Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder speaking to you from beautiful Frankfurt.

You might know this city only as the financial capital of Germany, well, of Europe really, but it is actually a very charming, friendly, relaxed sort of place.

I'm quite relaxed too. I'm ambling slowly to the Halparnhof because my train to Stuttgart

has just been cancelled and so there is simply no rush. But that gives me a chance to

catch up on the story I have just

been covering, which is frankly extraordinary. Let me give you the background.

Eurostar lost 95% of its revenue for a whole 15 months in 2021 because of the COVID pandemic.

They say we didn't get any of the financial support that airlines got and our shareholders

had to put in 250 million pounds. We're looking for 500 million pounds in loans.

We're not able to get those on favourable terms.

We're in a mess.

And, oh, and by the way, Omicron, and this was the French,

suddenly banning British travellers.

Omicron cost us an extra 50 million euros.

But the context of this statement by Jacques Damas, who leaves Euro star at the end of the month,

is that Hugh Merriman, the well-regarded senior Tory MP and the chair of the Transport Select Committee,

wrote him a letter on the 7th of September saying, please explain your decision not to reopen

for the time being the international rail stations in, in Evesfleet at Ashford.

Both of them really important, one for people who are driving around the M25,

the other for anybody who lives really in East Sussex,

coincidentally, Mr Merriman's constituency,

or, of course, anywhere in Kent, much easier for them rather than going into London and then coming back. So Mr. Merriman, understandably, wanted to know

...