like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

don't think they do those cheap advance tickets on my line. I have heard of these mythical cheap fares but never seen one to anywhere I actually need to go

vast majority of my train travel for the last umpteen years has been between my home and my mom's, goes thru two or three different companies' jurisdictions, would be eye-watering without advance tix

If going somewhere that I feel is far (say Glasgow) I will buy a ticket in advance, on The Train Line (on a computer; wouldn't know how to do it on a mobile device).

If going somewhere nearer, say in the SE, like Rochester, Haywards Heath, Reigate - then quite likely I'll walk up to a station and buy a return ticket.

If I can no longer do that then that's not good for me. In fact I can hardly comprehend what the alternative will be.

Overall the idea of dispensing with return tickets sounds to me insane, almost something out of Lewis Carroll.

'No, of course you can't have a return', replied the weasel with the whistle and cap, quite crossly.
'Why on Earth not?' asked Alice.
'Because round here, no-one ever returns. They just go'.
'But people have to return', Alice insisted, a little crossly herself. 'How else would they come back home?'
'Home?' exclaimed the weasel with furious disdain. 'One doesn't come home! One goes away! That's all!'

Haha exactly

I've never used Trainline, I did use the National Rail site in the past. However I know the cheapest routes and tickets for most train journeys I make so now I just go direct to the train operators' sites and use their best/cheap fare finder facilities.

that I still use nationalrail rather than the greater anglia website is down to the FOMO of getting an advance ticket to St pancras from thameslink, something which hasn't happened in about a year at least.

just out of curiosity I've checked the national rail site to see how much it would cost for me to go to London for a day, booking a week in advance. And it's something like almost three times what I paid for 2 adults 3 children to do the same in 2008. Either I got a v good deal in 2008 or the bread riots will be coming next.

don't think they do those cheap advance tickets on my line. I have heard of these mythical cheap fares but never seen one to anywhere I actually need to go

Been there...

I did London <-> Liverpool dozens of times for family reasons from late ‘00s on, and it was usually a patchwork of advance singles, alternate routes and slow stopping services to be able to afford that frequency of trip. Marylebone, Snow Hill, Chester and Stafford. Maybe once in every eight visits I’d score a Virgin WC return for an acceptable price (once first class - it was cheaper!).

I check now and not only are those alternate routes quite expensive, but Avanti WC seem to have a policy of purposefully limiting advance booking. The (near-)18yo hopes to study up in the Lakes from Sept; probably easier and cheaper to visit her if she’d got a place in Poznan, Lisbon or Helsinki.

I’ve seen this no-return move greeted quite enthusiastically in some transport nerd quarters. Supposedly it will simplify ticketing - more of a European per-km model? But I don’t really know the details.

I don’t really care what happens to the return as long as there’s some kind of responsible price management, which is… unlikely.

Much as I can manage the current system (try two separate bad untransparent websites and hope for the best, then give up and use trainline), getting bargains is dependent on (a) understanding how to use the internet (b) having the internet or (c) being within walking distance of a open train station with a helpful teller. That’s pretty exclusionary!

I’ve never really understood why advances are cheaper - some legacy thing? It’s not like they cancel the train if no one books tickets in advance, afaik.

I don’t like having to book a specific timed return either, it always makes the last day of a holiday seem rushed to me

Transport Nerd Quarters.

This is what I vaguely assume to be true, and I may be way off:

In most of the EU, you want to travel 200km by train, it costs 200 times some unit cost. Doesn't matter where or when you're going, whether it's four legs of 50km, 100km there and back, 180km inter-city and a 20km branch line, whatever. There are some premiums associated with express services, maybe.

In the UK, you're at the whim of the franchisee(s), fares vary wildly depending on when you book, whether it's single vs return, if you're travelling in a group, whether you're breaking your journey, etc etc.

I'm sure I'm mischaracterising travel on the continent, but I think the price structure is simpler, if not as simple as I like to think. And I think that's what some ppl are hoping happens with this "abandon single/return" pilot thing. But I completely agree that if there's any opportunity for it to become to a route to price gouging, or added complexity, or digital-only exclusivity, that's what will happen because I no longer expect anything to get better in my lifetime. Cheers!

i always got the impression that uk fare structures were mainly there to disuade you from travelling when it was busy

Avanti WC seem to have a policy of purposefully limiting advance booking.

I'm convinced they also have a policy of making it as difficult as possible to change at stations to catch alternative services by alternative train companies. However this would need some coordination of timetables between different companies. A common occurrence is to find a cheap ticket to somewhere where you can change trains only to find the ticket price for the second part of the journey has been mysteriously bumped up... and vice versa.

(xp) More like to maximize profits by charging more for the times when people prefer to travel

There are odd little legacy ticketing arrangements hidden away on websites... like the Southern Day Saver. I'd lived down here for 25 years and I had no idea you could travel unlimited on Southern (outside morning peak) for a day for about £20. We did it a couple of times last summer (Chichester, Worthing, Hove, etc). Clearly no one else knows about it either, because the paper tickets don't work in any of the barriers.
(My summer hols as a kid were basically this - a 7-day rail rover around North Wales, the Lakes, Shrewsbury... about £12 for the family!)

Avanti WC seem to have a policy of purposefully limiting advance booking.

This is a recent post-covid thing, afaik, due to staffing issues, like cutting the London/Mcr service from 3 trains an hour to 1.

spend yr summer hols in shrewsbury :o

Fetter: yeah, I know it was associated with that... not being able to confirm the timetable more than a few weeks at a time, etc. Most other operators seem to have got back to 2019 levels of service, but I assume Avanti have some particular challenges.

