Enoch Had It Right...

It can't have escaped your notice that a very bad thing happened in Woolwich yesterday.



Early reports were wild; Twitter and Facebook seemed to blow up with the news and the reaction has been as vociferous as the act was atrocious.


Apparently two men in a car, knocked another man over in a street in Woolwich and then killed him with a large knife and a meat cleaver. They then waited around for the police to show up and attempted to attack them too. Armed police were dispatched and the attackers were wounded and taken in to custody.


Because this is one of the many countries in the world governed by rule of law and the right to a fair trial, these men will be given hospital treatment and remain in custody during the investigation of the crime. It's pretty safe to say they're not going to be given bail so they will be incarcerated until their trial. If/When found guilty, a punishment will be handed down and it will probably be a pair of long prison sentences.

Those are the bare bones of what happened and what will happen.

It would take a braver man than I, possibly a man that could think his way through a corkscrew in a tornado, to argue that these men are innocent until proven guilty.

Well, technically, they are innocent until proven guilty but the eyewitness reports, statements from the police, news reports (although I'm loathe to completely rely upon them) and the pretty damning video evidence from mobile phone footage screams "Guilty as sin". Even so, they have a right to a fair trial and I welcome that.

I'm glad these men didn't die yesterday because due process has to take its course.

The crime has to be investigated and they have to be tried based upon that investigation. At the very least the victim's family deserve to know who murdered their man and why.

Whatever punishment is handed down, even if it were the death penalty, it will never be enough and will never fill the hole such a horrific event will leave in their lives.

If a member of the mourning family were to stumble across this post, then I would like to assure them that I in no way underestimate their loss. I'm trying to make some sense of it too. I may not have known Drummer Lee Rigby, but I know, as you do, what it is like to lose someone dear to you. Whether it was long before their time or after a damn good innings, the gut wrenching, soul draining feeling of loss is overwhelming.

I've been in the situation where I've grieved and vowed revenge. I've sworn that I would make it right.

I didn't. I could. But I won't.

It would only beget more bad things. I would be doing my missing loved one's memory a disservice if I let my gift of life be consumed by hate and be ruined because I sought revenge.

Nobody wins with revenge.

I know that time is a great healer, just as you do. You may well ask "what the fuck am I supposed to do while time's healing me? What am I supposed to do tonight?"

All I can tell you is 'nothing'. It's just time. I'm sorry.

I enjoyed this tweet:

The vast majority of humans are good, but we live in an age where we hear of every sick act of 6 billion people and try to make sense of it.
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) May 8, 2013

For a blog post with the title "Enoch Had It Right..." you may be forgiven for thinking this has been a dry as dust summing up of the murder in Woolwich yesterday. As far as I'm concerned, that should be the only thing to say about what happened until the full facts are known. When that happens then a dialogue can be opened to attempt to stave off the likelihood of such events from happening again.

The key word there is "likelihood" but we'll come back to that later.

Instead, what we have is a population with a plethora of smartphones and access to the world wide web. We have Twitter, Facebook, Online Forums, blogs such as this splatter on your screen and, of course, the comments sections of online news articles.


A Muslim man or woman living and working in England, living an "English" life as you and I do, must have been quite worried about the news reports coming in.

The BBC and Sky were saying that two men "OF MUSLIM APPEARANCE" had murdered a man.

Not just any man, but a serving soldier of the British Army, on leave in his own country wearing a Help For Heroes T-Shirt.

That hypothetical Muslim person must have been thinking "Jesus Christ, here we go..."

Well, maybe not Jesus but you get what I mean. They must have been thinking "Here we go, some nutter who's been tagged as a Muslim  has killed an off duty soldier and the rest of us are about to suffer because of it."


Before we go any further, I heard the phrase "of Muslim appearance" in my mind's ear and immediately thought of a few lads from my cricket team.

I won't tell you which ones I suspected...

Of Muslim appearance though...

Frank Ribery is a massive Muslim

Muhammad Ali; such a Muslim, innit!

