Here’s how to solve the national transport crisis. Just stay at home
THE transport system in this country is now so completely useless it’d be easier to get around in space.
On Tuesday, I had to record a voiceover for the next series of Clarkson’s Farm, which meant I had to be in London, 70 miles away, at 11am.
I set off at 8.30am and, thanks to road works on the A40, which are due to go on for several years, I was an hour late.
Then I had a meeting in Notting Hill, which was three miles away.
Getting there took more than an hour.
So I was late for that, too.
The following day I had to go to Old Trafford.
And to get there on time, I had to miss the Manchester rush hour, which meant using single-track roads round Altrincham that had grass growing out of them.
On Thursday I was due back in London, but thanks to those A40 roadworks, I thought I’d use the train.
But when I arrived at my local station, I realised straight away that something was wrong.
Because the car park was empty.
Yup, the train drivers were on strike.
A fact mentioned only in an obscure sub menu on GWR’s website.
I therefore had to get a taxi to a station in Oxford, where I boarded something from the 19th century.
It had no legroom, stopped at villages that haven’t been on a map since the time of Edward the Confessor and, bit by bit, picked up everyone in South East England.
It was so crowded, that to prevent suffocation, the lady on next to me suggested we synchronise our breathing.
And then, in London, the Elizabeth Tube line wasn’t working and there were problems too on the Central Line.
And that night, some people were stuck underground for three hours because a wiring board shorted out and Paddington station was closed, which meant you couldn’t get to Heathrow.
Not that you’d want to go to Heathrow, because these days you have to stand around for hours waiting to be examined internally by a security officer who isn’t there, because he’s working from home, and then, when you do get to your gate, you find the flight has been cancelled.
Things can’t be this bad by accident.
No one’s that useless.
So someone must be doing it on purpose.
And I reckon they are.
You pay half your yearly salary to drive into London and what do you get in return?
Traffic lights that are green for such a short period of time, you need a Bugatti Veyron to capitalise on the moment, cycle lanes that no one uses when its raining and a “road closed” sign on every corner.
And when something goes wrong, there’s no sense of urgency to mend it.
Hammersmith Bridge, for example.
That’s going to be shut . . . for ever.
Elsewhere, the motorways are patrolled by Highway Officers who are told that when there’s an incident, the No1 priority is to look after themselves.
No it isn’t.
The No1 priority is to get the bloody road open as quickly as possible.
Time and again, I divert off a shut-down motorway and fumble along lanes so narrow the door mirrors are snapping branches in the hedges.
And why? Because instead of removing the problem that caused the motorway to be shut, the Highway Officer is sitting in his 4×4 having a sandwich.
The Tubes?
Forget it.
If a train comes at all, it’ll crawl along so slowly that if the tectonic plates are moving in the opposite direction, you won’t move at all.
And I can’t even remember a time when the train drivers were at work.
I know their trade union leaders are bonkers but surely to God, they could have had some sense larched into them by now.
Unless of course, no one wants the trains to be back on song and no one wants the roads to be clear.
And no one wants airports to be full of happy families whizzing through without a hassle.
Maybe, someone has worked out that the only way of achieving net zero is to make travel so unbearable that we all choose to stay at home.
Rash bash trash
WHEN inmates at a category C prison in Staffordshire decided to paint a mural of Marcus Rashford, you might imagine all would be well.
But no.
One of the prison guards objected and sued her bosses for religious discrimination.
Is Rashford a racist? It seems unlikely.
He’s a fine footballer and, thanks to his tireless work helping to feed vulnerable children, he’s widely regarded as something of a working-class hero.
So what’s the problem?
Well, it turns out that Rashford was once photographed with a rapper called Wiley, who is apparently anti-Semitic.
And it was this picture that upset the guard.
That’s madness.
The late Queen was once photographed with Rolf Harris.
That didn’t make her a cartoonist.
Mercifully, a judge threw the case out.
Rightfully so.
Global warming appears a damp squib
THINK it’s been a bit wet lately?
You’re right.
Being a bit of a bore, I monitor rainfall these days and 2023 is well on its way to being a record- breaker.
And to think they promised us global warming.
I hear less’o Lisa
FOR 15 years, I’ve struggled to hear what people are saying.
Which is especially embarrassing when I’m hosting Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the contestant is a bit of a mumbler.
It’s also annoying when I can’t hear what someone’s saying, and they get cross.
Why? If a blind person momentarily inconveniences you by taking a little longer than usual to cross the road, you don’t lean out of the window and tell him to get an effing move on.
Whatever, I now have hearing aids and I must say that they’re pretty brilliant.
I can understand what Joaquim Phoenix says.
I can hear birds singing.
And I can change the settings via an app so that they drown out background noise in a pub.
I can even use them via Bluetooth to have phone conversations.
But the best thing is that I can filter out the Irish accent so that when my Dubliner girlfriend Lisa asks me to put the bins out, I hear nothing at all.
Beef on cow show
LAST week, Channel 4 transmitted a programme in which the host basically said that if you eat beef something or other terrible will happen.
I have no problem with that.
I may not have agreed with his views, but he’s perfectly entitled to express them.
And because this was Channel 4, no one was listening anyway.
What I do object to however, is his workings out.
They were wrong.
Sure, if you eat meat from a cow that’s been force fed with chemicals and reared in a factory in Texas, it’s probably not great for the environment.
But British cows stand around all day turning the grass they eat into natural, fully organic fertiliser.
We need big animals like that to keep the soil healthy.
So eating beef is actually good for the environment.
Bear that in mind when you sit down tomorrow for your roast.
Or you stop off tonight for a restorative Maccy D.
You’re being a better Greta.