If you don’t live in the south, and you never make any trips down here, you might have missed the Southern Rail debacle. You lucky, lucky bastards.
For anyone that relies on trains in the south east of the country – I feel your pain my friends… will it never end?
Southern – the busiest commuter franchise in the country has gone tits up, and stayed tits up for the last 6 months or so.
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Although the Southern Rail shit storm doesn’t affect anyone outside of the south-east of England, the problem is relevant to everyone in the country because it’s a glimmer of what is to come under Tory rule. It is a mass demonstration of privatization gone sour.
Southern Rail are the largest rail network in the UK, they are on their knees, the government is stood by silently humming the national anthem to itself, and commuters are, quite rightly, losing their shit left, right and centre.
Everyone has their own opinion on privatisation, but this is mine – it makes rich people richer, poor people poorer and public services substantially shitter.
According to the geniuses at the top, privatisation encourages competition and increases efficiency. Southern Rail’s epic and unending failures show that this is total bullshit. How can it increase competition? It’s not as if I can choose which rail network I use and there are no buses that will take me to work in under 4 hours – I am forced to use Southern Rail. Every-fucking-day. I can’t switch my custom to Northern Rail to traverse East Sussex.
There is no competition here, just cash flow away from the many and into the hands of the bell ends.
This poor, lonely excuse for a transport company has cut services (hundreds across their network), virtually all trains are running late or getting cancelled, people’s commutes are doubling in length and, guess what, the ticket prices are still sky-bastard-high. It’s a form of sick and twisted psychological torture on a grand scale.
Basically, Southern Rail are saying:
SR: “Hi guys, we’re making your service even crapper than it used to be. We’re going to make it harder for you to get to the job you hate. Also, we’re not changing our pricing, so it will cost you thousands of pounds per year for a much, much poorer service… is that OK with you? Oh, actually, don’t bother answering that, there’s nothing you can do about it any way. LOL.”
Us: “How long will the disruption last?”
SR: “Dunno, LOL.”
Us: “FML.”
Us: *waits for the fucking train*
So what’s going on here?
Southern Rail Disgrace: A Summary
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Basically, Southern Rail wanted to make changes to their conductor’s roles. The conductors don’t like the changes and reckon the changes would make it more dangerous for passengers. Southern Rail wouldn’t listen to their concerns, so the conductors went on strike.
After a little while and some fruity debates, Southern Rail still wouldn’t listen and decided to reduce the conductor’s ability to work overtime and cut back on some of their privileges, like parking spaces etc. Just to make sure they are suffering a little more.
Conductors were stressed out from losing money and the additional pressure. They were overworked and massively annoyed, so they started taking sick leave, in droves. This had a knock on effect to the trains that were running. Loads got cancelled due to “staff shortages” – an excuse they have now been using for months.
The fight goes on and neither side seems to be willing to back down.
Southern have also been spotted with their trousers down playing dirty business. On a few occasions they have been caught cancelling trains because of “staff shortages” when, in reality, the conductor has actually turned up for work. The rail network are sneakily attempting to turn public opinion against the conductors by making the situation worse.
Thanks Southern, I hope you get kidney stones.
What Are The Government Doing?
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Claire Perry (above) – the Railways Minister – quit her job… thanks mate, that’s really helpful. Paul Maynard took over a couple of months ago and said that he would”
“broker talks between Southern Rail and the union.”
Cheers, great, yes, have a nice chat. He’s pictured below (PS – don’t judge a book by its cover).
That was about 7 weeks ago and the problem rages on. The government should be in charge of this shambolic shit parade but, to be quite frank with you, Theresa May and her rabid bunch of sadists are only interested in their bottom line, and Southern Rail is doing fine financially, thanks very much. So they are unlikely to give any fucks anytime soon.
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This is the real kicker – part of our taxes go into propping up Southern Rail. So, if you are a commuter, your tax is helping fund these total morons, who then overcharge you for your season ticket but don’t actually feel obliged to take you to work in a timely or predictable fashion. Cheers to everyone involved in that ridiculous rinse.
And, the cherry on the top of the fart-flavoured cake? – Southern Rail just announced a £99 million profit. What the ACTUAL fuck? Are you serious? Yes, they are serious. But, don’t worry, the top bosses have waived their fat bonuses – how kind of them.
