September 21st - A Twitter storm shows the complex reality of British trains and politics
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When rail services between London and Yorkshire were disrupted due to overhead wire problems, a Labour MP took to Twitter to say: "Just another reminder that we need to bring rail into public ownership and make it fit for the future." But she was aboard a state-run LNER train, on tracks owned and operated by Network Rail. Both organisations are offshoots of the Department for Transport (DfT), which means they are ultimately owned by us. Fixing the railways takes more than slogans.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder |
| 0:06.0 | and I'm speaking to you from the magnificent curve of York Railway Station, |
| 0:12.0 | one of the great hubs of the railway and very close of course to the very good, very free National Railway Museum. Now today I am actually boarding a train which is on |
| 0:25.9 | the East Coast mainline and it is operated by LNER and as you might be able to hear it's just |
| 0:34.6 | drawing in now. I'm heading only to peterborough tickets about |
| 0:40.6 | 30 pounds for last minute purchase which i think is fairly reasonable and the reason i'm taking this |
| 0:48.9 | train it was partly because i want to travel but it's also because there is a really interesting, a lava going on, if I think, |
| 0:58.1 | I think that's the technical term. So what's happened is that a Labour MP has been complaining |
| 1:05.4 | about privatisation and, well, creating something of a social media storm which i find it's all too easy to do um |
| 1:17.0 | so last night on tuesday it was absolutely miserable for all kinds of people who were trying to go about |
| 1:27.3 | their journeys travelling between |
| 1:30.3 | London and the North. |
| 1:33.3 | On the East Coast main line which you don't need me to remind you runs from the Kingscroft Station in the capital |
| 1:39.3 | through to Yorkshire to North East England and to Scotland. |
| 2:00.2 | Now, Ms. Sultana was trying to get to Leeds, and her train was apparently delayed just north of London. |
| 2:00.8 | There were overhead wire problems in the Stevenage area, |
| 2:06.1 | just as there were the previous day in the Hazent-Harlington area, |
| 2:12.2 | which was why I was at Paddington Station. |
| 2:14.1 | Anyway, miserable journey, |
| 2:16.1 | and she tweeted, my train to Leeds for tonight's |
| 2:21.2 | enough is enough rally, which is organised. I think it's fair to say by the leftish wing of the Labour |
| 2:29.5 | Party has been stopped just outside London for the last three hours. I'm sorry to be not to be there, Leeds. |
... |
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