JUSTIN DUNN’S ROOM 101 WHAT’S ANNOYING HIM THIS WEEK? Forget filleting the BBC... sort the f**king trains, Boris!
ACCORDING to Google Maps, travelling either by road, rail or my own feet, the distance to the hospital was 22 miles.
In a straight-line dash down the motorway with no interruptions, you’re looking at a 20-minute journey, or even less, from door to door.
So why did it take us two hours and 20 minutes to get there? And three hours to get back? Easy. Boris Johnson. He made lots of promises to get the keys to Number 10, helped along by a tremendously shit opponent that had scared the hell out of most normal people.
Yet he still hasn’t “got Brexit done” properly, and that “levelling up” agenda seems to be right up there with Sir John Major’s “back to basics” and David Cameron’s “Big Society”.
Hot air. Or, as we call it up north, bollocks.
Part of that levelling up agenda was to finally sort out the appalling rail services across the north of England, for decades starved of real investment and instead tossed measly patch-up repairs.
Untouched
Not for us a glittering array of wifi-friendly tube trains and lines to choose from.
Nor a sparkly new east-to-west Crossrail system.
Nor, as it’s coming soon, a north-tosouth Crossrail system, too.
While the ground beneath London increasingly resembles a chunk of Gorgonzola, the grounds up north remain as solid – and untouched – as ever.
No sooner had he got into office, the Prime Minister started to backpedal on the northern bit of the HS2 line, because obviously the south urgently needs more railway services than we do.
And the result is Monday, when it took me and the missus almost a working day in travel just for a round trip of 44 miles.
It didn’t help that the community hospital we were attending was in the middle of nowhere, tucked onto the edge of Shotton itself, and, the way our cabbie took us, accessible only by a single lane country road.
After our three trains to get near it, we discovered there is no actual bus route to the hospital, either. So, a cab it was. Then, after a 90-minute appointment with some brilliant NHS specialists, we again took a taxi to the station and waited.
Madness
And waited. We’d arrived back at the station just before 2pm, thinking we had twenty minutes to wait, but it turned out to be an hour-and-a-half.
Yes, they’re not even on the hour, never mind the half-hour.
As Shotton is within spitting distance of Chester, Manchester and Liverpool, this is madness.
Worse still, the train we waited for would eventually land at Birmingham International.
God help you if you were on that journey.
Before Boris starts gun-boating the Channel migrants, or shuts down the BBC, or chucks yet more billions for the NHS to swallow with a hearty follow up belch, he needs to start on the trains.
Not last week. Not in ten years’ time. Not as part of a grand plan full of fancy words but no action.
Just get the f**king railways sorted, like every single politician in my lifetime has promised.
How hard can it be?