I had to leave early tonight and caught the 16.05 from KX. On the way the guard came round and as he, to coin a phrase from my freind at http://www.gnersucks.co.uk/ 'protected the revenue', I couldn't help overhearing him tell the lady behind me that her ticket wasn't valid for that train and she had to pay an additional fee.

Now you may remember I comented a few weeks ago about a similar incident where the conductor concerned treated the passenger with utmost profesionalism and compasion. Today was differant.

The lady concered started to make an excuse when the guard interupted to tell her that they had made 4 announcements to check tickets were valid and they had therefore done all they could to avoid such an event. Next the lady tried to tell him that she had no cash but the Vulture spotted the prey in the form of a bank card in her handbag. He then re-stated his earlier sentence about announcements and all they could, twice more as she coninued her futile pleading for mercy.

What made this differant was the guards matter of fact attitude to the whole thing. Clearly this woman was embarassed, as have I been when Hitler himself refused to accept my dried out excuse for a ticket., but that made no differance to him. The contrast to my earlier blog in respect to the guards handling of each situation was staggering but a classic example of how some of GNER's best assits, are their few employees who stand out above the rest.

Michael Jaques, regular Guard on the 07.20 P'boro/KX, I hope you read this or hear of this one day because your one of the few. As is Sean but I can't remember his surname and some of his punchlines are wearing a little thin.

The number of hit's and page views on this blog is rising by the week sugesting somebody actually finds this blog of mine interesting.

If any regular readers would like to become a co-authur, please post a comment and we'll take it from there.

No probs on the train this morning and given how busy it was, it's a good job too.

On the company front, the link to the following article sugests GNER might be seeping ever further into the red and looking for legal loopholes to bail them out: -

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article1220706.ece

Can't see how they can claim the government are at fault though: -

Who was it that grossly over estimated the revenue which could be milked from the ECML?
Who tabled a bid £300 million higher than their nearest rivals just over 12 months ago?
Who was it that promised UK Gov PLC £1.3 billion over the next 10 years?
Which company has a parent who can't meet loan payments?
Who knew rival operators were bidding to run services on the ECML while they were negotiating their own contract with UK Gov PLC?
Who chose to ignore warnings that massive increases to the price of fule and electricity were on their way?
Who agreed to remove contingency clauses in the contract, presumably to help them win?

Quite rightly, the DfT are so far refusing to re-negotiate the deal but for how long? GNER have frozen all recruitment and are considering redundancies. In summary I have a nasty feeling that it will be the staff and passengers who pay and suffer. Ticket prices will rise well above inflation again, service levels will fall, the staff who keep their jobs will be left to deal with the passenger backlash and of course those that are made redundant will loose their jobs. Mean while the fat cats at the top collect their bonuses for a bad job done badly.