Virgin: What short memories people have!

The Downing Street petition to have Virgin Rail re-instated as the franchise holder of the West Coast Main Line has now reached 100,000 people. That's pretty impressive, especially for a private company involved in railways.

It does amaze me, however, why so many people have jumped on the bandwagon. It was only 10 years ago or so, that Virgin had a really bad name when it came to railways. It was the company cited by comedians and others when trying to point out that the railways were in a mess. Now it's all turned around, which is fantastic for Virgin.

I must say that I was always impressed by Virgin's commitment to give a good service on the troublesome West Coast. So, I am a little sad that Virgin lost out. The worry is that First Group will give a worse service, after all it's been panned for the service on the Great Western line. But one has to remember that the service provided is dependent on the state of the track, and whereas the West Coast has had a lot of investment, the Great Western has been neglected. This also explain's Virgin's turnaround in fortunes.

People are also wistful about the old British Rail. They also forget how bad it was. Years of under investment with old trains and bad service. The British Rail soggy sandwich was its emblem! Privatisation enabled new investors to enter. Now we ride new trains. New services like Great Central give variance to the old ways of doing things. It's not a coincidence that passengers numbers increased year on year since privatisation in 1995. We now have the most number of passenger journeys on railways since World War 2, probably ever:

So let's have a little perspective! Good luck to Virgin and First Group in the future. Thankfully the Great Western is about to get a lot if investment.Hopefully Virgin can take on the Great Western franchise!

Squiffy

Resolve

Today the borrowing figures showed that we borrowed £600 million for the last month, in fact for July we'd normally see a surplus. It gave me a jolt, but we need to have some resolve. Remember that you cannot borrow yourself out of debt.

The economy will come good, the GDP figures do not add up, employment is growing. If only George Michael had sung Faith at the Olympics closing ceremony and not his new one. We need to keep the faith.

Squiffy.

Olympics...

Just a short note to say "How brilliant was that?". London put on one hell of a show and I loved every minute of it.

Squiffy

Clegg does the dirty

Today, I am mainly being disgusted with Nick Clegg. After confirming that the Lords legislation has been shelved, he also stated that the Lib Dems would vote against the equalisation of constituencies. He needed to make up some reason and so it was that a reduction in MPs could not be allowed now that the Lords would not have greater legitimacy. What cock.

As I said in an earlier post, the boundary changes were the trade for an AV vote and that the coalition agreement only said that proposals would be brought forward for an elected chamber. Mr Clegg is being entirely duplicitous. The bad legislation he brought forward was the reason for the Tory backbenchers rebelling.

After a promising start to the coalition, I'm now fed up with the double dealing Lib Dems. They are dishonourable. It may be time to bring forward an election and see them be decimated. Will be difficult, but only a truly Tory Government can get us out of this mess.

Squiffy