Posted: Thu 27 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, National Express East Anglia, Travel, Work-related |
Following on from yesterday’s mini-rant about National Express East Anglia‘s huge price-rise coming in on the 5th/6th Sept, I’ve kept on looking for more information.
Unsurprisingly, National Express East Anglia’s website doesn’t really mention fares at all (although there’s plenty of references to penalty fares) and the upcoming fare-rise doesn’t appear to feature in their news section either. They still talk about off-peak fares, but it’s nigh-on impossible to get one. I’ve gone through ’til November using The Train Line’s website, and any time you ask about off-peak tickets you just get a “Not Available” (if you can even find the access to the off-peak tickets.
As the National Express East Anglia website itself says in the terms and conditions for off-peak tickets,
In most cases off peak day tickets are not available for travel on trains arriving in London before 1000 or departing from London before 0930. Travel is also not permitted on services departing from London between 1629 and 1834 Monday to Friday, except for travel to stations between Hatfield Peverel and Braintree inclusive on the 1636 departure from London.
None of the trains I’m using fall into these categories – I get in to London at around 1015 on the Monday , and was leaving at 1615 on the Friday – but still, the off-peak tickets appear to be completely unavailable after 6th September.
And for the pedantic and picky among you, yes, there is a cheaper off-peak ticket via Norwich – but that journey takes at least an hour longer, takes me to a less-useful London station, and is one of the more renownedly unreliable lines in the country…
Posted: Wed 26 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, National Express East Anglia, Travel, Work-related |
In the spirit of being organised, I’ve just been booking accommodation and train tickets for the rest of the contract, which takes me through to the end of September.
I’d already booked stuff for next week, and that was all sorted.
However, it looks like 5th September is National Price-Rise Day – and in the case of the train tickets in particular, it’s abso-fucking-lutely extortionate.
This week and next, the return ticket from Attleborough to London (including Tube to get me to the office) is £39.50. Which, in fairness, is pretty good value.
For travelling on the 7th September, that self-same return ticket is – are you ready for this? – £74.
Yes, for reasons known only to themselves, National Express East Anglia think it’s acceptable to pretty much double the price. How the fuck can that be justified?
Posted: Tue 25 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Photography, Travel, Work-related |
So. the first night in London went OK, thankfully.
Of course, I’d rather be staying back home, but them’s the breaks, there’s not a great deal I can do about it. And I really don’t fancy the commute…
The other downside of being here in London is that it means I’ll be missing out on other things, like the meeting of the local Camera Club tonight – slightly more frustrating, as it’s still all getting formed and we’re figuring things out.
Still, I’m sure I’ll find other things in London to be getting on with…
Posted: Mon 24 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Travel, Work-related |
Today’s the first day of the new contract, so I’m off on the train to London.
Updates today are likely to be thin on the ground, for obvious reasons. As for the rest of the week, there’ll be more stuff here.
Enjoy.
Posted: Sat 22 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Driving, Own Business, Thoughts, Travel, Work-related |
Last week, Gordon wrote a small piece on driving too fast.
I too drive fast – when the situation and environment allow, anyway. One day I’ll get stopped for it I’m sure, although I’m normally also pretty aware of what’s going on around me – and what’s coming round the next bend, or over the next peak of the road.
Admittedly, at the end of July I thought I’d possibly been had twice in one journey. The first was a speed camera on a bridge over the M4. I’d driven down to Chippenham for an interview – a minimum four hours of driving each way – and was on the way back. I came round a corner and there it was on a bridge, although still a fair distance away.
The second was closer to home, the A11 on the final stretch back. Again, coming over a peak on the road (not that Norfolk has peaks as such, but there’s a number of dips in that stretch of A11) and there it was, still one dip/peak away.
I don’t know the range of these cameras, where they’re focussed in order to get the best details. I don’t know if they have a specific focus point, or if it’s flexible – I assume it’s somewhat flexible, to account for road conditions and topography, and all that jazz.
What I do know is that wherever they were focussed, those cameras weren’t focussed on the places where I first saw them. By the time I got into whatever their focus-zone was, I was legal.