Flippancy aside, it had now been reported that two men of Muslim appearance had killed a serving soldier of the British Army, on leave in his own country wearing a Help For Heroes T-Shirt.. That's an extremely unhelpful thing to report. It gives rise to this nonsense:


If it's one thing you can rely on, it's for events to spiral and for tit for tat idiocy to ensue.
Woolwich Machete Attack: EDL Clash With Police After Leader Calls For 'Feet On The Streets'

More than 50 EDL supporters gathered at Woolwich Arsenal train station, throwing bottles at police, before moving to a nearby pub. The group then marched to the town centre where they were surrounded by police. No arrests are being reported.

Fifty plus EDL supporters you say? Armed with bottles, strong language and a thirst for a pint? Wow, that's an impressive military force.

Fifty dickheads generated a headline. FFS.

This sort of mindlessness only serves to ensure that things never get better. That attitude in certain places has reached the point whereby both sides are so entrenched and so very convinced they are right, no lasting truce is likely to be seen our lifetime.

Israel and the Arab Nations, Ireland and Britain, Chard and Crewkerne, Wolves and West Brom to name but a few.

And I am not being flippant.

You only have to see the vitriol some football fans spout at each other to know that ugly things, committed by people with ugly expressions on their faces can, and do, kick off in a heartbeat.

People die during that shit too.

In the case of football hooliganism, the theatrics of a couple of millionaire ball kickers in competitions, competitions that mean fuck all when compared to the genuinely relevant things in life, an excuse is apparently granted to a moron to go too far by half.

And far more regularly than the sort of thing that is reported to have happened yesterday.

People are people. Not every Muslim is a terrorist, not every terrorist is a Muslim and not every black man has a large penis.

Again, that may sound facetious but some of the arguments that I've seen that attach large swathes of people, entire adherents to a particular religion or to a skin colour administered by dint of birth, attached and accused of being complicit to the unimaginable crime that was committed by two men yesterday, is insane in itself!

Send 'em all back! Bloody coming over here committing crime, taking our benefits and talking in that heathen lingo.

Bloody hell.

Jesus wept, in fact.

I've been in Wolves long enough to see the difference between the media portrayal of English life and the reality. People are people, which is equally awesome and shit. As amazing as it is disappointing, as wondrous as it is horrific and as mundane as this metaphor. Money doesn't guarantee manners just the same as the lack of it doesn't guarantee self righteous victimhood and crime.

Apparently Wolves is crawling with immigrants and ethnics. CRAWLING WITH 'EM!

Bollocks. 

79% white as opposed to 90% in the rest of the country. More than the national average? Certainly. It's not a majority though. 

People seem to rub along pretty well, from what I can see. I very rarely see trouble during the day or on my commute. I've seen plenty of different coloured faces with grimaces, swearing under their breath because we've been moved to Platform 1 when we're on Platform 12 and the train leaves in 2 minutes. 

Even on my commute in my car. I hate everyone for getting in my way but when I give a single second's consideration to the driver of the other car, he's stuck in the same flow as me! 

We're all trying to get somewhere; work, college, drop the kids off at school and then need to do those other things on that ever expanding list! We are united in our hatred of our reliance on the bloody trains and roads and immovable systems we need to navigate to live!

That's us.

That's the people who live and work and just try to get by in this country.

You've only got to look out of your window to see chimney pots to know there are many, many people in this bit of the world.

Take a look out of your window. How many chimney pots can you see? 

It's a pretty good estimation that the number of chimneypots in an area is, as near as damnit is to swearing, the number of people that live there.

Take that number and compare it  to the actual number of people (bored teens/chavs/fishwives/whatever) causing any hassle. The ratio will be pretty low.

The squeaky wheel gets the most oil.

These examples you see in the papers; they're utter cunts. No doubt. But they do not represent everyone in that community.

The Daily Hate is among one of the worst problems this country has. They, like many other papers, muddy the waters with their rhetoric and make any reasonable conversation impossible. Righteous fury and indignation is all they aim for and because of that, nothing changes for the better. 

I worry that people are easily brainwashed by the Daily Mail and the like. I think "Welfare tourism" exists but it's a very rare thing perpetrated by, when you get right down to it, bastards. But the majority, and this has to be true or I'll kill this fluffy kitten, the majority of people are pretty damn decent.

