This time its the train service. Me and the Misses had a shocking trip with them on Monday, I have sent a letter of complaint for whatever good it will to, have a read here:
To make this very clear form the beginning, this not so much a “comment about your service” as it is a compliant (there was not an option for this in the drop down box on the web form that I am typing this in to).
This is a complaint regarding the Virgin Trains journey that my girlfriend and I took form Reading to Carlisle on Thursday the 23rd of August at 16:10 and the returning journey on Monday 27th of August.
I’ll start with the outbound journey. Our tickets where purchased online and in advance so we had seats reserved (always a good idea when you expect to be on an over crowded train). For some reason, this information had not made it as far as the little screens above the seats which where occupied by a woman and her wheelie luggage. There where no other seats available so I had a go at explaining to the woman that she and her suitcase where sat in our seats and I showed her our tickets to which she replied “you’ll have to find a guard then, wont you”. As annoying as that was, I didn’t blame her, I don’t think I would have offered to stand for the rest of the journey if I could avoid it either. I didn’t attempt to find a guard because I could not move up or down the train due to mild overcrowding. A while later, two seats nearby where vacated and we where able to sit for the remainder of the journey.
Now for the return journey. This one sucked a whole lot more then the outbound journey. Right off the bat, the train was very delayed, I think we had to hang around for an extra 40 minuets at the station sitting our bags, not a huge deal and not totally unexpected. The problems really occurred when we boarded the train. Again we had seats reserved and again the little screens above the seats did not reflect this. This time I didn’t even bother talking to the people in the seats, not because I didn’t want to have an argument (this train was much, much more overcrowded then the outbound journey) but because I didn’t fancy sitting in a sauna for the next 5 hours, the air-conditioning was broken.
The unbelievable list of problems to have as soon as we board the train:
1) Its very late. 2) Its very overcrowded. 3) Our seats had not been reserved for us 4) The air conditioning in coach F was not working 5) I will throw this one in for good measure, although it can be taken as read from a Virgin train, the whole coach smelled of the toilet.
So, in an attempt to find other, more suitable, accommodation we and our large bags attempted to move down the train, we got as far as the shop when we had to stop, the next coach was far too full to take our bags though, so I was pressed up against the fridge unable to move back or forward. While I was there I had to assts the staff in the shop by passing drinks out of the fridge for customers who had no chance of reaching them (a little un-planned voluntary work). After a while a member of staff managed to direct my girlfriend and I out of the shop and in to the vestibule… well, I say vestibule, I it was the concertinaed bit that holds the carriages together. Not very comfy, very hot and again, smelling like a toilet.
We made formulated a plan to get off at the next station and run up the train in the hope that there would be space further down the train. Ha. The sight was somewhere between the pictures I have seen of the Shane Punjab Express for Delhi and what I imagine the inside of a sardine packing factory would look like. We made our way down most of the length of the train because we literally could not fit in to the vestibule of any of the other carriages. The vestibule we did manage to squeeze in to was at the beginning of the first class section. In true first class style, there was just about enough for us to sit on the floor (well almost).
As an interesting side note, the toilets in the first class section smell exactly like the toilets in coach F, I guess this an example of a classless society, but I digress…
In the true spirit of the blitz we and the other passengers passed the time by lamenting the level of “service” that we received, commenting on the temperature and the smell, discussing what we would do if any further passengers attempted to squeeze themselves in to our first class toilet corridor.
Now, to make it very clear, do not take the jocular nature of this letter as a sign that I am anything other then furious at being transported in a way that makes be jealous of Veal. This is what I would like to see. Our tickets cost £88 each, I would like to see a reasonable portion of the refunded. Please let me know what you require from me to provide this. I would also like to know how so many of these issues could crop up at once, particularly the over crowding. I appreciate that it was a bank holiday, but I do not see this as any sort of excuse.
I await your response, apologies for the length of this letter of complaint.
Before I start this rant, let me be very clear about what I mean when I use the phrase “Pikie”.
I am not saying that have any sort of problem with those who want to live alternative lifestyles, weather that be living in a commune, being self sufficient like off of the good life, or travelling the land in a mobile community. Those who do wish to travel in such mobile communities and live in such a way that they don’t impose themselves on other communities and act in a social, lawful manor, I am going to refer to as “travellers”. As it happens I have never had personal experience of such groups, but I am sure there are some out there, and more power too them. I have a fantasy about living on a barge travelling the country, so I can understand the appeal.
Now, back to my Richard Littlejohn style rant.
To coin a well known phrase from the movie Snatch “I fucking hate Pikies”. I am now going to talk from personal experience, not from what I have read in the paper or from some bigoted, demonising position. When I was a kid I lived over the road from a park, this park would occasionally fill up with white caravans covered in chrome, when this happened our local community (if you can call anything in west reading a community) suffered. I remember the knocks at the from door asking if they could buy my bike, the answer was always “no”, so the easy way to get around this? Just take it. I remember seeing this Pikie kid riding around, on my road, on my bike. To my Dad’s great credit, he actually went over there and got it back for me. He should not have to do this.