On both occasions I was travelling between 85 and 90mph. The road was pretty clear, the weather was fine (bright sun), and everything was safe. But still, well, I was speeding, and at least 15mph over the limit. Oops.
If I had been tagged on either occasion, I wouldn’t have objected, it would have been entirely fair. In some ways, I got lucky by not being caught – although in some ways I’d also argue that it was because I was aware of things in the distance.
I’d like to say that those events made me rethink my driving speed. But if I did, I’d be lying.
Posted: Fri 21 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Domestic, Own Business, Travel, Work-related |
Slowly but surely I’m getting ready for the new contract starting Monday…
- Train Tickets – Booked
- Accommodation – Booked
- Location – Well, I know where I’m going, and all that
- Travel – I know how I’m getting there, even checked Underground etc.
- Essential Software – Loaded on a USB stick, just in case they don’t have it already
I’ve still got a couple of things to do though
- Pack bags
- Last-minute shopping bits
- Find that fucking A-Z – I don’t want to buy a fourth one…
And that’s it.
So I’m just about ready to return to the maw that is “Working in London”.
Posted: Thu 13 August, 2009 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Stupidity, Travel |
While I can’t deny I’m pleased to see that the current train strikes that have been affecting us in Norfolk/Suffolk have been suspended, in a lot of ways I think it’s a great shame that National Express East Anglia have capitulated to the union’s demands at all.
Interestingly, neither the RMT or ASLEF sites actually detail what the deal was that they were trying to get. That in itself says to me that they know it was unreasonable – after all, why not try and gain support and understanding from the public if they’re really so hard done by?
The BBC mentioned some of the requests in one story, as follows…
National Express managers say the unions want a 2.5% pay rise, a four-day working week and a 4% increase in the number of train drivers.
Although as that’s from National Express managers, I can’t really say it’s 100% accurate, obviously. This story from the Guardian in 2002 suggests that the average train driver’s salary was around £30,000 seven years ago, along with 35-40 days holiday a year. MySalary estimates an average train-driver’s salary in 2009 as £35,000.And that’s before we consider overtime etc. as well.
That £35,000 is a good figure. In this area (excluding Cambridge) the average salary is around £19-20,000. Hard to have sympathy for people striking about wanting more money when they’re already on nearly double the regional average, isn’t it?
Additionally, the strikes of the last three weeks have been counter-productive in other ways. I don’t know of anyone who’s had sympathy for the train drivers, and I wonder how many people have decided that actually it’s more reliable to use their own transport (or car-pool or whatever) rather than relying on the train “service”. If that’s the case in a significant number of people, the train service has fewer paying customers, reducing the income to the company – which reduces their ability to pay the drivers.
How much have the strikes cost National Express? I don’t know – but again it’s going to be a significant figure. It has to be, due to dropping all but a handful of services. (I think they ran six to/from Norwich each day, instead of the usual 60+) Roughly speaking, that’s 10% of the income they would normally get. Yes, I know it’s a rough figure, but it’ll do.
If I were on the board of National Express, I would do three things.
- Tell the unions to get stuffed, that their actions had cost National Express £x00,000, so that was the figure that we’d be cutting the salary budget by.
- Look at how I could get extra drivers in (even perhaps train-drivers from the continent, or ones who had retired, but wanted some extra cash for a few days work) in order to run the service still. Hell, I’d possibly even look at organising a pool of standby-drivers – casual labour, but trained up and fully current.
I wonder whether you could get away with offering train-drivers a cash sum or extra money to break the strike and do their job. Not a salary-rise, but just a loyalty-bonus for sticking with the company. That one would be fun…
- Finally, I’d have been completely up-front, and made it highly public about what deal National Express were offering, vs. what the unions wanted. I’d put the entire deal in the public eye, and see what the reaction was then.
I think that if those things had been done – and particularly number three – it would’ve made for a really interesting situation, where the unions could see what the public thought of them.
Mind you, that’s probably why I’ll never be on the board of a company like National Express – I suspect my way of handling things would be a bit confrontational for their tastes.
It’s still a pity that they seem to have compromised to any degree with the demands, though.