I don't remember all of the sermons my headmaster, Mr Bryce, gave during assembly at the CofE Primary School I went to, but I remember the sentiment behind this one:

Take an A4 sheet of paper, draw a small dot in the centre and ask people what they can see.

Most will concentrate on that blot.

That blot makes not even a 1000th of 1% of the unblotted paper. 

The negative perception will rule. Most people will ignore the respectively vast area of purity. What about all that white? 

No.

The impurity in the middle is what we see. 

The blot.

I storm out of my house every morning with a face like thunder just begging the world to give me an excuse to go thermonuclear. THE VERY FIRST OLD BIDDY TO GET IN MY WAY asks me if I could help her with her bag on to the train and I couldn't be happier to do so. She said "thank you" and I had rainbow breath the rest of the day.

The actions of two men in Woolwich, men with a slim grip on reality with a random act of violence perpetrated on a stranger who happened to be a man with a future, should not incite such hate towards anyone other than the doers of the deed.

There are sixty million plus people on this island, each of us interacting with each other in a vast number of ways. Do not let this one horrendous act in a series of billions of successful interaction sully our humanity.

This act represents Islam as much as I do.

This country is built up of many, many people. People just trying to get through life. Some of them, a very small number, actively try to make this world a worse place. The majority of us, the rest of the sheet of paper, live without direct consequence of that blot. But we all fear it, and fear stains in the watermark.

We are better than that knee jerk reaction.

Enoch did not have it right.


My condolences to the family of Lee Rigby and Lee himself.

May he rest in peace.

Currently on facebook...

Jesus wept. No real requirement to fisk this but, well, why not?

" An incident occurred in a supermarket recently (no it didn't) when the following was witnessed: A Muslim woman dressed in a Burkha (black gown & face mask) was standing with her shopping in a queue at the checkout.

When it was her turn to be served , and as she reached the cashier (because we call till bashers "cashiers" in England do we?), she made a loud remark about the British Flag lapel pin (British Flag lapel pins are really popular over here) which the female cashier was wearing on her blouse. The cashier reached.... ...............up and touched the pin and said, 'Yes , I always wear it proudly. My son serves abroad with the forces and I wear it for him. The Muslim woman then asked the cashier when she was going to stop bombing and killing her countrymen explaining that she was Afghani (sic).

The attention to detail this unnamed casual observer displays is astounding. I have no idea why that long pause is in the middle but we'll put that down to the ever elongating nose jamming on the dot button. 

At that point an elderly gentleman standing in the queue stepped forward (no he didn't) and interrupted with a calm, gentle voice, and said to the Afghani (sic)woman: 'Excuse me, but hundreds of thousands of British men and women (444 since 2001 to the present day, not to make light of any death in service, but 444 is a few factors lower than multiples of 100,000) just like this lady's son, have fought and sacrificed their lives so that people just like YOU can stand here in Britain, which is OUR country and allow you to blatantly accuse an innocent check-out cashier (Again the Americanism) of bombing YOUR countrymen. 

It is my belief (fuck off) that if you were allowed to be as outspoken as that in Afghan, which you claim to be YOUR country, then we wouldn't need to be fighting there today. However, now that you have learned how to speak out and criticize (we don't use z's that way) the British people who have afforded you the protection of OUR country, I will gladly pay the cost of a ticket to help you pay your way back to Afghan (sic). 

My Bollocksometer^TM just melted. Bugger, the warranty's just run out too.

When you get there and if you manage to survive for being as outspoken as what you are here in Britain, (as 'what you are here in Britain'? The old man's a chav!) then you should be able to help straighten out the mess which YOUR Afghani countrymen have got you into in the first place, which appears to be the reason that you have come to OUR country to avoid'. 

If this chick was pro Taliban then she would be in Afghanistan and probably would be that outspoken, because the men agree with her. It's the Afghan women who selfishly object to being treated as second class citizens that get the shit kicked out of them. 

Apparently, the queue cheered and applauded. 

No. They really didn't because it didn't happen and crowds applauding a row in a shop is not a sight I have ever witnessed in Blighty. Not in Waitrose in Wolverhampton anyway. LIDL on the otherhand...

