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!

We all Hate Insurance Firms

We all hate Insurance firms. Not content with parting us from our hard-earned for something we really don't want to pay for, irritating us night and day with television adverts only margnially better than those for debt management and bombarding us with junk mail, they're now wanting more money from us.

Following the recent trend set by gas and electricity firms, Motor Insurance companies are jumping on the price-hike bandwagon.

Norwich Union from next year will increase their prices in 2007 by an average of 16%, with prices for the high-risk groups inflating by around 40%.

I write this as someone who is currently getting quotes ranging from over £850 to more than £3200 to insure a 2002 1.1l Citroen Saxo, despite already having two years of claim-free motoring. This is because I am in the unfortunate position of being a 20-year-old male, which makes me public enemy number one in the eyes of Britain's insurers.

The problem is, this price rises seem a little bit short-sighted. Whilst I'm fully aware that insurance firms, like all businesses, are only interested in lining the pockets of themselves and their shareholders, it just seems stupid to announce this, although they seem to think that they are meerly leading a pack which will soon follow.

Amongst the reasons cited for the rise by Norwich Union, is the increase in claim processing costs, due to the presence of around 1million uninsured drivers on our roads.
The problem is, that these uninsured drivers are likely to be the young drivers, those on low income or those with bad driving records, who are being priced out of insurance in the first place. With increases like of 40% for these groups, surely this figure is going to rise much higher than the current one million? That means that in one/two years time, claim costs are going to rise yet again, and I'll probably writing a similar piece in the not-to distant future.

Is Norwich Union seeing something that I arn't?