It must have been a busy day in GNER's boardroom yesterday as they culled their senior management team and appointed a new CEO.

Bob MacKenzie, president and chief executive of parent company Sea Containers has appointed himself as executive chairman.
Chief operating officer Jonathan Metcalfe has been promoted to CEO and will report into Mr MacKenzie.
Finance Director Shaun Mills, HR Director Mike Goodie and Marketing Director Clare Field have all been made redundant.
Rail division financial controller Tom Fielden becomes financial director.
Michelle Drage combines her role as customer services director in marketing to become commercial director.
Helen Thornton takes over as acting human resources director.

There are now fears that a cull of frontline and opperational staff will follow so it looks as if we can expect some disruptions in the coming months due to the usual union strike action.

The other big news affecting GNER today concerns a report that Virgin are preparing a £700 million bid to take over the franchise as GNER attempt to renogotiate their deal with the DFT.

From my perspective GNER can't afford to cut frontline staff as they already have regular staffing issues and that's before they've even announced any redundancies to frontline staff.

I'm not too bothered what happens at the top as long as the people appointed are up to the job. Don't know them or anything about them so I can't really comment other than to say time will tell whether they're good enough or not.

I wouldn't be too pleased if Virgin took control of the franchise. I've been on their WCML trains and i'm in no doubt that they ARE WORSE than GNER.

Strikes and redundancies go cap in hand. It's the unions job to protect their members and they'll use every means at their disposal to do just that. I'll endure whatever action they take but only because I've got little option but. I will also be happy to support them as I'm in no doubt service levels will fall if there are large scale redundancies.

Fianlly it looks like it may be worth considering a switch to FCC before long.