IF YOU AGREE.... Pass this on to all of your proud British and other worldly friends.... I just did !!!! (Other worldly? Do you mean ghosts and the occult?) It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. (Another American saying not in general use over here.) It's also nice to be British!"

I've read some dumb shit in my time, Daily Mail articles and the comments sections of same, for instance, but that's up there. Right up there. Right up where the sun don't shine.

Brilliant.

Taking The P

I'm busting for a pee. Unfortunately, I'm at Birmingham New Street and I don't have 30 pence in change.

Not to worry though, if I have a pound coin or 50 pence piece I can use the Change machine conveniently located 10 yards to the right. To a country boy, or at least a small town in Somerset that's quite close to farms and bucolic stuff but not in any real sense of the term agricultural boy like me, this takes the piss.

I'm not really busting for a wee, not anymore. I didn't pay to go either. Why the hell should I? My taxes blah blah blah and whatever.

No. Bollocks to that, if Network Rail think it's alright to waste money on glossy posters telling us that Birmingham New Street is a building site when I can clearly see that it is, then I'm buggered if I'm paying to pee.

Don't jump the stile, by the way, people tend to notice that sort of thing. Just pull the top metal arm towards you, just enough to get a leg through followed by your back leg and stroll on towards that porcelain paradise. Well, for thirty pence it ought to be pristine.

I'm glad I didn't pay judging by the state of it in there. Disgusting.

Mind the Gap? Not Really, Seems Harmless Enough.

Some of you may have the impression that I'm just a great big ball of hate, venom, bile and piss and vinegar. I don't know what gave you this impression, I truly don't, but it seems to me that I need to give my public image a bit of a spit shine and buff out the more noticeable dents.

Without enjoying the resources to afford a world class PR agency and being woefully bereft of the skills required to mount a proper charm offensive, not to mention far too lazy to go back and delete any incendiary posts or tweets, I suppose I could give the truth a go. It worked so well for Chris Huhne after all.

I get angry very easily. To the point where a barely imagined slight will drive me to apoplexy. Someone talking too loudly to their friend on the train, or just any group of teenagers for that matter, will drive me mad.

Take my commute for work. The ride in is usually fine. I catch the first lot of trains at around 6am, so it's not too busy and the delays (generally) haven't started yet. The trains are not top of the range, certainly not overly plush, but then I don't expect or want first class throughout. It's a train, not my front room or something out of MTV cribs.

I (generally) get exactly what I want from my commute in to work: The leg room is good, tables are generally available along with a much coveted Double Seat. The carriages are a good temperature; not hot enough to need to take your coat off, but you could if you wanted to. Most people are catching some shut eye and it's only occasionally a couple of idiot teenagers that spoil the silence. If not teenagers then a couple of middle aged Thelma and Louise types who appear to be embarking on some sort of adventure. They're so fucking chirpy for that time in the morning it's obscene! You are surrounded by grumpy people going to work. Shhhhh!

Those kids though, really should be packed into their own carriage. Or taught the error of their ways using methods that bear a striking resemblance to frying pan inspired cartoon violence.

Dear lord they bring out the beast in me. Last Monday morning, for example, was a complete and utter clusterfuck. It seemed as if the entire rail network had gone out at the weekend and got ruinously drunk. Signal problems at Worcester Shrub Hill meant that trains couldn't leave their depot and as is the case with any minor train problem early on, it snowballs. These trains were late which begat later trains which then gave birth to congestion, cancellations and routes being altered mid-journey.

I was slightly late and missed the 6am bus at the bottom of my street, which should have meant that I got the next one at half 6, got in to Brum for 7:15 and then the 7:19 to Malvern, getting into work half an hour later than expected.

Nope.

The 7:19 was allegedly 40 minutes late so it was rammed to the gills when two sets of commuters got on. As we went along we were told to change at Droitwich for Worcester Foregate Street and Malvern. A few stops later, we were told to stay on for Worcester Foregate Street and then change for Malvern.

All very tedious I’m sure you’ll agree but as the morning gets later, the trains become packed with lots and lots of horrible children and teenagers.

