Private profiteers Virgin on ridiculous
VIRGIN Trains has a TV advert out telling customers that when it comes to travel there’s no better choice than them.
To the soundtrack of Spandau Ballet’s True, a woman called Valerie arrives relaxed, stress-free, smiling and punctual at a job interview, having taken one of their lovely trains.
Meanwhile, an alternative Valerie is also shown arriving late, dishevelled and suicidal having gone by car.
Well, here’s my latest Valerie experience. On Sunday I needed to book a standard-class open return from Liverpool to London to get to a job there the following morning. If you haven’t done this kind of thing for a while I’d advise you sit down when you do in case you have a stroke.
Virgin wanted £318 ( first class was £484) for taking me on a two-hour journey to London and back home again. For that money I could have booked a weekend for two in Rome, and had enough left over to bribe a Swiss Guard to give me an audience with the Pope.
There are no planes from Liverpool to London, and motorways are slower than a cart and horse, so I had to use Virgin. But I wasn’t going to give old Beardie £318, so bought a £159, second-class single for the 7am train which meant at least I’d get to the job in good shape and on time. Well, sort of.
I was asked to pay extra for wi-fi (despite our local buses giving it free), struggled to get a laptop power point even though the train was half-empty, and it arrived in London 21 minutes late. Meaning, unlike Valerie, I was late, stressed and snarling.
Virgin likes to tell you about all their cheap fares, but they need to be booked weeks in advance. If you don’t, unless you want to travel in the off-peak hours, they delight in making tax-exile tycoon Branson even richer. Take a train between major cities abroad and you’ll be baffled at how cheap it is in comparison. You’ll also ask yourself why our government gives massive state handouts to private firms then lets them exploit commuters as they run a virtual transport monopoly.
For those who looked at Labour’s manifesto and said Britain can’t afford to go back to nationalisation, I’d say we can’t afford not to.
Between 2010-15 the East Coast line was run by the taxpayer and returned £1billion in premiums, as well as several million in profits, to the Treasury. When the Tories re-privatised it again in 2015, new owners, Virgin, immediately hiked prices.
A senior Labour figure told me after the election campaign that nationalisation had been a big policy winner on the doorsteps. Because as prices of rail, water and energy keep outstripping pay, a majority of voters realise one of the biggest follies we ever made was flogging off our vital industries to private companies. Many of whose shareholders are foreign governments profiting from UK consumers to subsidise their own.
Had the Tories won a landslide two weeks ago it would now be full-steam ahead for even more privatisation. Chunks of the NHS are already being flogged off to private firms, one of whom is, surprise surprise, Virgin Care.
Who we know, from our experience of Virgin Trains, are only interested in running parts of the NHS because their Caribbean exile boss wants to make Britain a better place. And definitely not to make loads more money screwing the already screwed tax-payer further into the ground.
Virgin were asking £318 for Liverpool to London and back