So I spend most of my life on trains, whether that be travelling into London on the suburban SWT services, or from Kings Cross to Leeds on Virgin East Coast.
SWT: Service is not great, with many delays. However, most of the delays are due to either points issues or suicides, which neither is the responsibility of SWT, which is why we rarely get a decent refund on our ticket. T rains are packed, but one of the issues is that the infrastructure of the Surbiton mainline doesn’t allow for more trains as the network is already full. They need another set of rails to allow for more services, which is just not possible apparently.
I pay £316 a month for unlimited travel into and out of London, and unlimited tube.
Virgin East Coast: Very impressed with the service in general, always get a seat, generally book about a week in advance and get a return for circa £70. If you are half an hour late you get 50% of your ticket price back, and 100% if it’s over an hour. By the way, I have NEVER seen people leaving their bags on seats to save them, and then just leave them there, especially a whole carriage full. Again, any delays I have tended to experience have been due to power lines going down, which is Railtracks responsibility.
Personally, I’m not against re-nationalisation of the railways, but it all depends on how they’re going to approach the issues we have (too many people on an already “at capacity” network), and the piss poor work of Railtrack (who are already Government owned).
Could they not add a couple of coaches to each train?
Genuine question - or are the trains already at some sort of limit?
They are all 12 coaches long, which is the maximum length stations are built to, so is assume not. It would block crossing tracks at Waterloo.
Smith was on Radio 5 Live this morning and was asked about this.
He apologised unreservedly for using the term Lunatic.
But he said he was referring to himself NOT being a lunatic and not suggesting the Corbyn was a lunatic. He claimed to be responding to a question that (and I’m sketchy here) posited that he, Smith, might be a lunatic.
It would be interesting to see moments that led up to the clip you showed.
I’ve got sympathy with Corbine on this train seats situation. I’ve been there. You get on the train at one end with ur bitch, and maybe there’s the odd empty seat, but she wants to sit Together, so you keep walking, hoping there is a couple adjacent seats in next carriage. But there ain’t, so you try next carriage. Before you know it, ur at the end of the train, and bitch suddenly decides she’s now willing to sit on Own in the last empty seat in that carriage, and you don’t want to walk back down the train cos those empty seats you saw earlier might be gone by now, and in any case she’ll get frosty if you “abandon her”, and being woman, she’ll never remember to get off at the right stop if you ain’t there supervising, so you end up standing in aisle, or sitting by the door like a Homeless.
On the other hand, if you can afford First Class Tickets, you should get them, to free up the cheap seats for the Common Man. Bit selfish that he done that, just to save a few quid. Tight cunt.
The Virgins do have a point tho. Combun is either v.amateur train passenger, or he’s purposely trying to appear a Victim. He hasn’t followed any of the Procedures:
Reserve a fkn seat
If not, sit in first empty seat you see.
If not, remove a “Reserve” card + throw it out window.
To be fair, Bear, he is on an impromptu tour of the country he never expected to be doing.
The other question is should we accept this level of service and adapt ourselves around it, or should we try to change it so that it serves us?
As constituted, it’s really only there to take the piss out of two groups of people. Regular commuters and people that have to travel without notice, mostly peeps on a business trip that has to happen now.
ms pap and I were looking at train opportunities for Southampton home games. There’s a rolling month of cheap tickets. I can’t seem to book any further than a month out to get a deal, and if that fixture changes, I’m a bit stuffed.
Of course, there are personal events that can lead to a must-have unplanned trip. Most of those are going to be miserable as well, such as bereavements.
Train companies are there to make money out of “shit happens”, and if rail is your only option, the TOCs have a monopoly in most places you’ll need them.
For what it’s worth I’ve taken that service up to York (it then goes onto Newcastle/Edinburgh/Aberdeen) time and again and it really is absolutely rammed. Admittedly this is primarily on at 6.30 on a Friday night when all the Geordies and Scots who work in London are heading home for the weekend, but there are people/bags etc. jammed in the aisles every single time. Its a clambering act to even get to the food car for an overpriced warm beer to make the journey vaguely bearable.
Bloody expensive too as unless I can book literally like 2 months in advance - (which is surely impossible for everyone else as much as it is me I assume, given that things come up and you simply can’t plan *that* far ahead), it costs £65-70 ish for me for a weekend return even with the 30% 16-25 discount.
Having said that, it does rather look like Corbyn has been caught bang to rights on this one I’m afraid. The photos (not necessarily the ones with the reservations) do basically bust him.
Having said that, it does rather look like Corbyn has been caught bang to rights on this one I’m afraid. The photos (not necessarily the ones with the reservations) do basically bust him.
Don’t believe everything you read in newspapers.
At least, not immediately.
“I was on said train and it was very busy!” she said. “He got seat about 45 mins in when staff started shuffling people around!”
She added in another tweet that the train was “chock-a”.
Separately, Charles Anthony, a Corbyn-supporting video journalist who shot the original film also released new footage and disputed the company’s account.
“Video footage of Corbyn sitting down is after he filmed video. And after people got off,” he said in a series of tweets.
He also posted new footage of Mr Corbyn walking through a busy train corridor and of other passengers seating on the floor during the same journey.
Why would any of that change with nationalisation? When the East Coast was re-nationalised for 3 years we didn’t get cheaper train tickets…
As part of the Liverpool Metro deal, the Metropolitan Area will get to set bus timetables themselves, depending on need. The companies will have to run the services. They can’t simply continue to plough money onto popular routes. They’ll be running to the city region’s tune, and rightfully so. I don’t think people realise what a lifeline public transport is to many sections of the community.
They can do that because the decision making power has come back into the public domain.
As it stands, I’m not sure what power the TOCs have to direct infrastructure now that they’ve absolved themselves of paying reasonable infrastructure costs, but it’s highly unlikely that any of them are going to conduct nation-wide planning.
That’s what nationalisation and public ownership changes.
As I’ve said, it’s backfiring. Whatever photographic prestidigitation transpired, there are a lot of people backing up Corbyn’s time-specific claim, and even better, posting videos from yesterday showing what a fucking shambles Virgin Trains are.
If they thought Corbynistas were bad, they really ought to try captive commuters.
I don’t think this is exactly a rip roaring success for Corbyn either. Expect for cementing the seige mentality amongst his existing support base, or that every possible criticism of the man is a conspiracy of some sort.
From where I am sat, all this serves to do is entrench pre-existing ideas on either side.
Then again, that cunt Farage seems to have won people over by drinking pints and smoking fags (oh and blaming immigration for every possible problem). So, perhaps seeing Corbyn sat on the floor will win him votes.