Follwing news that trading of shares in GNER's owners SEA Containers has been suspended, News is filtering through that in addition to last months boardroom redundancies, GNER are about to announce a whole load of customer facing and office staff are to go as well. That may well explain why nobody has checked my ticket during the trip to work this week, though they have checked it every night.

As is usual in these circumstances staff may be balloted for strike action and it looks like the first to be balloted will be ticket office staff? Why them? Well think about it. Becasue it's much cheaper to manage, most companies are trying to push as much of their order transactions on-line. GNER are no differant in that respect and when you add this strategy to the fast ticket machines that are popping up at stations up and down the land, ticket office staff look very vulnerable indeed.

One report even suggests that up to 10% of GNER's workorce could go. As a regular customer I wonder how this will impact upon my journey. Are we likely to see more delays, less RP checks, Higher ticket and consumable prices? I suspect all will show their heads in time.

There is of course another potential consequence of SEA Containers plight and that is that GNER could be sold, the franchise re-negotiated or the UK Gov take over the running of the line as they did when Railtrack got into difficulties. Not sure how I feel about that posibility.

Whatever happens it looks like life on the ECML is going to change over the next 12 months for passengers and GNER staff alike. Only time will tell if this will be for the better or worse.

As it has for the last few days, the 07.20 arrived into Tinsel Town on time. As I sat at my seat there was only one other bloke at the table. Blow me if it wasn't a smaller version of Yossa Hughes of Boys fram the Black stuff fame. He even had that wild stare of Yossa's which bernard Hill so perfected, The big bushy tash and long dark trench coat. It was at this point that my brain registered the warning signs and started saying Ne Nah, Ne Nah, Nutter alert, Nutter alert, to itself.

I was right. He was a nutter. Not long out of Tinsel Town, Matey boy continued with his crossword or sodoku or whatever puzzel he was doing in todays Metro and started to whisper and mutter to himself. This continued every few minutes all the way into Kings Cross. I couldn't hear most of it but I did cath the odd word or phrase like 'That's sick', or, 'Disgusting' and 'How could they'. Obviously he's a man with something on his mind and really ought to see a physciatrist or similar.

God forbid any poor person who managed to catch the fellows eyes becasue he'd just stare at them for 3 minutes or so. Needless to say most quickly learned to stop looking at him. A mate of mine sat behind and to my right was one of the unfortunates who caught Yossa's eye and he had to endure a tortuous 3 mins of meanies from those wild, threatening eyes of Yossas.

At least he was harmless though. In the end he didn't say a word to anyone, didn't bother anyone (other than make people feel uncomfortable) and most importantly, didn't do anything.