Right on Time

There was something of an inevitability about it, but in true railway fashion, the timing of extended rail disruption to the West Coast mainline could not have been worse.


Essential maintenance to a footbridge which crosses the primary line connecting London with Birmingham and Manchester over-ran, meaning that rail passengers were met with chaotic scenes at stations across the London and the South East with cancelled services and lengthy delays - and the same is on the menu for tomorrow.

And the news couldn't have come at a worse time for our alleged "eco-conscious" leaders, as rail operators announced fare rises of up to 11% on certain routes on the day that Britain 'went back to work' after the festive holidays.

The rises, which will understandably grate with commuters, environmentalists and anyone looking to jump on the Labour-bashing bandwagon - one that is already as overcrowded as a Northern Rail commuter train.

However the Rail operators, who experienced a 15% increase on complaints this year according to one passenger watchdog, claim that the rises are "essential" as they are needed for "essential" investment that will provide "essential" service improvements on "essential" services. If you learn anything as a rail operators spokesperson, it's that using the word "essential" enough times will make your price rises seem OK. What you also learn is that it is perfectly fine to re-issue the same press release that you released 12 months ago.

One of the biggest culprits happens to be First Great Western, despite having the dubious honour of being the worst train operator in the UK according to official statistics. With an appalling record for customer service, including threatening to sue a passenger watchdog for complaints made about it's services and being subject to a 'fare strike' by passengers (with another one threatened), their bosses tried to justify their average 6.1% rise on unregulated fares.

First Transpennine Express, who run the main route between Leeds and Manchester, is even worse with a 6.4% hike and the main operator in and out of Leeds, Northern, has upped their fares by an average 5.7%. Despite this "essential" rise to facilitate "essential" service and capacity improvements, the capacity on the Manchester-Bradford-Leeds route was halved again this morning and afternoon.

The rises don't exactly 'fit' with the government's constant insistence that we need to start leaving our cars at home, start using the railways and save the environment because in truth, the environment is just an easy excuse to mask additional forms of taxation.

Today we have a government that is happy for rail operators to increase fares and is preparing to bulldoze an entire village to facilitate an expansion of Heathrow yet come budget day, Alistair Darling will stand at the podium and attempt justify a further rise in fuel duty by trotting out tired lines about "CO2 targets" and "environmental concerns" amongst the other garbage that spews from his mouth.

Happy New Year everybody!

Planes, Trains and stupid politicians

Airlines are taking a bit of a battering lately in the fight on global warming and yet another politician has thrown in his two-penneth.



Tory MP Tim Yeo is calling for a complete ban on domestic flights. He believes, that by taxing all flights between UK airports and forcing us onto the train, we'll be saving the environment and the hole in the O-Zone layer will be healed.

The only problem however, is he's talking garbage.

Not about the aircraft CO2 thing, on that he's probably right, but he's wrong on the 'take the train' rubbish.

There's a reason why, in Britain, we don't use trains. It's because they're crowded, late, expensive, unreliable, you need to be a MENSA member to understand the fare structure and they don't work in the autumn when leaves fall on the track.

Planes on the other hand are much more comfortable and in fact, they're cheaper. Don't believe me?

Just as a basic experiment, I've got train and plane fares for a one-way trip from London to Manchester, the sort of trip hundreds if not thousands of business people make on a regular basis. As part of this, I'll need to be in Manchester before 9:00am on March 20th (a date picked completely at random). They say you have to book in advance for the decent train fares, so I'm giving them more than a fare (geddit) chance.

Here's how they each got on:
First let see how the eco-friendly public service train did. National Rail offered me a single ticket from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, leaving the capital at 6:20 and arriving in Manchester 2 and a half hours later at 8:50 via Virgin trains for the princely sum of £42.00.
Now for the airlines. There's actually a choice of three airlines, all vying for my business, so that should keep the prices competitive.
Firstly, British Airways, our national carrier. They'll offer to take me from London Gatwick and get me to Manchester by 8:10 for the fee of £39.10. That's already better than the train but I think we can do better.
Bmi are next up. This time you leave Heathrow, and land in Lancashire at 8:15 but for more than £10 less than BA - £29 to be exact.
But we're not done. This route has a new kid on the block, low-cost carrier Jet2. There London Gatwick to Manchester service comes in at an amazing £3.99, but before you get excited, that excludes taxes. That makes the £3.99 fare a £24.99 fare, still the cheapest of the three and more than £17 cheaper than the 'good for the environment, public service, publicly subsidised' train service.

And that's the crux of the problem. We're deciding to fly because, at the end of the day, we save money. The logical solution therefore in such case would be to lower your prices, improve your service and become more competitive would it not?

Not if your a minister. Improving services would cost money whilst lowering fares would hit the shareholders of the various private enterprises that have their fingers in the National Rail pie.
So instead of lowering the cost of rail travel to encourage the fliers and even motorists onto the trains, what you do is create a new form of taxation to deter people from taking to the sky's or the motorway network.
Except that doesn't work either so then you have to resort to making stupid statements like this one and quite quickly, you're back to square one.

The only saving grace is that we haven't elected this idiot, not yet anyway.

Don't Do Anything

Stay inside, lock all your doors and windows, unplug the phone and keep the kids safe in their bedrooms.











Today being told that we're all going to die again by police chief Ian Blair who claims that the terrorists are onto something. OK, so we were all going to be horribly killed back in October, but this time it's for real and we should all stay inside.

Apparently, there is no "concrete intelligence" to suggest that anything specific is going to happen anywhere specific over the festive period. But still, we're in grave danger and rather than running the risk of being confronted by a complete lunatic, we should just put our feet up in from of the Christmas TV.

Not only that, even if you weren't blown to pieces by a religious extremist, you'll probably die from the inevitable flu pandemic which threatens to wipe out the entire population.

And even if you were stupid enough to want to leave the house after all these justified and accurate warnings, you wouldn't get anywhere. The plane's aren't flying, the roads are clogged up and the trains, well, they never run anyway.

Just stay at home at don't do anything, OK?

I Told You Trains Were Rubbish

But did you listen? Well, probably. In fact, you probably knew anyway.







Still, lets all laugh at Virgin Trains, who have now resorted to asking passengers to repair their faulty fleet.

One thing that I would question though is this:

Mr Gaskin told train staff he had some plastic cable ties and a tube of superglue in his briefcase.

Another passenger, who was a former Network Rail engineer, climbed on to the front of the engine and tried to fix the loose windscreen wiper blades but was unsuccessful.

Who on earth carries a bag of cable ties on a train journey?

Clearly not Mr Branson