According to The Guardian, the chief executive of Go-Ahead (owners of Southern rail operator Govia Thameslink Railway), has decided not to take his bonus.
Like I said, this is a sign of what is to come. The government doesn’t give two hairy dog shits what’s going on, as long as the company is still making money.
Awesome.
The government do not care that people can no longer see their children because they have to leave their house before they wake up and arrive home after they’ve gone to bed. They couldn’t give a badger’s tadger that people are now rammed into germ-infested carriages for longer periods of time than is safe. Nope. They enjoy the suffering. They revel in the pain.
Dear Theresa May and your government of shit-dribblers – how do you sleep at night?:
May: “Really, really well thank you. I have a wonderfully comfortable bed, and I’m totally unperturbed by human suffering. If anything, I get a bit of a kick out of your tears. Your misery sustains me. Thanks for asking.”
Southern Rail users: “Any chance you could have a look into this crisis? Perhaps do something about it?”
May: “Nah. I’m a bit tired today.”
Southern Rail users: *carry on with shit life until we die*
Of course, Southern Rail are blaming the unions and their staff, and the unions and staff are blaming Southern Rail. With any ongoing dispute, it’s tricky to tell apart the truth from the lies. But, when it comes down to it, who do you trust?: thousands of employees and trade union officials or a handful of fat cat bastards making £100 million profit? Hmm…. tricky one.
First Hand Accounts
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As I started to write this article and vent my aching spleen, I thought I would ask some of my fellow travellers how they have been impacted. There were a number of responders. People love a rant after all.
One of my good friends wanted to make something clear, and I must say, I wholeheartedly agree with this statement:
…can I just say that, despite the appalling lack of services from Southern Rail, it is their employees who are on the front line, every day, facing disgruntled passengers and abuse that should be directed at the twats that own Southern Rail… the employees are respectful, understanding, and show compassion for the disruption and its effects on passengers all day, every day. I think they’re ace…and back ’em 100%!
The staff are being shat on from above and below and are (generally) maintaining a high level of calm. I don’t know how they are managing it, but on the whole, they’re just trying their best to muddle through like the rest of us. Their entire lives are being ruined to a greater extent than the commuters, in many ways.
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But, solidarity aside, Southern Rail as a whole has generated so much negativity that I think we could quite rightly blame them for bringing the nation’s state of mind to a new low. Here’s an example that gives you a bit of insight into just how long dissatisfaction with Southern has been trundling on:
I’ve been using the Gatwick Express service for the last 5 years and at least twice a week, the service has been either late, cancelled or reduced. When services are cancelled at 6:30 in the morning, more often than not, the service running after the cancelled train arrives with just 5 carriages. This means that one 10-carriage train’s passengers and the following train’s passengers all have to squeeze into one 5 carriage train.
That’s 20 carriages worth of people on a 5 carriage train, maths fans.
Certain GE trains have had toilets that have been locked up and marked out of order for up to 6 months, so you have to walk up and down the train to find a bog. Sometimes there’s no water in the tanks, so when you do find one, you might not be able to flush it, or wash your hands. And the dryers often don’t work either. So you have to walk about with pissy hands.
I was on a train that got stuck due to a bit of track being broken, resulting in me sitting on a train for 5 hours, with no water in the tanks for the toilets, in the middle of summer. So everyone was overheated, couldn’t use the loos and had to sit waiting for the police to come and give us bottles of water.
We were a 2 minute walk from a track-side exit but due to the train company’s “insurance,” we were forced to wait for them to sort out the bit of track so that another train could shunt us back 30 feet to the previous station. Five hour wait for a 20 minute solution.
Pretty much every week at least one train I catch will be held up by signal failure either at Gatwick or Haywards Heath. This has been the case for 5 years at least, and I have no idea how they are so incapable of fixing these signals permanently.
With the ever-increasing fare hikes and the ever-decreasing quality of service, it’s hard to know where any of the money the passengers are spending is going – I spend £4k a year on trains and I’m sure that my ticket price alone could fund the fixing of a single signal.
I Bet The Hot Weather’s Helping, Ain’t It 😉
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Yes, the hot weather has really helped the situation. Despite the problem with Southern Rail’s service having dragged on for months, they are still no closer to getting anything the fuck done about it.
