Day 12 at the Bedfont Big Brother house

Good news and bad news...

The biggest day so far, without doubt. Good news: housemates arrived by the hundred and seem to have decided that more flair was required as regards the catering on offer; crew came equipped to eat, with silverware and table clothes in evidence on some of the outside tables!

Plates of home baked cakes and muffins also arrived by the dozen. The above, supplemented by a diet of daily bacon sarnies, means it’s fair to say that a “Three Day Bedfont” plays havoc on the waist line; people are proud to wear their XXXX T-shirts but to be honest, fairly soon, they won’t need them, the expanding “Bedfont paunch” will probably identify them just as easily!

Two thousand T-shirts have been given out already, so with the above in mind, we have had to order more for next week in XXL and even XXXL sizes - and for once, they are not just for Hamed!

Highlights...

...The colourful and noisy departure of the open top bus for Speakers Corner in central London, where they staged a mute protest at a location famed for promoting free speech; fifty crew made the point that they were in effect “gagged” from telling their true stories to the public at large, by a management that threatens to sack them if they do. They protested in silence, each wearing a gag.

...The “exuberant” arrival of the Manchester commuters who had hired their own transport to bring a large group to the picket lines from the North; they quite literally fell out of the bus, one or two crew purchases for the worse, and received a warm welcome and a standing ovation from the whole of Bedfont.

Lasting memory... the kindness and determination of crew...

...The Manchester commuters that had decided to collect money onboard the bus to donate to a purser who lives in Washington DC and is paying around £500 per trip to get to work and is now digging deep to pay for her own hotel so she could be at Bedfont.

...A couple who live in Portugal that have both lost their staff travel but paid for full fare tickets and hotel rooms, again just to be at Bedfont.

These are truly humbling stories - especially when some of our own colleagues would not even drive just a few short miles to join us.

And now, the not so good news: While crew demanded a fair settlement in the sunshine, Derek Simpson met with Mr. Walsh under the auspices of ACAS and was again assisted by Brendan Barber from the TUC.

Unite Joint General Secretary, Derek Simpson said:

"Willie Walsh is blocking a deal to end the strike. He has refused to re-instate travel concessions in full despite Unite making it clear that the union would suspend the strike if he did so. It would cost BA nothing to reinstate these travel concessions yet Willie Walsh is prepared to see the strike continue, putting the travel plans of thousands of passengers at risk and costing BA over GBP100 million over the course of this dispute.

Unite have made it absolutely clear that we remain available at anytime day or night to meet again with the company."

It now looks certain that Sunday’s strike will go ahead as planned, a fair solution remains out of reach as Mr. Walsh does not, at the moment, appear to want one. His desire for conflict with us continues to outweigh his concern for the state of our airline, or indeed our passengers.

We ask him to reconsider and to mend the deep divisions that are being created and get us back to being “the worlds favourite airline” with the world’s best crew.

Sunday is family day, to encourage an early attendance, free breakfasts will be served for all those who attend before 10am. Free breakfast = picket duty!!!!

See you there and for all those who played their part at Bedfont this week and to all those who were equally as brave by supporting our industrial action in their own homes by going on strike, thank you...