I think I have heard it all, now. Northern Rail are slashing loads of services next week in order to avoid last minute cancellations. This is a bit like the legendary Staffordshire bus route which failed to stop for passengers because it would interfere with the timetable. Welcome to so called public transport in Britain today.
In any event, I have a problem with the term ‘public transport’. It implies that the service is run for the benefit of the public when in reality the service is being run for private profit by way of extortionate train fares.
I have not suffered as greatly as my friends in the north. My train journeys are usually short ones and the cancellations and delays are neither here nor there. If the train I want to get is running late, the odds are that the preceding train is late too and I can catch that instead. If your living depends on it, or you are going somewhere special, it is more than a pain in the arse.
The best excuse recently is “staff shortages”, especially among drivers. How can this possibly be? Train drivers pay these days is very generous and – let’s be very honest here – you could train a monkey to operate most trains these days. I am not begrudging drivers their generous pay – just look at the vast sums being trousered by the franchises who mismanage the railways – but there really should not be staff shortages. And I am going to make a generous offer here. If a company wants to employ me to drive a train on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I can start next week. I don’t go sick very often, my eyesight, thanks to laser surgery, is good and I promise not to have a few pints before taking the train out.
Using public transport always gives me a sense of personal failure. The rolling stock is ancient and antiquated, rattly and noisy, there are often no refreshment facilities and even when there are, I am asked a fiver for a BLT sarnie. Sod that for a game of soldiers. I’ll bring my own. But I sacrifice my own comfort and what’s left in my bank account by getting a train when I want to go into town for a pint. (That’s two references to booze long before 10.00 am, not good.)
There is only one solution to this: take the railways back into public ownership and run them for the benefit of passengers and not to boost the already bulging bank accounts of the likes of Brian Souter and Richard Fucking Branson. I reckon even the most ardent of Tories agree with this because it’s much less to do with some political philosophy and more to do providing a service that exists for the people who use it.
Yes, nationalise the railways, put someone like Christian Wolmar in charge of it and run it for you and me. Cancelling services in order to stop cancellations is bonkers.
