It was Crow who in 1996 warned Blair against “interfering� when the Labour
leader, with an election nearing, urged Tube drivers to call off a series
of strikes.

When Knapp died in harness in 2001, Crow went for the leadership. On New
Year’s Eve two men attacked him near his home with an iron bar; he blamed
“muscle� sent, he claimed, by the employers.

Crow polled twice as many votes as both his rivals put together, and in
February 2002 took office as general secretary, installing busts of Marx
and Lenin in his office. He also joined the TUC general council.

He started by ordering an audit of the union’s properties. Discovering that
Prescott was just about to purchase his subsidised union flat under “Right
to Buy�, Crow vetoed the deal, saying the deputy prime minister could
afford the market price.

The RMT halted the Underground four times in three months over drivers’
pay, ending the action only when Livingstone promised arbitration as soon
as he was installed as mayor. Within two years, Livingstone had had enough
of continuing disruption.

A decade later Boris Johnson, standing for re-election, put up posters
warning that if Livingstone came back, so would Crow. Crow sued for libel
and lost; Johnson narrowly fought off Livingstone.

In 2009 Crow stood for the European Parliament on the “No2EU� ticket,
polling 17,758 votes across London. He was also a patron of the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign. Controversial to the end, he made his last media
appearance the evening before he died, telling Radio 4’s PM programme that
MPs deserved a pay rise.

Millwall apart, he was interested in boxing, darts and meteorology.
Bob Crow is survived by his wife, Nicola Hoarau, a son and three daughters.

"Peter Able" stuck@home wrote:
"Recliner" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 11 Mar 2014 10:51:19 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 10:35:44 on Tue, 11 Mar
2014, Graeme Wall remarked:

B----y hell, he wasn't that old. 52 according to the BBC

Mortality rate for a man that age is low, but not insignificant; around
7% of men will die in their 50's.

He didn't, perhaps, have the healthiest of lifestyles...

http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/...tj.ehu033.full

RMT tribute at Coventry Garden Tube station:
http://www.lbc.co.uk/tube-staffs-hea...bob-crow-87219

On 11/03/2014 16:13, Recliner wrote:

Many of those commuters are Telegraph readers. Here's its surprisingly
rapid obituary

They have the obituaries of suitably famous people ready and waiting for
years, they don't wait until someone actually croaks before writing them.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On 11/03/2014 21:17, Arthur Figgis wrote:
On 11/03/2014 16:13, Recliner wrote:

Many of those commuters are Telegraph readers. Here's its surprisingly
rapid obituary

They have the obituaries of suitably famous people ready and waiting for
years, they don't wait until someone actually croaks before writing them.


Hence the repeated anouncement of the death of the Queen Mother over the
years by excitable journos seeing the obit being updated.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

Arthur Figgis wrote:
On 11/03/2014 16:13, Recliner wrote:

Many of those commuters are Telegraph readers. Here's its surprisingly
rapid obituary

They have the obituaries of suitably famous people ready and waiting for
years, they don't wait until someone actually croaks before writing them.

Yes, of course, but I didn't expect them to be so well prepared for a
52-year old.