Mick Lynch is being Mick Lynch again today.
If you’re a fan read on. If not, then maybe log onto the Mail or Telegraph, and enjoy your day.
Anyway, Lynch was outside of London Euston station today as RMT members at 14 train operating companies take part in the first in a wave of four 24-hour strikes.
Reporter clash
He clashed with a Sky News reporter and it is safe to say they won’t be going for a coffee any time soon.
Presenter Jayne Secker suggested rail the workers were striking their “own way out of a job” – a view that he argued was a “government line”.
Ms Secker said: “Some would argue that you’re actually striking your own way out of a job because you’re going to contribute to the railways becoming less popular, less reliable. People are going to stop relying on the railways.”
Punting
Lynch rejected this and said: “Well, I don’t think that’s true. That’s a government line that you’re punting out on their behalf.”
But Ms Secker wasn’t having it: “I’m not going to have you stand there and accuse me of being a government mouthpiece. This has got nothing to do with the government”, she added, noting that she was relaying information from conversations she had personally had with people about the strikes.
“It’s exactly the phraseology that I hear across the table from government ministers, almost verbatim…maybe you’re just very in tune with what they say,” Mr Lynch went on.
“What we’re seeing now is a government that’s determined to drive down public transport usage, whether that’s on the buses or the railway. Fares are being hiked, services are becoming more and more unreliable, and the problem is that there is not a coherent railway system in our country.
“It is completely fractured and broken, and we need to revise that and get a decent system that’s in all our interests.”
Watch
He also discussed the profit the train companies have been making…
What did he make of the Budget? Not very much, not very much at all!
Related: Budget: Jeremy Hunt’s plans slammed – Best reactions
