Earthquake!

5.2 on the richter scale apparently on Tuesday night with the epicentre in Market Rasen in Lincolnshire!

I stayed in London and was far too drunk to notice it when it happened!!!!!!!!

I'm told that my house in the midlands shook quite violently for about 15 seconds. It actually woke up Little Miss Corby, who was apparently terrified.

Do I want Watford to get promoted?

On the face of it that question seems nonsense, but when you have experienced it, then it becomes an interesting conundrum!

Many fellow hornets have said that they would not be fussed if we didn't go up and I'm increasingly coming round to that opinion.

If you go up you get lots of money which is great, but you are still going to be in a relegation battle and you still wont be able to entice the quality of player that will keep you up, as Watford saw last time. We rarely got tonked like Derby have this season when we were there but with possibly the best side the manager could have hoped to assemble we were only competetive for around 80 minutes a game. So the money is nice but it does not buy you survival.

Then you have to put up with all the gloryhunting fans, around 6,000 of them tagged on last season to us!

And what about the grounds? Well my first ever visit to Old Trafford last season was, quite frankly a disappointment! There was in all honesty better facilities at Kettering Town. Fratton Park in fact would be a ground more at home in Conference North! White Hart Lane, while expensive to get into is the best football ground in the land - No matter where you sit the view is fine and the facilities are great. It's bloody expensive pretty much where ever you go too and following Watford Last season financially "cleared me out" to a degree.

Championship grounds however are cheap to get into (relatively speaking). Generally the facilities are good - whith the exception of Charlton (my god the pastie was unedible). I've so far enjoyed adding Scunthorpe and Southampton to my list of grounds visited and look forward to visiting Hull. I've enjoyed re-visiting many places such as Loftus Road, Molyneux, The Ricoh and Portman road (even if the natives were a bit strange there). Next season if we didn't get promoted, I would quite look forward to popping down to Wales to Swansea and Cardiff (grounds I've not yet been to) and I always enjoy a trip to The City Ground in Nottingham.

Don't even get me started on the consistently weird kick off times and the fact you can go weeks at times when you don't even play a game!

So all in all the premiership perhaps isn't as much the promised land it is made out to be in my opinion.

Of course having already renewed my season ticket for next season, I'd tolerate it if it did happen to us though!!!!!!!!!!!!

Knowing someone without meeting them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Strange statement you may think but today I had just this experience!

LU's Duty Managers are going through a process called 360 degree review. Us centurions went through the same process at the end of last year.

What happens is that you nominate 3 peers and 3 direct reports. They are then sent a questionaire to answer about you managemnent style and behaviours. Your boss also completes one. There are places where you can write in comments to back up the scores you give in the questions.

Once this is done a report is compiled about you as a manager.

It is a fabulous self improvement tool, which, if used correctly can certainly open your eyes to who you think you are and who you actually are as a manager and leader of people. I remember when I received my feedback that the things that come out of the analysis almost make you feel violated in respect of the fact that no person should know that much about you!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the Duty Managers some of the Centurions have been selected to provide the feedback and to run through their reports. I did my first one of these today. I received the persons report yesterday and had a look through it. I formulated a mental picture of what this person was like and it was spooky how near reality was when I actually met him.

It has in effect really made me realise how valuable these sort of exercises are.

Seems I hit a bit of a nerve.....................

.................................With my previous post!

Someone who thinks they know me who unfortunately posted as anonymous put forward some very unionistic views on the matter.

Unfortunately it is my policy that unless a post goes with a name they don't get aired on my blog!

Strikes achieve nothing these days except piss off the general Travelling public and alienate the union from them, actually strikes have only served to achieve this for about the past 10 years.

We have not had a strike for a while on the tube..........

............Well this could become as potentially bad news to some customers who read this!

The RMT primarily but also TSSA unions have a problem about the following apparently:

1. Closure of ticket offices - About 40 are planned to close or have reduced opening hours. (Only 3% of tickets sold are now paper single tickets). Oyster accounts for nearly 80% of all tickets sold for travel on The Underground. It seems a little silly wasting money having someone sat in a ticket office doing nothing. Many companies would have made staff redundant but not London Underground. We are currently recruiting more staff and increasing staffing levels due to the current line upgrades taking place.
2. Heathrow terminal 5 station - T5 has been built by and is owned by BAA. London Underground's Piccadilly Line will run there because the extension was paid for by BAA. BAA are kind enough to let us have a Station Supervisor in place to deal with any train related issued on the Piccadilly Line platforms. The unions seem to think that London Underground staff should run the whole station! Rediculous when you consider only a small part of the complex affects us.
3. Refusal to work on grounds of safety - RMT claim LUL has changed its policy, undermining safety and breaching legislation.
   RMT and TSSA are demanding the immediate re-instatement of the original policy despite the fact that there has been no new policy issued. There is a consultation document which clearly has draft written all over it which proposed to simplify the current document to bring it in line with other Train Operating Companies policies, of which RMT and TSSA have many members within these companies.
4. Direct recruitment of station supervisors, train operators and service-control staff - LUL is now systematically denying career opportunities to experienced railway staff and recruiting externally, apparently. This is despite the fact that we have not recruited as a company for supervisors since 2002! In the spirit of the current LU / Union agreement we are seeing the waiting lists for Train Operator and service control staff dwindle to such an extent that if we don't recruit externally soon then we wont have enough of these staff to run a railway in some locations.

