God, do you not remember the old BR buffet carsâŚ(shudders)?
I remember them well, mainly from travelling home for weekends from college in the Midlands. I was an impoverished student, but could still at least afford to get on a train from Newark to come home.
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Read back and you will see I thought appointing James Timpson as prison minister was an interesting idea
Yes I am going to be critical of Labour,particularly around employment rights - I employ the 80 staff in the Uk - the idea that someone I hire to fulfill a full time role can on their first day request part time work and I have to give it serious consideration is plain daft. So yeah, I am going to be bitching like crazy.
Ditto the Unions
I have also said that the Tories need some time out on the naughty step to sort themselves out
Itâs not about wanting the Tories back in, itâs about my views on policies that we are going to have to live with for the next decade . If you are happy to drink the Kool aid great, Iâm not
Fuck, the last time I could afford to travel by train, my pocket money wouldnât stretch to buying anything from the buffet car. 
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I can still see the not the nine oclock news sketch about the sandwich morphing into a sausage roll.
Re employment rights, why fall into the Daily Mail Trap? (focussing only on the worst possible scenario which represents maybe 0.0001% of what this offers)
Remember most employment rights IMPROVE the situation for workers which provides greater security, less anxiety and good employers harness this to their advantage - embracing this can lead to lower staff turnover/ reduced recruitment costs, more experienced staff and greater productivityâŚ.
Remember such regulation would also apply to competitors so there is no competitive disadvantage to it.
Your response makes you sound like a Victorian Mill owner!
Do you know, thatâs pretty much exactly what was happening the last time BR was in public ownership (which I think is what @CB-Saint is harking back to.) In fact, in the seventies in general the country was a model of industrial harmony, with a satisfied workforce happily cooperating with benign management structures to create the ideal employment scenario for all concerned. 
Would rather see the money go to the staff than subsidising rail fares elsewhere in the EU.
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You try running a small business
If I advertise and employ a receptionist for a full time position, is it unreasonable to expect them not to be putting in flexible work requests on the first day?
We are not Tescos, who can absorb this - some of the positions in our business only have one person doing it - That kind of request is problemtic
I donât have an issue generally with worker rights - equal pay, equality rules, holiday, rest periods, H&S - that is ll good stuff. What we are being asked to accommodate is a lot of lifestyle choices which can be hard for small businesses to accomodate but we are legally compelled to do so.
Ultimately we are not the only game in town, far from it. You can choose to work for us or not. These things dont need legislation, the market will quiclkly adjust. If you cannot hire staff because of you work patterns, you will change
Yep - British Rail was run by the staff, for the staff
It wasnât just BR. Thatcher only got elected because the country had got tired of being held to ransom every time a union decided they felt like a thirty percent raise, with the support of all the other unions who knew it was their turn soon.
I used to take a packed lunch with my Ian Allen trainspotting books in my Duffle Bag. I left my Duffle Bag on one train journey. Three months later I got a postcard from the local BR Lost Luggage Office saying it had been found.
Unfortunately the packed lunch was still in the bag. 
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I recall a few times in the mid 80s taking a train to London from Salisbury - the old Exeter -Waterloo service and having a damned fine full English Breakfast around as we passed by Hook.
Had a flashback 2 years ago when i did my Polish train journey to Munich via Vienna. Damned fine Breakfast for ÂŁ7
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Bet you wouldnt get change from 70 quid from BR now?
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That means nothing to me.
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He was a spy dont you read all those spy novels @Polski_Filip is the star of most of them why do you think his knee is fucked ?
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The Caddy Who Came In From The Cold? 
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Saddam Hussein. My part in his downfallâŚ
But we canât talk about that after our ZUK Country Manager got arrested instead
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Fucking Labour - two weeks in and they have fucked the internet
Youâre here, stop complaining. 
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