Hurrah, I’m back, bearing mysterious growing theings from the Eden Project and a winter’s worth of clothes from Primark and M&S, gallons of shampoo from Boots and a lot of teabags.
Richard Branson did his best to fuck it up – quiet carriage my arse – but rather than bore you with the minutiae of the journey, here’s GarfieldSnixon in the Grauniad to do it for me.
August 18, 2007 10:18 AM
How much VAT or duty on a train ticket? How much on vehicle fuel? No government will invest properly in rail travel as there is no incentive; oh well, ‘climate change’, but then that’s just a convenient fly-swat term to use when it suits government purpose. I travel on Virgin Rail pretty well weekly and it is surprisingly reliable.
The travel conditions suck though: it’s not just that the toilets don’t work, they often back up so you have the malodorous accompaniment of a couple of journey’s worth of shit to enjoy; you have “Keith’ or whoever telling you at least twice at a time that the buffet is now open or will shut in ten minutes (somewhere north of Milton Keynes if you are travelling south) and as the PA system was probably fitted by a bloke from Yellow Pages, it feeds back with a deafening squeal. The ‘train manager’ will spend what seems like a lifetime reciting the bleedin’ obvious about terms and conditions which may be OK on your first journey but is boring after the second (buy a ticket to use the train – durgh) and then there’s the two-tone descending signal that repeats three times and no-one knows what it is or what it means but is it ever loud. The seating is unadjustable and leg room is pitiful; the windows are not always aligned with the seating although the luggage squeezed into the minute luggage bay enjoys an excellent view of the countryside.
The ticketing system is arcane and frankly borders on the fraudulent; despite the high profile adverts there are seldom ‘cheap’ tickets available for any journey and the Virgin website has been put together by the Yellow Pages guy who also does the train’s PA. And don’t get me going on weekend travel; if you cannot run a proper service, don’t charge for it – drop the rate at wekends. Oh yeah, 1st class is rubbish as well: crap food, unadjustable seating – the last time I was offered the sandwiches they couldn’t sell from the buffet even though the tables were set for silver service (pretentious w***ers).
Yet none of this is functionally addressable until it cuts into the bonuses of the managers (train staff are generally OK, particularly as you just know the kind of BOHICA* they would have to deal with); I would propose that no bonus ever be paid in a year when a toilet malfunctions for a start, then that any major fines imposed by OffRail or whatever it’s called (which are going to be passed on to us mugs anyway) be translated into obligatory fare reductions; for example, for one month all fares to be reduced by 50%. There are other sanctions I’d love to suggest; some involving Branson but none in keeping with the current human rights’ conventions.
* management speak: Bend Over Here It Comes Again
Our train manager tried to enliven the proceedings with arch little witticisms as we approached every station – “Taunton! A titillating treat! Taunton, your next station stop!” – like a low-rent Graham Norton, but without the brogue and the rakish charm or let’s face it, the comic talent. Poor guy. I got the impression he’d’ve welcomed a bit of BOHICA on those long, lonely nights criss-crossing the wilds of the West Country.
Re the blog, I still need to recover from the unaccustomed exertion : but tomorrow, as the railways so laughably put it, normal service will be resumed. This blog has been remarkably cat-free in my absence, but that will be rectified in short order and that’s a promise.