There is a bit of an epidemic of Pikies in Reading at the moment. If there is a postage stamp sized bit of land, sooner or later the caravans will appear. Shortly afterwards the rubbish appears. Great fucking piles of it. And when the Pikes are gone, the rubbish stays. Why is it someone else’s responsibility to get rid of this stuff? Why must my council tax be wasted on this?
I am not going to comment on anything that I read in the local paper, I know how inaccurate they can be in their desire for a sensational story, so this next anecdote was told to me first hand by someone I trust. She lived out near the countryside, there was a bridge over a large road which was a vital means of getting from her village to the town. Pikies set up a unilateral toll system. I.e. give them some money or you cant cross this bridge.
I have some big problems with my feelings towards Pikies. I think I am typically what you would refer to as a liberal (little L). I do not believe in tarring a whole strata of society, social or cultural group with the same negative brush. For instance I do not believe that all Muslims hate the British and would blow us up as soon as look at us. So how can I justify these sweeping statements about Pikies? Because I do not believe them to be an “ethnic minority”. As I touched on in my first paragraph, what defines, for instance, the Gypsy community should not be a pre-disposition to law breaking (weather that be trespass, theft or taking money with menaces) but a shared history, genetics and an inherited culture.
Now, you can’t say that just because an act is part of a culture or that an ethnic minority do it that it is OK. For instance, If I decided that I was only ever going to live in tents in other peoples back gardens, do you think that would be tolerated. Or if I decided that I was going to live without paying any tax, just because I feel like it, would that be OK? Of course not, these things would get me in to trouble. I don’t understand how you can have a culture which has such negative effects which *has* to be accepted by the “static” communities because if you don’t like it, you are a racist.
What inspires me to write this passage is partially because of the latest infestation of caravans that I see on my way to work each morning, but mostly because of a program that I listened to on radio 4 called Romany Roads. The program was dealt with changes in Gypsy life since the end of the war. The program was from a very annoyingly pro-Pikie position. In one section a woman can be heard to say how her family are moved on from wherever they site themselves and all she wants is for her children to have an education because they cant even write their names. Now I don’t know if I am supposed to wring my hand sand say how terrible that is and how guilty I feel. I hope I’m not supposed to say that, because I actually say “tough shit”. If you want an education fro your kids, buy some land and say in the same place. If there are objections to you doing this because it would make local houses un-saleable “tough shit” rent or buy a house.
The whole of society should not and does not have to bend over backwards to accommodate the vagaries of the alternative lifestyles of a small an non-contributory group.
Wow, I didn’t realise I had so much to say on the topic.
If the newspapers and television are to be believed the high A level pass rate isn't the big news story, its the disproportionate percentage of them that are pretty blond girls. Apparently, they have an even better chance of passing if they are prone to hugging each other.
I have a dog, he is a little angle most of the time, but has been barking a lot at night recently. It has been driving us to distraction, but we are trying a few techniques to get it in hand. The real problem is that our next-door neighbours recently got a cat. This cat hangs around in our back garden and shits I our flower bed. You can imagine what effect this is having on the dog. He is on constant alert and barks whenever it comes in to the garden.
That is not the reason that I am pissed off (although it was at 03:00 this morning)
The reason that I am pissed of is finding a printed sheet of A4 stuck through our letterbox this morning saying that the dog barking is keeping people awake, we should “get our dog under control” and keep him in the house at night (which he is anyway) otherwise they will call environmental health.
It was signed “the neighbours”. How mysterious.
They are right, the barking needs to stop and I am genuinely sorry for any missed nights of sleep, and as I say, we are working on it. The part that is pissing me off is that this information has been delivered to us in the form of an anonymous threatening letter. We do not live on some sink estate somewhere, there are no rusting white goods in our front garden, it’s not like I was going to stick a knife in the ribs of anyone coming to ask if I could stop the dog from barking. In fact, I know loads of the people in my street to say good morning too and, as far as I was aware, had a reasonably good relationship with them.
It’s very frustrating to have complaints levelled at you with no obvious route to take to defend yourself. I have a suspicions as to who it is responsible for the letter and I may have a word with them tonight if they are in. What’s really annoying is that when these people moved in I specifically asked them if they dog was a nuisance and said if he ever is, please let us know.
I have made my first post on the Ubuntu forum and I’m not even asking a question, I am filling people in on setting Ubuntu up on a tablet PC. Getting stuff to work on a tablet
Long time readers will have heard me bleat on about pro-ana before. It’s the process of glamorizing anorexia as a lifestyle choice rather then an illness, pretty sad. Anyways, There is this news article about it on the BBC:
Talking about the number of groups on social networking sites that promote this bizarre practise. It features this picture of a face book group:
I did a little digging, that particular group has a total 16 members, not exactly the epidemic this story paints it to be. In fact, by my count, there are 5 pro ana-groups on facebook with a total of 263 members, while there are 9 anti-pro-ana groups with a total of 958 members.
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