Of all the places to be stuck, Birmingham New Street... not the bustling nerve centre of the universe but a black hole strategically placed inside a Bermuda triangle like phenomenon specifically designed for trains and the broken souls of passengers just hoping they may actually reach their destination.
Joe Bidden said, “It is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidise highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don't subsidise, we don't want to subsidise, a national rail system that has environmental impact.” – This man talks sense.
On average for a round trip from Cheltenham to Liverpool it costs about £25 if booked in advance £35 if not. For this amount of money, you would at least expect a service that will take me from A to B without any major glitches.
Here's the kicker, as of January 3 2011 not only does VAT increase to a whopping 20% but National Rail are upping their fees by around 9%. Now, 9% sounds like a lot. It gets worse. This is just a national average, so some mainline links are going to increase much more than 9% - 25% to be precise. So a train fair that initially cost £35 will now cost £43.75 before VAT.
AWESOME.
Dear Dave,
As we're all in it together in your BIG SOCIETY, would you mind subbing me the extra £8.75 it will take me to get home to see my family? As I'm sure your £142,500 per year could more than cover a couple of trips.
Yours sincerely (may want to look up that word, it's in the dictionary just before spineless),
An epically poor student and unfortunate member of your tiny rich boy society.
"Beyond highways and roads, we need more money for mass transit, intercity passenger rail and freight rail. We have a long way to go to bridge the funding gaps." - Bill Lipinski
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