I don't generally concern myself with politics, but I was watching the Parliament Channel and saw (don't know the names) fast asleep (or seemed to be) behind people speaking. I mean, If I or any of you were caught taking 40 winks at work we would get a slap on wrists. Why is this acceptable for men and women who work within what has to be the highest authority in the county? Disrespectful I feel. Oh, and why do they keep saying "here, here, here" like mumbling children? It really is fascinating to see just how little these so-called MP's do.
There's speakers in the tops of the benches and often Mps will slump down do they can hear better. Does look like they're asleep though. https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthis...is_this_speaker_grille_on_the_benches_of_the/
If you wanted to be fair to MPs you could take into account the long sittings, long work days and late nights away from home. But there’s really no need to do that, so what a bunch of wasters.
Yet they seem to find the time and energy for 2nd jobs and "consultancy" work when there's a few bucks in it for them. Funny that.
Liz Truss, through the speaker of the House of Commons, pointed out to Angela Rayner that she, the deputy Labour Leader, had personally recieved more than four times the amount of donations recieved by all the Conservative MPs, she accused of being corrupt, put together. Rayner did not object or even suggest that Truss was mistaken, so its on the record unchallenged. So if some MPs, on both sides of the House, have to do a side job to buy an outfit as nice as those of the Ashton Scummer, so be it. As long as they declare it.
I visited the old fire station in Watford when I was a kid, I used to sit with the strikers in the make do shelter they set up on their picket line with a brazier and everything, and after the strike ended, they invited me in for a personal tour. There was a dorm bedroom where they would get sleep between calls, if they were on night duty. I don't know the full reasons for it, but it struck me as pretty cool at the time. I know they did training and maintenence during the day, so getting some sleep was not the standard down time. Seems strange today, but I think, then, it may have been accepted that if people were on night duty, they may well have been doing other jobs during the day. I doubt it is the case today.
The fire service definitely sleep while on night shifts to this day. A true story is that when a few years ago they went to combine police and fire stations locally to save money by having joint estates, when I was in the former, they felt it necessary to put codex locks on the dorm doors to stop the coppers sneaking in!
We used to have some lovely kips on nights at Euston, depending on what job you were on. Most especially Saturday night/Sunday morning after you've got rid of the last of the noisy beer gang revellers and fighters around 02:30. There's nothing then arriving in until the overnight sleepers from Scotland in the morning and nothing departing until about 06:30 (despite the drunks regular appeals for directions to the 'milk train', the last one ran in about 1946 and even then they didn't generally transport milk from London out to the countryside, nor did they have seats). So after having sent someone down to Chinatown for a takeaway and perhaps even a nightcap at the Ibis hotel over the road, it was lights out time generally. One bloke used to bring in a blow up lilo thing. I sometimes retired to the station medical centre, where there was a comfy examination bed where you could catch 40 winks before time to sign off in the morning. Best of all though was working in Euston box on nights, which I did occasionally. For some reason, there was a night job doing the announcing and working the old click-clack Solari arrival and departure boards. Unfortunately, under Camden Council by-law, I was legally prevented from doing any announcing after 11pm for fear of waking surrounding residents/tramps on the concourse. So that just left the boards to do. Set them up for the morning with the arrivals and departures and by about midnight you're just about done. Comrade signalmen were amenable to making any updates to the arrival times on my behalf, in return for regular tea supplies and running errands to the shops etc on their behalf. The signal box was highly protected by barbed wire, cameras and entry swipe card gates from any marauding IRA bombers or railway managers who might want to cause trouble for us, so one could safely turn in with absolute security just after 12. There was a lovely 4 seater sofa in the signalbox kitchen and pillows and blankets in the lockers. Lovely. It almost all went wrong one particular night though. I'd retired to bed on the kitchen sofa as normal, but in the early hours got frantically shaken awake by, Ernie, one of the signalman. A manager is here! Well I jumped up stuffed the pillows and blankets away and walked out into the main signalling area all nonchalantly. The manager - a young keen female trainee type..groan - was standing with her hands on her hips all indignant over the slumbering face-down on the desk figure sitting in my chair and letting rip about 'a disgrace!' and so on. Fortunately there was a trackworkers 'possession' of some of the lines that night and as part of the regs, the gang had to send one of their number up to the box to liaise with the signalman. Since my chair, on a little platform at the back, was vacant for the duration, he'd taken the opportunity for a little bit of shut eye. He woke up all confused, she realised it wasn't me, or anyone she had jurisdiction over and was just as confused. I put on my best offended voice and asked her what was going on? She couldn't stop apologising enough to me. I was still offended that she had thought such a thing of me, but allowed myself to be talked round to store some future goodwill in the bank. We both agreed though that it was an 'absolute disgrace' about that track worker asleep.