So, when the DFLs (Down From Londons) rolled into town for our annual warm spat, the trains went into epic motherfucker melt down. They couldn’t deal with the traffic before the busy period. If animals had been treated like Southern Rail’s passengers, Southern Rail would have been arrested. But, it’s only humans, so… well… fuck them, basically.
This next story comes from another traveler who is a freelancer and a mother who has missed meetings and had to pay out extra cash for childcare:
On that crazy hot Tuesday where Brighton station got closed, many trains from Croydon to Brighton were cancelled including a train that had just turned up.
Far too many people (probably 2 or 3 train’s worth, seriously) had to hotfoot it to another platform, no one was taking any prisoners it was a full on savage scramble. Do or die.
Anyway, I was one of ‘the lucky ones’ and made it onto the new oversubscribed ramadamadingdong train.
The man in front of me who I had to stand up against, much to mine and my fellow passengers dismay, had a very spicy bottom and he wasn’t afraid to use it.
When I finally got a seat, a man dropped his iPad on my head. I accused him of middle class train rage. He loved it.
The end.
What Can We Do?
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So what can we do? In short, fuck all. That’s the most annoying thing. Most people HAVE to use Southern to get to work. So, whilst they single-handedly bring our quality of life to its knees, we’re still forced to pay them hundreds of pounds every single week.
It’s a total joke. A planned commuter demonstration at Brighton station started late because the trains were delayed. You couldn’t make it up.
In fact, it has become such a massive joke that someone made a computer game out of it. I shit you not. They probably programmed it whilst waiting for one of Southern’s shit bucket contraptions to wheeze down the track, overloaded with suicidal semi-humans:
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Some people are trying to escape the mayhem, but it’s not an easy carousel to step off without breaking the bank (even further):
I’m a student, I travel from Crawley to Worthing regularly. If the trains ran smoothly it would take me 2 hours to get from the front door of my uni, which equals about 4 hours of travel per day, which I signed up for and was ready to do; what I wasn’t ready for was 6-8 hours of travel daily.
I spend approximately £200 a month on trains and I wish my money was well spent. I will quite often get on my second train and hear they will not be calling at my stop, so I’ll have to get 3 or 4 trains with people equally as frustrated.
Or, I’ll sit, miles from my house in the cold and rain wishing I’d never chosen to further my education by attending uni, because of them. I’m so frustrated with Southern, I’ve spent almost £1,000 to date on driving lessons just so I can learn, pass and spend more money on a car just so I don’t need to step foot on their trains or pay into the big guys pockets.
However, there is some light at the end of the dismally-lit, stench-filled tunnel. The Association of British Commuters (ABC) are attempting a crowd-funded legal attack on the bungling muppets at the Department of Transport.
According to their Facebook page:
Association of British Commuters Ltd. are seeking to bring a Judicial Review (“JR”) against the Department for Transport (DfT).
Our initial target is £10,000 to get this case off the ground and we have a second target of £25,000.
This is a type of legal process in which the High Court can review the decision-making process of the DfT and – if that process is found wanting – can make an order declaring the DfT’s actions unlawful; preventing it from continuing in its course of action and requiring it to take steps to fulfill its duties.
On a rail network already stretched to capacity, this summer has been an absolute nightmare for commuters on the Southern Rail network. Barely a day goes by that we don’t hear of someone losing their job or relocating their home and family due to the sheer impossibility of living with this daily catastrophe.
It is now time to hold the Government to account but we can’t do it alone! If every person who uses the network donated a few pounds we would be at our target in no time at all!
You can DONATE HERE.
I would love to see this work and, there’s no reason it shouldn’t. However, as we have all seen over recent months and years, if you’re rich, you don’t have to pay for your errors. It’s only the poor and down-trodden folk who are forced to suffer. Southern Rail will probably be carrying out this same levels of shittery this time next year.
The commuting public will still be crying, wailing and feeling helpless while the big wigs at Southern Rail HQ and DfT will be spunking in each other’s eyes and singing happy songs while they bathe in caviar.
It’s shit enough as a standard (relatively) healthy person. But imagine if you were disabled or pregnant; it’s just a waiting game until this fuckery causes some serious health beefs.
Re-nationalise the rail network. Screw you, big business. I’d like to say your day would come, but it probably won’t.
I’ll end with one more shot across the balls from another pissed off commuter:
“I’d like to see the board of directors in a Battle Royale.”
