Those of a delicate disposition should look away now.
DATE 27 July 2008 (yesterday - a Sunday)
FROM Manchester Picadilly
TO London Paddington
SINGLE TICKET PRICE: £61.40 (return for a pound more - why?)
No, that is not a typo. Sixty-one quid!!
Furthermore,
JOURNEY TIME: 4 hours 20 minutes.
Which was of course further delayed by 50 minutes.
More than five hours from Manchester to London! And the trains were packed so people stood the whole way. For sixty quid!
Oh, and (insult to injury) contrary to the advertised provisions, there was no buffet. "Staff shortages"
In a related post of my previous moaning about the trains (I don't drive and I use public transport every day - although my better half drives and we shan't ever use the train to/from Mancs again) you will see that various people made various very sensible suggestions as to why our trains are like this. The Observer had a similar piece recently. But the core question seems always to be ignored. We pay high taxes from which large subsidies are given to the train companies, and we pay very high ticket prices. Why do so many other countries manage it, but we can't? In those circumstances I'm not really interested in the excuses we always get given - as Michael Howard would say, I don't want problems, I want solutions!