There is a long-running joke: "say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least Hitler made the trains run on time".


Yes, not exactly hilarious, but I was given to thinking about this when I tried to book a ticket to (don't talk to me about culture, I've been t') Leeds in September. Like a dutiful forward thinker, I seek to get the best prices by booking early and three months is as early as you can get - they don't issue tickets any further in advance on The Trainline.

You're bored - I can tell. Bear with me.

The cheapest ticket available today is £63 return. None of the cheaper tickets advertised (from £10.50 each way) are available. Railways are not airlines, they are supposed to be flexible. If you book one of these super advance tickets that may or may not be available, and your plans change in the quarter of a year between purchase and travel, you cannot exchange and you must pay the full fare of £75 for a single, £150 for a return or think "fuck it, it's cheaper to take the car"

For comparison a flight costs £138, and the bus takes six hours and is full of heroin addicts and the unemployed & smells of wee: they'd have to pay me.

This is why we are all pissed off with the rail network. It's not because it's unreliable - it isn't particularly bad. It is far, far safer than any other form of transport. It's not overcrowded, at least outside the major commuter routes and I've found that getting up to Town by 8am rather than 9am guarantees me a seat - people are too lazy to get an earlier train. In fact, outside the major commuter routes, I rarely see a full train. The cost of a ticket, you see is prohibitive.

I hate, having tried to navigate the painfully slow website and bought a ticket, arguing with some bureaucrat in bri-nylon over whether the ticket I have is valid on the journey I'm on - a question of Stephen Hawking defying opacity.

I believe this is the place to deal with the "Tory Privatisation" argument. Yes the Tories got the structure wrong, but the problem was not with privatisation as such. Indeed it achieved it's main function - a cut in the subsidy, matched by private-sector investment, and a massive increase in passenger numbers, without any change in the safety of the railway. Labour subsequently re-nationalised the railway in 2000 and the state subsidy mushroomed 250% to £5bn, whilst the Train operating companies are not laying on any more services to cope with demand. The problem is not about who owns the railways, but in the incentives for whoever does. It is these which are skewed. All changes to schedules must now be cleared by the DfT, which is ludicrous: the Government actually prevented additional services being laid on to meet demand. Thus TOCs hike prices, hiding it under the cloak of the cheapest fares of which about 10 are available, to maximise returns, rather than driving up passenger numbers by meeting customer demand, which is what they did under privatisation. Renationalisation has kept the bad bit of private industry: the profit motive, and lost the bit that makes it work - the flexibility and investment. A typical New Labour worst of both worlds fudge, just like PFI.

If you want to get people off the roads and onto the railways then the fare structure needs to be simpler. Rail needs to be the cheapest option at all times (apart from the bus, which is for scum). It needs to be no less reliable than a car. Trains need to be full, the toilets need to both work and be cleaned occasionally and the buffet needs to never, ever run out of cold Lager.

If the government regulated the railways to that end, then we'd all be happy, but Tony and Co. are a total bunch of cunts who couldn't organise a clusterfuck in a Brothel. They have been led by the media's hysteria following the Hatfield rail disaster in 2000 and chased headlines rather than implement changes which might actually work. Just like everything else done by this mendacious bunch of sub-marxist wank-stains on whom I would only consider pissing if they weren't on fire at the time.

We've got authoritarian bastards running the country without even a working transport network to compensate.