The “Rudeboys” that got on at Bromsgrove/Droitwich made me laugh. Well, they make me laugh now I’m sat here writing this. At the time I just wanted to choke each one and ram many, many elbows into their stupid, annoying, wannabe gangster, ignorant, loud fat faces. These kids couldn’t have acted harder and more street if they tried. They got on at Bromsgrove and got off at Malvern. I very much suspect that Mummy or Daddy dropped them off at the station just prior to taking little sister Clarissa for her early morning pony ride. You’re from Bromsgrove, children. Not the Bronx. You would shit yourself at the first sign of real trouble.

So yes. I am quick to anger.

Apparently, to my friends who are not scared of me in the least, this is hilarious, pathetic, childish and a great reason to make me feel extremely silly, guilty and apologetic for as long as they see fit. Which can be quite a long time. My friends are assholes.

My Mother has been telling me since I can remember that "your temper's going to get you into real trouble one day".

Sorry Mum. That temper has got me into trouble many days.

Whether it was clicking on the PUBLISH button of a furiously and thoughtlessly scribbled blog post, as hard as I could with the mouse just to emphasise the point, as if it were a digital punch or whether I threw the real thing. Whether I put my foot down to get around THAT PRAT IN FRONT WHO SHOULD BE DOING SIXTY HERE whilst making it clear I wished harm upon him via the medium of Kenco Coffee Bean gestures to the wrong person, or making my opinions felt a bit too vocally in the workplace, yes, I've landed myself in hot water.

Oh well. I'm doing alright. I'm doing pretty well at work, could do an awful lot better if I shut my mouth sometimes but luckily I have a good boss and colleague to curb my more mercurial tendencies. These two blokes should hate me but, after a few rough patches and some good bouts of honest to goodness getting shit done against the odds type of bloke stuff, oh and me getting my head out my ass and starting to act like a man instead of a spoilt child that's been refused his copy of Tits Weekly, we have a good professional and personal relationship.

As it happens, I have made great strides in moderating my reactions in the past couple of years; I now attempt to respond rather than react. Whilst it may be true that these responses start out with a google search for sources to back up my own opinion, there's every chance I will allow myself to be persuaded that things are not as cut and dried as all that.

Take same sex marriage, or more to the point, the same sex marriage bill. My first instinct was that any opposition to the bill was simple homophobia. Why shouldn't gay people have the opportunity to be as miserable as heterosexuals? It's offensive to your religion you say? I've got to be honest, the fact religion still has any say in the 21st Century offends me so we're pretty much at an impasse.

It'll confuse children? I doubt that very much. Children, if we're talking about those little humanoid things that are basically clean slates until their experiences of life start to form their world view, are pretty good at picking up new concepts. When I was 7, I had to set the video recorder for my parents who were 27 and 29 years old at the time. Could you imagine a 30 year old in 2013 not being able to casually set up the series link on a Sky+/V+ box? Of course not.

We stand on the shoulders of giants with every increase in knowledge. My baseline happened to be set with VHS recorders and the good old Atari 800XL and a very white, working class upbringing. Kids in Chard today will rub shoulders with other kids from much further afield than Tatworth or even Devon whilst having almost unfettered access to the knowledge and disinformation that the internet can provide. I'm sure the kids will be fine with this sea change in the marriage laws. 

So, any opposition to the Same Sex Marriage Bill is just wantonly ignorant. As always, of course it's not that cut and dried. The Heresiarch of Heresy Corner is always a good place to visit if there's an issue that needs to be looked at from an angle that isn't completely partisan. He has a way of viewing and dissecting the events of the day, by producing posts that aren't tub thumping calls to arms for any particular colour of rosette. I tend to think of the Heresiarch as the blogging/political equivalent of Snopes.com; a good place to debunk. 

