Saturday, July 23, 2011

How to completely wreck trust in a public transport system

The public transport system, built up so well under Evangelical influence in Victorian England, has been completely wrecked by Thatcher and her followers since then (whether belonging to the Labour Party or belonging to the Conservative Party).

There are "competing" rail companies, all operating trains on the same set of railway tracks, but with different fares for the same route - and even different fares on the same route for the SAME rail company, depending on what time you travel.

But few trains now run on time and they are almost always overcrowded (if one travels Second Class).

And, to make it really difficult, tickets valid for a train operated by one rail companies may not be (usually ARE not) valid for trains run by other rail companies!

To illustrate: I have just checked the possibility of travelling from London to Peterborough.

Depending on the time you want to travel, the price for the ticket varies from £8 to £23.

Let us imagine that you buy at ticket for a journey scheduled to leave, let us say, at mid-day, but your train is late. It is not inconceivable that the previous train (run by an entirely different company) is also late, but arrives at "your" platform almost exactlz at mid-day. Unless you are extremely careful, you are likely to take this train, and to incur, as a result, a huge fine.

The above is not a merely hypothetical example.

The UK is full of gossip about little old ladies and gallant old men who have been caught out.

Train travel, instead of being frequently serviced, safe, reliable and cheap, is now not only infrequently serviced and expensive but also unreliable (at least so far as timings are concerned) and unsafe (think rail accidents).

No wonder the roads are more crowded than ever. With more delays and accidents than ever.

Thanks to Thatcherism and all the other experiments that have been indulged in by the British ruling class over the last few decades, Britain is now a rather nasty country in which to live, though thank God it still has many redeeming features - at least when compared to many other countries which are in an even worse condition.

But what a fall compared to being the leading country in the world, which is what Britain was in Victorian times - which elitist modernists, who have destroyed the country, of course still systematically malign. Sphere: Related Content

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