Mark: I'm not sure what we did in Shrewsbury. Wrexham at least could boast an international-class pick'n'mix in Woolworths. And Rhyl briefly had a monorail.

due to staffing issues

OG shitposter MP Jared O'Mara convicted of fraud in support of his cocaine habit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64512690

his main crime it seems was committing fraud in such a stupid and transparent manner that it doesn't take too long for the trail to get chased up. He should have got some tips from Streeting and Cooper on how to court dark money/private health/big bookies donors, he could have paid his coke dealer off in no time.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/09/former-sheffield-hallam-mp-jared-omara-jailed-for-four-years

4 years! Can they prosecute everyone else who submitted fraudulent claims now please?

Nah, House of Lords for them.

99% of them are fucking compromised and bent as fuck, mostly within the rules of course. Also Jared got shopped to the police by his own chief of staff before he could rectify his whoopsy daisy absolutely accidental mistake honest guv claims, that doesn't usually happen I don't think.

Think the lesson here is that if you're going to be an obnoxious prick AND a corrupt MP then your best bet is to join the Conservative Party.

it's working good for 30p Lee

TFW Jeremy Corbyn correctly identifies you as an absolute danger

In a July 2019 statement, O'Mara said he had never been reinstated to the party, and that Corbyn had made "false reports about me being a mental health danger around parliament" after O'Mara had complained about not being able to arrange a meeting with the former's office.

can you remember when his political career peaked? Lots of people waiting to see if he has managed to get on a train for a parliamentary vote during the prorogation. I doubt he even remembers it tbh

"Wrexham at least could boast an international-class pick'n'mix in Woolworths. And Rhyl briefly had a monorail."

This last fact is remarkable.

I visited Wrexham last summer and found a notable church which a local church warden type was proud to present as one of the greatest of its kind in Britain. Most striking to me, outside it was the grave of the original Yale, a Wrexham fellow who gave his name to Yale University by giving it a big donation centuries ago.

The Woolworths, on the other hand, must have been long gone.

hard to appreciate looking at Rhyl today but it was a massive holiday destination back in the 60s and 70s, pretensions to rival Blackpool

yes when i was growing up the north wales coastline was like the med you could drive to

(then cheap package-holiday flights to spain kicked in)

just heard the Jared O'Mara case framed as "he tried to finance his cocaine habit with taxpayers money" - "one rotten apple" is it, lol.

these fuckers:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/10/far-right-demonstrators-clash-with-police-at-liverpool-hotel-housing-asylum-seekers

I hope the Scousers end them.

This is incitement, and chances are it will get people seriously hurt. They know whose buttons they're pressing when they do this and what the outcome is likely to be pic.twitter.com/70zzkEJiBZ

— Tom Blackburn (@malaiseforever) February 11, 2023

scumbags. And all the bleating you get about safety concerns for MPs and the toxicity running within our politics boo hoo hoo. These arseholes are effectively encouraging lynch mobs to attack asylum seekers.

That guy Gullis in particular is a real piece of work.

70 pupils in Stoke-on-Trent walked out of school on Thursday to protest The Discovery Academy's 'disgusting' decision to install barriers in front of the loos so students allegedly can't access them during class time.

https://t.co/lxBVExzlLM

— Metro (@MetroUK) February 11, 2023

labour today really going after these tory ministers splashing out on hotel rooms during their *check notes* work trips, rooms which run to over, now make sure you’re sitting down, *checks notes* £200/night.

no way that’ll come back to bite them, right?

i didn't notice that story, must've been because of all the noise coming from the shadow cabinet condemning fascist lynchmobs

Yvette Cooper ought to be apologising for her own bigoted rhetoric while May was creating a hostile environment that was hostile enough for her liking

🖋 Which minister's department spent £59,155 buying stationery at Banner from 22 February to 2 April 2021?
 
Despite only spending £1,470 at the same company for the other 325 days of the year?
 
🚀 You'll see spending rocket in March in ➡️ https://t.co/ujdIr20IWR ⬅️ pic.twitter.com/Lt5DhAqFss

— Labour Press (@labourpress) February 13, 2023

what is the rationale behind this line of attack, what am I missing? Why is supposed to reflect badly on the department of health that they spent a relatively high amount of money on stationery over the course of one month and a low amount on stationery for the rest of the year, are we supposed to infer something other than they bulk buy a year's worth of stationery in one go? I guess I could understand making this your line of attack as some last-ditch act of desperation if you're facing electoral oblivion, why would you do it when you're 20 points ahead in the polls and likely to be in government in the fairly near future, surely you're just creating a rod for your own back?

they want to demonstrate that we are all in this together in preparation for another 5 years of hard austerity. But while people with health conditions die in cold houses, government ministers get their budgets for stationery and art deco prints heavily scrutinised by the dept of sensibleness. They are fucking idiots and I genuinely hope they don't win the next GE.

is the idea that the extra spending in March is because it's the end of the tax year and they don't want to have a surplus left because that could mean a smaller budget next year, so they blow it on stationery, and if they were procuring stationery in an efficient manner then there'd be a more steady spend over the year? But it's such a small amount relative to how much the government spends.

well yes. I don't know what the focus groups are telling them, but I think most people understand that government department budgets are a drop in the ocean.

the office budgets of govt depts I meant obv

is this specifically a Labour right thing, where they've internalised the criticisms of Lab being spendthrift and economically irresponsible to the point where you get this kind of counterproductive pedantry over any expenditure? It reminds me of the arguments when the Corbyn leadership was proposing free parking at NHS hospitals, and people were complaining about how the money could be better spent on medical treatment, or the obsession with means-testing. Also policy-wonk focus on minutiae.

This "spending money on any old crap at the end of the financial year because we've got to use up the budget" is standard practice in the public sector. Why else would we have got an email at the start of the week saying we're getting new staff lockers when no-one wants them and there's nothing wrong with the ones we already have?