And then the last train of the day, the only train after five thirty pm cross country from England's second biggest city just sat there, without crew.
Hahaha everyone laughed. Forced to depend on an infrastructure brought to its knees by folks striking for better pay for themselves.
Normally I have sympathy. But this cripples me and everyone else, every week. Until our Tory spaffocracy pays their demands, triggering strikes across every public sector union who are also trapped in the twelth year of the Austerity project.
Or hell freezes over.
This is Britain. Run by our own class of oligarchs and kleptocrats. No wonder they saw common cause with Russia for so long.
I have a friend who runs a transport charity. And it's a nightmare because so many staff are off with covid. If one in ten have covid and you need two people to a train, that's a twenty percent chance your train hits the game of no staff roulette.
And up until now they've made sure that the last train of the day is the one that isn't cancelled.
Up until now.
One train from five thirty until Monday. Six and a half hours when there used to be at least sixteen in that time? On a major artery? It's paralysing.
Unions strike for better pay FOR THEIR MEMBERS. We need a total rethink of political alignment, so that Labour truly represent the interests of the neo-working class, improving pat and conditions for all.
It shouldn't just be about improving conditions for one tiny subset of a workforce that had strong traditional working class roots.
If you normally board the wrong train in Britain you are fined. And because we have different services running different routes, they all have a vested interest in protecting 'their' revenue.
This is why privatised utilities and mass transit systems don't work.
The irony that the privatised UK transport networks are owned by companies owned by nationalised European train operators is not lost to me.