Winterton of discontent

February 18, 2010 — admin

Another day, another Conservative MP rolls up to the Stephen Nolan show on Five Live to commit political self-immolation. This time it’s Nicholas Winterton on trains and Pete Waterman he ain’t.

Just so he knows what it’s like in second class these days, I went into the City earlier on South West Trains and had to stand next to the toilet due to the volume of people aboard. It’s pretty difficult to get your laptop out or start leafing through reports when you’ve go no seat to use, despite paying the same fare as the people who have got seats. So I hope he’ll forgive me if I don’t share his “outlook on life” when on the train, it’s just that usually I’m having to listen to kids noisily playing I-spy or someone sitting across from me using a personal music device that’s anything but personal.

I’d love to have a “business environment” in which to work, but sometimes you just have to share your world with other human beings and make the compromises that that inevitably entails. He should try it sometime. My company doesn’t pay for me to travel First Class – and neither should taxpayers pay for MPs to do the same. Give them the regular fare – if they want to top it up from their considerable wages, so be it. But I suspect that some of them could do with a bit of second-class travel.

On the way back, I did manage to find a seat, open my laptop and do a few emails before the train pulled into Woking. You see, Sir Nicholas, some of us carriage-classers are capable of doing work on the train, despite being a different type of person. There’s no reason that MPs can’t do the same at certain times of the day.

There are many issues with our trains and overcrowding and punctuality are just the surface of a deeper problem, which the Wintertons might like to look into and lobby Andrew Adonis about. The fact that the most pressing problem in Sir Nicholas Winterton’s mind is that he wants to travel first instead of second class just demonstrates how much better off Parliament will be without him.

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BA humbug

December 16, 2009 — admin
A sad tail: BA's staff and pensions have become more powerful than it's airline function

A sad tail: BA's staff and pensions have become more powerful than it's airline function

I’ve never been very good on aeroplanes, as my family will attest. I don’t how it came about but I have suffered a deep-rooted fear of flying for as long as I can remember and it’s got worse as I’ve got older. The one airline that I felt some degree of safety on, some gamut of re-assurance with, was British Airways. Not sure why, it was just familiar, consistent – there didn’t seem to be any nasty surprises and it had (and still has) an excellent safety record.

It is fair to say that during the last 10 years it has become something quite different to what it was. The level of service is meagre and customers are generally treated as a bit of a nuisance in an airline run by and for the convenience of BA staff. It is quite a tragedy to see such a great institution indulge itself into oblivion – but that is the way it is going. The cabin crew decision to strike over Christmas is the latest two-fingered salute to the paying British public – and possibly the greatest since Gerald Ratner insulted his clientele by admitting his products were “crap”.

It could also go down – at 92.4% as Unite leaders keep telling us - as the most decisive corporate suicide note in history.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a strike-breaking Tory. I believe people have the right to withhold their Labour – more than that, I believe it is an essential buffer between extreme grievance and revolution. But I don’t understand what this strike is for – cabin staff are not taking a pay cut, they are not being made redundant, they are not even working extra hours (although they may have to do more in those hours; but at the moment, who doesn’t?) It seems to me that this grotesque posturing is more about Len McLuskey and his place in the Unite union than any genuine grievance cabin staff have. They earn twice as much at BA than elsewhere – senior staff earn more than £50k for goodness’ sake – and if you like flying, I would have thought that being cabin crew is a great job.

I have nothing against BA staff - a lot of them are great people and without the special attention of one or two, it is no exaggeration to say that there are some flights that I just wouldn’t have got on. BA management too seems hell-bent on learning absolutely nothing from past experience.

But there are some very pertinent letter in the Daily Telegraph that sum everything up nicely. If the cabin crew strike over Christmas, they may all be out of a job within six months because BA could quite easily fold and a government bail-out would be tricky – can we really argue that a flag-carrying airline is as important as the banking system? And if the unions win their battle, how else is the company going to cut costs to pull itself back from losses of £400million?

The “plane fact” is that unless BA cuts its costs without being seen to cut its quality, it’s future looks very bleak indeed. It’s time that its staff – all of them – brought their heads back down out of the clouds and understood the bigger picture. If they choose to bring the company crashing down around them for the sake of their own personal comfort, I don’t see how that is different behaviour from the bankers we’ve all been told to despise so much.

Update 17/12: It is difficult not to feel that poetic as well as judicial justice has been done today.

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End of the road

November 24, 2009 — admin

Unfortunately, the Chobham Shuttle Bus, whose representatives came to address the Horsell Residents’ Association on Wednesday last week, is to terminate at the end of the month.

The group hasn’t been able to find sufficient funding to give us a chance to extend the service into Horsell to bolster up the no 73 route. I was a little surprised to find this out given that although the need for finances was a topic of discussion on Wednesday, the prospect of imminent closure wasn’t mentioned.

Yet on Friday it appears that that was the decision taken. It’s a great shame for people in Chobham and also that we won’t get a chance to look at a new service for people in Horsell.

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Busted

November 18, 2009 — admin

The Woking News and Mail today reports Surrey County Council plans to launch a comprehensive review of its passenger transport budgets in common with most of  its other budgets. It simply cannot afford, it says, to keep subsidising bus companies to run routes that are not commercially viable and the level of subsidy has risen from £4million in 2001 to £11million now.

One could say that the bus companies are being greedy and not putting enough of their margins on the commercially viable routes into helping out loss-making “social” routes. But that is a moot point because rising costs and the recession have forced them to tighten their costs too and the county council is not able to negotiate from a position of strength.

Unfortunately, the only way to cut costs is to cut subsidy and that means routes having to change dramatically or go altogether. The spin on the county site is upbeat enough and talks about a fresh review and an opportunity to shape services but the reality is too stark to deny.

In Horsell, the number 73 bus that goes from Chobham to Woking via Well Lane and Horsell is listed on the review document as one that the county council would like views on but is not immediately under threat. It is then really important that as many people in Horsell as possible contact the county council to express support for this service. It would also be a good idea for as many people as possible to use it.

Should the 73 service be questioned – and there is nothing at this stage to suggest that it will be any more than any other route – one solution is alluded to by Cllr Ian Lake in his quote – that community transport could be answer. That, of course, raises the question of who is going to pay and we had just such a question tonight at the management committee of Horsell Residents’ Association.

Chris Chaney and Edward Bentall came to speak to us about the Chobham community bus that currently runs from Chobham to Woking during peak hours and the possibility that it could be extended into Horsell, which would give us a chance to shore up at least a part of the 73 route. The committee gave a resounding endorsement to the principle of extending the service and giving this option to Horsell residents in the future.

The question is where the money will come from. At the moment, the scheme is funded in part by Surrey Heath Borough Council and Woking Community Transport. But to extend the service would mean more money, which Surrey Heath is hardly likely to pay for given it is Woking residents who will benefit. And Woking Borough Council has little capacity for additional expenditure as things stand.

But I’m hopeful that we can make it work and I will certainly do everything I can to find a solution because I think that having that extra option of peak services into Woking from Horsell will give reassurance to many people in our village. The figures may suggest that few people use it but to those people that do it is often a vital part of their quality of life. And a community is defined by its treatment of the minority, not the majority.

Posted in Community, Transport, Woking Borough Council. Tags: , , , , , , . No Comments »
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