There are a few other issues which are absolute nonsense as well which the RMT particularly seem to be spoiling for a fight with, I wont bore you with them here, I'm sure you will hear about them soon enough anyway.

Should I be surprised with this happening? The answer is probably no! We have on the horizon the Mayoral elections (will Ken want to upset the unions?) and the LU pay deal is also due for renegotiation over the next year, so I suspect that this is the start of posturing for position for these events.

With the opportunity which presents itself at the moment to London to have a really top class transit system over the next 10 years, I find it quite disheartening that organisations such as RMT and TSSA can be so stuck in it's ways that it is unable to accept change and modernisation to move things into the modern age.

Charlton Athletic 2 Watford 2

A cold but sunny Saturday afternoon saw The Hornets come back from being 0-2 down at half time to claim a 2-2 draw. Watford were slow and sluggish in the first half and probably deserved to be behind at half time, but were much better in the second half as John Joe O'Toole ghosted in to get on the end of a Tommy Smith pass and then 80 seconds later Big Dan Shittu rose to head home a Matt Sadler corner. Jobi McAnuff had a couple of chances to win it, but a draw was probably the right result in the end. The point means Watford drop to second behind Stoke City on goal difference.

Kettering Town fought out a 0-0 draw at third placed Harrogate Town and remain 6 points clear at the top of Conference North

Valuable information?

These blogs serve a purpose!

I was talking to The Station Supervisors boss last week at a LU event. He said to me "You know The Station Supervisor don't you". I confessed all wondering what tirade of abuse I would hear next, but instead he said "I read his blog all the time and I think it's great. It's a good barometer for finding out what the feeling is on the group about things".

Nice to see a blog being used as a Management tool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Denying a goal scoring opportunity?

This picture shows Leicester attacking towards the right of the TV screen.

The Watford player (John Joe O'Toole) is seen clearly holding the Leicester players shirt, but with another player coming round (Leigh Bromby) on the cover 10 yards nearer to the goal he is defending.

So answer this question:

How the fuck does the referee wave play on and not see the foul when his shadow is the one on the left of the screen?

How does the Linesman (60 yards away) not only see the foul but then deem that O'Toole has denied a goalscoring opportunity when one of his colleagues will easily get to the ball, especially as the pass between the Leicester players was also over hit?

JJ got sent off for this but little did us Watford fans realise that it would be the catalyst for one of the most gutsy, battling performances for many a year. A Darius Henderson goal 5 minutes after the Sending off (which happened on 40 minutes) settled the game, but 10 man Watford didn't allow Leicester a shot on target in the whole of the subsequent time left in the game.

3 wins in the last three games have put us top of the championship once more and I firmly believe that our dodgy run is now at an end.

We are a point clear at the top and have not turned up for the past 3 months worth of games! We could have been nearly promoted by now if it wasn't for our loss of form!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Train Crash

This is the picture of the front of the train which collided with a bridge on Friday on the Midland Mainline between Loughborough and Leicester. The driver was injured and had to be cut free from his cab but the six customers on board were walked to safety, shaken but uninjured.

The incident occured when a dumper truck knocked a footbridge off of it's pedestal and sent it crashing onto the track into the path of an East Midlands local service which was fortunately slowing down to make it's stop at Barrow upon Soar station.

All of my trains from Kettering to London pass this point and so you can imagine that there was chaos at Kettering on Friday morning when I sauntered down to catch my train at 0700. I waited until 0830 in the vain hope that there would be a train to London! Fortunately I had some work I could do from home, so retired back there to do that once I had thawed out!

For those that use Midland Mainline, I'm told thatthe line is open today and normal services are expected to resume on Monday morning

There's only one Steve Kabba...................

..One Steve Kabba
He used to be Sheite
But now he's alright
Walking in a Kabba wonderland!

That's what reverberated round Vicarage Road yesterday evening as Watford recorded their first win at home in the league since October. Two further goals from Tommy Smith in the second half ensured a comfortable win for The Hornets.

So a first goal for Steve Kabba and for a forward having been brought to the club last January, that is a long time to wait. However he had not played a full competitive game for around 8 months before he came to Watford, so what did we really expect. Still, he looks fit and that is a bonus to us in our push towards the premiership.

Good news for my "other" team, Kettering Town. They thrashed title rivals Southport 5-2 at The A-Line arena to stay 8 points clear at the top of Conference North.