"The Marriage Man: Cameron and heterosexual civil partnership" is no exception:

Never do the right thing for the wrong reasons.  You invariably end up by alienating your friends, annoying the people you're trying to court, and looking like a stinking hypocrite, all the while tying yourself up in the knots of your own inconsistency.  Observe David Cameron's predicament over same sex marriage.  The principle might be good, but the government's proposals are rushed, incoherent and, I increasingly believe, prompted by expediency.  Let's look at one glaring problem with the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.  In Prime Minister's Questions this lunchtime, Cameron admitted that the reason his government has refused to consider granting heterosexual couples the right to enter into civil partnerships, as their gay counterparts will still be able to after same-sex marriage is put into law, is that he fears that it will undermine marriage.

Please do go and read the whole thing. 'Tis rather good.

So not all opposition to Same Sex Marriage is completely without reason. I do however, find it hard to believe that any of the 'No' votes in parliament were anywhere near as reasoned as Heresiarch's thoughts on the matter.

My simplistic summing up is that, as long as there is an institution that allows two people to turn their pure and uncomplicated devotion for each other, into a quagmire of shitty regulation by whatever government is in place, which in turn is made even worse by some draconian and sexist divorce laws that benefit only the legal establishment and gold digging whores, then the gays should be given the same opportunity for ruin and shame as the straights.

That's the thorny issue of the gays and that sorted. What's next?

The Best Of The Public & Private Sector?

I am now almost 2 months into my public transport adventure and it’s not going too bad really. Sure, there are times I feel a bit miffed, like when the National Rail App tells me that my train is already 10 minutes late and the platform digital readout is refusing to acknowledge that the train is anything but on time.

Saving that, in the main, s’alright.

One evening, an engine failed and we couldn’t make it up the incline so we had to go back down the hill to Bromsgrove where the entire train was emptied into the night. This incident, whilst not traumatic, was a slight inconvenience as it was December and bloody cold. The next London Midland train, for it was they, wasn’t due to pass for another hour.

As is usual with this type of occurrence, London Midland, advise you to visit http://www.londonmidland.com/your-journey/delay-repay/ and fill out the online form for some recompense.

“If your London Midland journey is delayed by 30 minutes or 
more, we think you ought to be 
compensated whether it's our fault or not”.

Aw, thanks guys!

I dutifully filled out the form and got an e-mail confirming that my claim had been received and would be dealt with within 28 days.

Funny old thing, and it should have come as no surprise really, 28 days later I hadn’t heard anything and I had reason to put in another claim; a late train had caused me to miss my connection.

 As anyone who commutes and has to change trains at any point will tell you, connections are vital. Whether it’s ten seconds or ten minutes late, it doesn’t matter as your next train has gone and you won’t be heading to your destination in any form of punctual fashion.

I do find it funny that train companies don’t consider anything under ten minutes actually late. I’m sure form tutors and bosses up and down the country are shaking their heads and reaching for the red pen at that very notion.

Anyway, on Monday, my train from Wolves to Brum was 5 minutes late getting into Brum, so I missed the 7:19 to Hereford. The next Hereford train was due at 7:59 and come 7:59 I was sat on a rather full train waiting for the off. The engine stopped, the lights went out and a disembodied voice tannoyed thus:

“Sorry this train is cancelled. Sorry. We apologise. Sorry. It’s cancelled. There’s a fault with the train. Sorry. It’s not the snow, it’s the train. Sorry. The next train to Hereford, sorry, is 8:49 sorry”. 

This new delay would put me in work for around 10. A good hour and a half later than I intended.

I went to http://www.londonmidland.com/your-journey/delay-repay/ filled out the form and, while I was of a mind to, gave LMT a phone call to see what had happened to my other claim.

Whilst this is not an exact transcription, I’m pretty sure I was less sarcastic, it should give you the gist.

LMT: “When did you file your claim”?
Me: “18th of December”.
LMT: “Online or paper”?
Me: “Online”.
LMT: “Yeah we’ve got a bit of a backlog at the moment, we’re up to 23rd of November”.
Me: “Marvellous. So the claim I’m putting in today is going to take quite a bit of time as well then”.
LMT: “Um, yes”.
Me: “I also notice on the website that you state "Once we've validated the claim against our train running records, we'll send you the appropriate compensation in National Rail travel vouchers” Is that right"?
LMT: “That’s right”.
Me: “I have a season ticket. What good is a travel voucher to me”?
LMT: “Oh but they’re not limited to London Midland, you can use them on other franchises”.
Me: “Are you taking the mick”?
LMT: (slightly sheepish) “No”.
Me: “I’m not travelling around for fun. I use the trains for work and in these instances, it’s making me late. I also notice that the refund is only the partial price of the ticket”?
LMT: “Oh it’s not a refund, it’s compensation and you can save them up so that if they total more than forty pounds, you can exchange them for cash”.

