It was the train refrain of Christmas and New Year.
It was blurted out of tannoys with no shame, no sarcasm
and no embarrassment. ‘Disruption due to ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS’ sputtered
from public sound systems like odourless, colourless diarrhoea.
As early as 1990 it was officially stated that winters would
get warmer and very much wetter due to climate change. I would argue we’ve
known since the 1970s but let’s be generous and say we’ve only known for quarter of a century!
As I mentally battled with virulent notice boards
crawling with orange delay and cancellation signals, I had an internal function
crisis of my own. I briefly wondered if I tore out my hair, flung my rucksack
at the M&S station shop window then stripped out of my clothes, the
remnants of my sanity/ dignity and ran erratically round the waiting area/cum
shopping opportunity screaming ‘THIS IS CAPITALISM ULTRA. DO YOU LIKE IT?’
would anyone have the energy to intervene?
Adverse
Weather Conditions (AWCs soon surely – we love acronyms). Though, in effect it’s
just Adverse Weather. It’s not a ‘condition’. You know what – its actually just
WEATHER.
But whether it's Weather or Adverse Weather or
Adverse Weather Conditions it’s not what caused
the madness on the railways. Lack of investment in infrastructure and bloody
poor management over decades caused
the mayhem.
We’ve also known, since Thatcher started selling the
country to rich people for profit, that our infrastructure has been starved of
resources. You can’t dole out huge dividends to share holders while paying for
the upkeep and improvement and necessary development of the things that make
the country run. Duh.
Victorian viaducts (for example) should not be
attended to only when they sink into the ground. They should be Maintained.
Monitored. Checked. Upgraded. The railway companies could use – oh I don’t know
– some of the money I’ve paid over the years in exorbitant and still rising
rail fares.
With that same money and all the taxes that the
British public pay each year to the rail companies (far more than when we owned
the railways!) they could plan and invest in a sensible way.
All I would be able to scream by this point because
of the disconnect between the fire in my brain and the cold outside would be
something mundane like ‘more trains...’ and that’s if I hadn’t been rugby
tackled to the ground. Let’s face it who’d want to rugby tackle an hysterical
middle aged black woman suffering train related trauma and infrastructure freak
out syndrome – TRT&IFOS – on January 1st?
In the face of crumbling overworked sewer systems,
potholed roads, cracked pavements, inadequate flood defenses, clogged
motorways, poor (or no) housing, Cameron suggested an Infrastructure Commission.
I.e. an ‘independent body’ (euphemism for we-politicians-dodge-the-blame) that
would be responsible for infrastructure... Let’s just recap on what national
infrastructure is. National infrastructure is what makes the country work. Now
call me old fashioned but isn’t THE GOVERNMENT supposed to manage that? I mean
isn’t that what running the country is? If they farm their core responsibility
out to unelected bureaucrats, who is actually in charge and aren’t we just then
paying politicians for their daily sound bites? It is Fantasy Government. Just
a shame we can’t pay them in fantasy money. As I type I can feel the zombie
apocalypse closing in.
So – I would continue my railway rampage – RaRa.
Once I had an audience I would start on Hs2 (I don’t
know why I put a lower case ‘s’ there. It looks like some sort of delinquent
chemical symbol). Hs2, I would rant, is about providing a train link to London
so that non-oligarchs and non-Russian Mafiosi and non-Saudi Arabian friends of
the elite (i.e. people who cannot afford to live in London) can commute
efficiently in the future to wipe the arses of the oligarchs and Russian Mafiosi
and Saudi friends of entrenched wealth.
THEN
If I hadn’t fallen over one of the coffin sized wheelie
suitcases (see blog 6 Please Get a Bigger
T.V.) being navigated by morons who shouldn’t be allowed on trains anyway,
I would go on about how we're like third world countries
where the 1% live so far above the masses they are unaffected by the lack of or
failing infrastructure and simply pop up on set news pieces to say things like, ‘It’s all due to Adverse Weather Conditions’.
By this point however probably some kind person has
found my mobile and phoned my partner and he will be gathering up my clothes,
rucksack (telling M&S they will have to pay for their own window and, by
the way, could they please use less packaging) then he’d bundle me on the bus –
maybe wrapped in old newspaper – and take me to his flat. We would leave our, inevitably,
dog-shit-covered shoes (yes I didn’t remove my shoes – don’t be silly) at the
door and go in where he’d make me a nice cup of tea...