Manuel Cortes fires up the Quattro

Oh dear.

This from the leader of the TSSA today:

Manuel Cortes said: "If the local booking office goes, then the station itself will not be far behind it. Justine Greening must reject the siren voices of the train operating companies which want the freedom to close one in four of all booking offices.

"This will amount to a mini Beeching with hundreds of stations in rural areas facing the threat of long term closures altogether.

" An unmanned station is a less safe station, particularly for the elderly and young women travelling alone at night.

Unmanned?

Unmanned!

The politically correct term is 'unstaffed'!!

Shame on you Manuel, the sisterhood will be having your guts for garters!!! (shurely shome mishtake? Ed)

UPDATE: This from a Mr Le Carry...

Manuel?

Shurely Personuel?

Exciting new Eye avian competition launched

Time for an exciting new Eye competition!

Please study these two statements contained in recent press releases from the RMT and Labour tranport team:

The RMT said: "The idea of “deep alliances”, as a forerunner to infra-structure privatisation, is already being piloted on a joint operation on South West Trains and has long been demanded by the train operators as a way of seizing complete control and maximizing profits. In addition to a series of failed “mini-Railtracks” across the country, RMT also expects the Command Paper to confirm a series of other damaging and potentially lethal proposals (cont p94)..."

Maria the Eagle said: "Even though Ministers have run away from fronting up these policy changes, we now know the government's intentions for the railway and they are deeply worrying. In future, as a result of so-called deep alliances, a single regional manager will for the first time be accountable not just to Network Rail, but equally to private train company bosses. The creation of a set of mini-Railtracks will take us back to the days when decisions on infrastructure and maintenance were profit-driven."

Now using your skill and judgement see if you can guess what three word phrase is hidden in the picture below:


Do you know what it is yet?

Pointless signs - CrossCountry Voyager

DfT flounders for answers to railway reform

In advance of Friday's industry briefing on rail reform, government spinners have been hard at work.

In the FT today the Department unveiled its latest BIG idea...

Passenger trains along Cumbria's coast would be run by the state-owned body responsible for taking apart and cleaning up waste from civil nuclear plants under an offer made in response to government plans to overhaul rail policy.

Direct Rail Services, a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority that operates freight trains, has held talks with Cumbria county council on taking over the running of passenger services on the coastal branch line between Carnforth and Carlisle.

So let's get this straight.

The solution to the problems of the rail industry is to errr.... get a nationalised company to run the trains!

Well at least this one's British, but for how long?