(14 Oct 2022, 7:20 pm)F114TML wrote So bus drivers (the people who get people to work or allow some people even to just travel somewhere) and nurses (the people who do the day-to-day looking after of ill people) aren't key workers, even though some people would be effectively locked to walking distance if there were no bus drivers, and if there were no nurses, people's health could well be seriously compromised.

So who is a key worker then?

Either I miswrote or you misread, but I certainly never said nurses aren't key workers. 

There are actually whole regions in this world where being a bus driver in the UK sense, or indèeed any sense, isn't really a thing et all. And yet it is quite false to suggest these places are dysfunctional backwaters where everyone is locked into an existence of travelling only as far as their feet can carry them. 

Perhaps that is a good definition of key worker. If it's a role that you can find anywhere a critical mass of human civilisation exists to the point strangers routinely interact with strangers to conduct the essentials of survival (eating, sleeping, caring), it is probably a key role.

Buses can always be replaced, the key skill being driving, not bus driving. People perhaps don't take too well to demand responsive or personal ride sharing solutions precisely because it feels too much like you are behaving like your journey is necessary and important. That it is key.

Working so very hard to keep the UK hooked on this idea that transporting fresh air is an essential service, while simultaneously showing very little concern at how often services run early or don't run at all, and often don't serve certain places solely because of the cost of a driver, all far more serious issues for an essential service than simple late running, is perhaps precisely what ubdemines any union claim to be the representatices of key workers.

They are what they are, certainly in the current disputes. Trying to get inflation busting wage rises for their members, with nothing in return for their employers or the people who ultimately pay these wages.