At this point I thought there was no real point in continuing, which seems to be the goal of these schemes.

I could have argued further that it obviously isn’t compensation if the partial refund of a ticket, for being between half an hour and 2 hours late, comes nowhere near to the actual monetary loss that I would suffer by being late for work.

Also, how do you quantify the missed quality time with my Xbox, I mean, family and friends that arriving home so bloody late deprives me of?

“Darling! Carter Junior said his first words, took his first steps and is just the darlingest thing ever! He’s asleep now because it’s so damnebly late. Where were you”?

“London Midland cancelled my train into work this morning so I arrived 2 hours late and I had to finish late to make up the lost time".

“I want a divorce”.

“Took your time, didn’t you”?

Or something like that.

But Carter, I don’t hear you cry, if London Midland actually refunded the full amount or admitted full liability for the consequences of their piss poor performance, they wouldn’t make any money at all.

I can only respond that despite only 77% of London Midland trains running on time during December, they still received a nice wedge from the taxpayer in the form of RevenueSupport (scroll down to Signal Failures Private Eye #1328) and, well, all that pre-paid season ticket money is earning interest somewhere. LMT and the rest of British Rail, or whatever the hell they’re called these days, are far from being on the breadline.

No. Compensation would equate to getting me to a position where I would have been had LMT not screwed up. In the example above, I would be furnished with an hour and a half’s pay and a note to my boss saying “sorry we kept your best worker away from his duties, here’s a cheque for the amount that you guys charge for his time”. 

*THAT* would be the definition of compensation.

And what do London Midland do? They can’t even be straight enough to give us our money back. A travel voucher is not cash. I paid for my season ticket, six months worth of pre-paid travel, in cold hard cash. I need a travel voucher as much as I need a crash course in angry blogging.

So, instead of doing right by the tax payer and its customers, what do the train people actually spend the money on?

Infrastructure? 
No.

Drivers? 
No.

Nice trains for us to travel in? 
Certainly not.

Glossy leaflets and posters? 
Why, yes. Yes, that’s exactly what the cash gets spent on. Convincing us that nothing more needs to be spent on trains but a bigger kick up to the investors is required.

They advertise. They spend money on posters and PR departments to run twitter accounts which alternately say "sorry" or "we’re brilliant". They say sorry an awful lot which doesn't actually keep you warm on a frosty platform in the middle of nowhere.

Why are they saying sorry? Because they’ve focused on profit rather than service and are sorry you're making a noise.

So, for disrupting the day in such a fashion, London Midland tout their Delay Repay scheme, and let us be very clear, it is a scheme. A scheme which gives commuters Travel Vouchers. Travel vouchers of all things!

Travel Vouchers are the commuter's equivalent of an ashtray on a motorbike, a chocolate teapot, the rhythm method or tits on a boar. The value of the Travel Voucher is then prorated and discounted to a derisory and paltry amount.

Entitled to bugger all by the looks of it.

As the chap on the phone admitted, the backlog is rather large which proves two things.

Number 1:

The service has been that crap for the last few months there’s a backlog in “compensation”

Number 2:

London Midland show they are as committed to their Delay Repay scheme, as the banks are to giving back the money they stole in PPI scams,by under staffing it.

It’s a scheme to fend off the inevitable clamour that would ensue if they just said “hard cheese”. If there is a recourse offered, most people just shrug their shoulders and don't bother. Too much hassle.

You can always bank on the apathy of the Great British Public. You bastards. You've beaten our stiff upper lip and sense of fair play by being utterly rotten and not even sorry.

You take tax payer's cash before, during and after collecting money for season tickets. You get money from people that HAVE NO CHOICE IN WHAT TRAIN FRANCHISE THEY USE and again from the grossly inflated price of tickets bought on the day.

