yet another instance of me having not all that much to add here, but all the seem feeling obliged, or rather compelled, to put something here. and so it's further groans and what have you on the subject of trains, look you see.
it is not entirely unreasonable for anyone outside of the UK (welcome and thank you) reading this to wonder why on earth i go on about the disastrous public transport system here, for it looks amazing. that is down to the misconception of "London" (innit) being representative of the nation (or if you will nations) entire. which is certainly isn't. how lovely it would be to have just a fraction of the services they get down in London up here in the north. instead we have to battle with extremely limited options as it is (for a lot of areas, for instance, no buses on Sundays, public holidays or, farcically, after 5pm), with them limited options subject to all too frequent cancellations. or "disruptions", for if they call it a cancellation they have to pay you a small percentage of your fee back.
every now and then they are kind enough to give one some vague notion of an idea that an upcoming service "might" be an issue. such is what faces me around the time this is getting published. apparently yet more "work" is being done on the tracks, and so certain routes will have a "rail replacement service", as in a bus. on seeing a poster hidden away for this at my nearby station i tried to work out if my train would be affected. bewilderingly my route showed it as being their plan that both the rail replacement bus service and the train shall be running. go figure.
quite keen to see what happens when i turn up at the station, which is a five (5) or so minute stroll from my lodgings in this era of exile. often i have heading off, having checked the "app" and what have you that it is running, only to get there and be told "actually no it is not". priceless when they place the blame on a cancellation on "one member of staff not turning up for work". i wonder how it would go if a hospital was shut down due to one person not turning up, or if all electric and gas supplies were turned off due to one (1) absence. breathtakingly brazen is how they are about their own sheer f****g incompetence.
a reasonably recent cancellation was somewhat entertaining. the app things, the website and the tracker for the train all stated that it was all fine. except it (alas) was not. it was cancelled but they just let all the available sources of information (of course no one was answering phones) suggest that it was not. with regards to the "somewhat entertaining" part, well, it just so happens that a network rail employee was left stranded at the same station as i was. no, he couldn't even get hold of anyone to work out just what the f*** was going on. oh, make no mistake, it was no fun any of us being f****d over, but there's something vaguely novel about their own employees being made to experience our life.
generally those responsible for trains and buses claim that some routes and services are "just not financially viable". this (to state the obvious) goes somewhat (as in entirely) against the idea of public transport, does it not? exactly how some services are not "financially viable" is a mystery. rather famously, for instance, it is cheaper to get a flight from "the north" (be it actual, like Newcastle, or branded, like Manchester) to mainland Europe and then a flight from there to London (innit) than it is to get a train. and not just marginally (or slightly) cheaper; often north of £100 less ("fewer").
when people speak of "Broken Britain" it is not always traditional moans and groans. quite often it is the wilful, knowing deterioration in what was a world leading infrastructure. our network of trains and buses, outside of that there London, are forever knacked, and we have somehow decided that between them Royal Mail and the Post Office (two separate entities so they can just blame each other when something goes wrong) don't actually have to deliver mail. let's not start on the water.
pretty sure there's a Talking Heads lyric somewhere (possibly off Naked) that goes something like "and as things fell apart nobody paid attention".
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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