Walkouts are not without humour
PERSONALLY speaking, I have found the rail strike inconvenient.
I wished to go to Macclesfield on June 22, a no-strike day, and found London Northwestern Railway (LNR) had decided to give us a no-train day.
The Crewe-stokebirmingham service was taken off from Tuesday to Saturday, as was their Trent Valley service to London.
At my local station all I could find was a poster with a website and a QR code.
The website did not give information of any sort about the service calling at Stone and Stoke-on Trent. Without a smartphone the QR code was not much use to me either. LNR are not keen on anything traditional like timetables on posters or in
booklets, which can be very annoying.
But the other amusing diversion provided by the rail strike has been watching the interviews in which Mick Lynch, the General Secretary of RMT, has dealt with illinformed presenters and politicians.
After seeing off Richard Madeley and Kay Burley,
Stoke North MP Jonathan Gullis did not stand a chance. At least Mr Gullis will be better known to the public after several compilations of the Lynch interviews quickly appeared, including the sentence: “I think Jonathan should apologise for talking nonsense.”
Perhaps Mr Gullis would be better advised to challenge LNR on why they made so little effort to offer any useful service to North Staffordshire rail users. He might also look at the fact that by the end of the year timetable changes approved by LNR will reduce connections available to rail users at the Kidsgrove and Longport stations in his constituency. And can any reader tell me if the QR code tells me anything that would have been useful to know?
JONATHAN HEAL STONE