My god how you punish those poor saps that dare stumble upon your magical transportation network on the very day that they require access to other parts of the nation in person. 

£66 pounds for a single from Taunton to Wolverhampton? 135 miles? That’s not even a three hour journey!

Edit: I just checked and that single from Taunton to Wolverhampton is now £70. Seventy English Pounds, 84.28 Euros, $111.89 US, $110.32 Canadian, 3340 Thai Baht. I got the £66 price not 3 weeks ago. What on earth is going on here?

The PR though, oh dear lord it’s infuriating. Look at this nonsense. 

Wow, it’s a butterfly! Birmingham New Street is like a butterfly! It’s an ugly larvae now but soon it will emerge and we can get let down by London Midland in a pretty place!

What the hell is all that about?

We can see that there’s building work going on. We also know what builders and site workers look like so stop trying to make them all look happy, smiley and family friendly on glossy posters.

How about this one from London Midland. My jaw actually fell open.

Lying Graphic is a Liar

Since when have these trains been faster?

Since when have journey times been cut?

Cheaper fares? Are you absolutely sure about that? Train tickets have never been more expensive and have just risen by a whopping 6.2%  Surely it must be illegal to make false claims like that?

It may be a pretty graphic but it is a lie.

So, please, you, the managing director of London Midland, the transport secretary, my pointless MP, I can’t make these points clearly enough so I will put them in bigger letters for you:

Nobody is travelling at peak time for the thrill of it. Be sympathetic.

We do not choose a particular franchise to travel with because they have the nicest livery. It is because *that* is the train which goes at *that* time from *that* place.

The route we choose is because it is the route from point A to point B. Not because there is a John Lewis shop where we have to make a connection and change trains.

There is no market in a fixed timetable; we are bound to our jobs and circumstances. Choice does not really exist. You'll also find that trains aren't bursting at the seams all of the time; just on the major holidays. 

Adjust your pay on the day policy accordingly please.

Stop it, just stop pretending that we have a choice as to which train we use as we invariably don’t. 

Stop spending ridiculous amounts on advertising because we are not swayed by cunning slogans! You aren't going to bring people in from their cars with a campaign so don't try! 

Just treat the customers you do have correctly. Ha! You never know; word of mouth might just do it for you.

You’re a fucking train franchise! You receive millions upon millions of pounds from the tax payer to provide a pretty simple service. 


Weather problems? The seasons are fairly predictable. This is England. Assume rain!



This is not rocket science. This is 19th Century technology and you have had quite a bit of time to work this stuff out. 

That's enough shouting. Just get it right.

Childish But...

Victim of Crime pt II

Well shut my whore mouth.

“My bike has been bloody nicked. I’ve barely had it a month and it was hardly worth stealing. The only way it would be worth pinching is if I caught the person stealing it.

I’ve had a look on eBay but couldn’t see anything so I’ve had to just e-mail the police and wait for them to do absolutely nothing about it.

So, if you’re in the Malvern area and know of a cheap Trax TR.1 mountain bike for sale, give me a shout. I’d be most interested in meeting the seller.”

I’ve just had a phone call from the cop shop and they have my bike along with the offender. Well done chaps, I’m pleased as punch. Best get down to Halfords and buy some proper locks this time. They’ll be worth more than the bike but so be it.

Result :o)

UPDATE:

I forgfot to mention to you that the bike had only just been fitted with a horn, one of those clown jobs with a squeezy bulb. About an hour after that another copper rang me, asked about the colour and confirmed the make and model. I also told him that it had a comedy horn on it, a clown’s one with a bulb, to which he replied “Yes, it’s definitely your bike and we’ve got the offender too.”


Apparently the chap had admitted theft of two bikes and I should be able to have my bike back soon. I asked him how the bloke had been caught and he said that he had taken a quantity of Class A and member of the public had reported him making noises.

Basically, he was off his face and playing with the horn. We had lots of fun with that horn even though we were a little bit pissed. I can only imagine the time the thief was having watching unicorns and rainbows fart out of the other end.

Brilliant.

Thank you again to the British Transport Police and the Boys in Blue at Malvern.