Rail services will be at a standstill on some of the busiest commuter routes in the country on Tuesday because of another strike by drivers in a near two-year-long pay dispute.
Many services into London such as Southern, Southeastern and South Western Railway will be cancelled as members of Aslef walk out for the day.
Members of other operators will also strike on Wednesday and Thursday, while drivers are banning overtime until Saturday which is also causing disruption.
Passengers are being urged to check before attempting to travel by train this week.
The dispute is now the longest ever in the rail industry.
There is a glimmer of hope that negotiations will start in a bid to resolve the row after the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) invited Aslef to talks about exploring any common ground that could break the deadlock.
No formal talks between the operators and the union have been held for a year and it has been even longer since a transport minister was involved.
Business groups have warned of the impact on the economy of the strikes, especially for hospitality firms.
Train drivers will strike on the following days:
– Tuesday May 7: c2c, Greater Anglia, GTR’s Great Northern, Thameslink and Southern (including Gatwick Express), Southeastern, and South Western Railway.
– Wednesday May 8: Avanti West Coast, London Northwestern Railway, Chiltern, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, GWR, and West Midlands Trains.
– Thursday May 9: LNER, Northern, and TransPennine Express.
UK strikes – in pictures
Aslef said its members have not had a pay rise for five years and has accused the UK government of “giving up” trying to resolve the dispute.
“The rail industry is working hard to keep trains running but it is likely that services on some lines will be affected on the evening before and morning after each strike between May 7 and May 9 because many trains will not be in the right depots to start services the following day," a spokesman for the RDG said.
“We can only apologise to our customers for this wholly unnecessary strike action called by the Aslef leadership, which will sadly disrupt journeys once again.
“It will also inflict further damage on an industry that is receiving up to an additional £54 million ($68 million) a week in taxpayer cash to keep services running, following the Covid downturn.”
A Department for Transport spokesman said: “The Transport Secretary and rail minister have already facilitated a pay offer that would take train drivers’ average salaries up to £65,000 – almost twice the UK average salary.
“Aslef are the only union left striking after the government oversaw deals with all the other unions.
“Instead of causing passengers disruption, they should put this offer to their members and work with industry to end this dispute.”
Meanwhile, engineers on the Croydon Tramlink went on strike on Sunday until 6am on Thursday in a separate pay dispute.
Read more about the coronavirus
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Company profile
Name: One Good Thing
Founders: Bridgett Lau and Micheal Cooke
Based in: Dubai
Sector: e-commerce
Size: 5 employees
Stage: Looking for seed funding
Investors: Self-funded and seeking external investors
THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League final:
Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
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Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
If you go
The flights
Emirates and Etihad fly direct to Nairobi, with fares starting from Dh1,695. The resort can be reached from Nairobi via a 35-minute flight from Wilson Airport or Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, or by road, which takes at least three hours.
The rooms
Rooms at Fairmont Mount Kenya range from Dh1,870 per night for a deluxe room to Dh11,000 per night for the William Holden Cottage.
Three ways to limit your social media use
Clinical psychologist, Dr Saliha Afridi at The Lighthouse Arabia suggests three easy things you can do every day to cut back on the time you spend online.
1. Put the social media app in a folder on the second or third screen of your phone so it has to remain a conscious decision to open, rather than something your fingers gravitate towards without consideration.
2. Schedule a time to use social media instead of consistently throughout the day. I recommend setting aside certain times of the day or week when you upload pictures or share information.
3. Take a mental snapshot rather than a photo on your phone. Instead of sharing it with your social world, try to absorb the moment, connect with your feeling, experience the moment with all five of your senses. You will have a memory of that moment more vividly and for far longer than if you take a picture of it.
Squads
Pakistan: Sarfaraz Ahmed (c), Babar Azam (vc), Abid Ali, Asif Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Haris Sohail, Mohammad Hasnain, Iftikhar Ahmed, Imad Wasim, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan, Shadab Khan, Usman Shinwari, Wahab Riaz
Sri Lanka: Lahiru Thirimanne (c), Danushka Gunathilaka, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Avishka Fernando, Oshada Fernando, Shehan Jayasuriya, Dasun Shanaka, Minod Bhanuka, Angelo Perera, Wanindu Hasaranga, Lakshan Sandakan, Nuwan Pradeep, Isuru Udana, Kasun Rajitha, Lahiru Kumara
Ticket prices
- Golden circle - Dh995
- Floor Standing - Dh495
- Lower Bowl Platinum - Dh95
- Lower Bowl premium - Dh795
- Lower Bowl Plus - Dh695
- Lower Bowl Standard- Dh595
- Upper Bowl Premium - Dh395
- Upper Bowl standard - Dh295
MO
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The Byblos iftar in numbers
29 or 30 days – the number of iftar services held during the holy month
50 staff members required to prepare an iftar
200 to 350 the number of people served iftar nightly
160 litres of the traditional Ramadan drink, jalab, is served in total
500 litres of soup is served during the holy month
200 kilograms of meat is used for various dishes
350 kilograms of onion is used in dishes
5 minutes – the average time that staff have to eat
Getting there
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Tbilisi from Dh1,025 return including taxes
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Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
