From the Regional Council newsletter

After consistently being ignored by management over the Victoria line upgrade, outsourcing of work to tubelines and the proposed future supervision of signalling control centres, it seems that rank and file signal technician workers decided to throw a party to celebrate. By complete coincidence the party coincided with the weekend of 'Operation Bismarck' when power supplies across the whole LUL network are tested usually leaving massive failures to signalling and electronic equipment. Mysterious film posters began to appear in almost every conceivable place with the title of the 1960's classic film 'Sink the Bismarck'. Obviously signal staff enjoy the odd trip to the cinema or two! An astute manager [I'm assured such a creature exists] put two and two together and immediately assured the rank and file that there would be no outsourcing, transfer of staff and that the Victoria line upgrade would be fully discussed. One senior manager even texted to ask in light of all the concessions given he hoped the party would now be cancelled. As it happened the party was coincidentally cancelled due to concerns that catering for a thousand inebriated railworkers was perhaps not the best way to spend a lazy weekend off.

On a similar subject, it seems that the District Area Infrastructure Manager is considering imposing new rosters on the Technical Officers working on the district lines as the present ones 'do not work for the needs of the business' and that they would give the union 28 days notice of implementation by Tuesday. It now seems that once again, in a totally unconnected manner, that the manager has now been informed that the flexible approach to taking meal breaks is 'no longer working for our members' and we may need to start taken them in the middle of engineering hours, thus bringing maintenance to a complete halt. We will of course report all developments.