egafd.com

Yes, after many years of playing with his train set it seems like the grinning oaf has lost his west coast franchise, you almost feel sorry for him don't you, he is now threatning not to play with trains anymore..

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Yes, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh...

Good riddance to Mr Beardy, he must be in a state of shock after being shamelessly brown nosed for 13 years by New Labour, who's stock reply to any of his requests was, "We like to say yes!", to find himself booted out on his backside!

"Where's that arse licker Tony Blair when ya need 'im! I made that tosser, da'ya hear me? I made 'im, 'e woz a nobody till I shook 'is miserable hand, I want his head on a plate and that cunt Gordon Brown's as well, yeah bring me both their heads on a platter!!"

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Obviously you must all live Darn Sarf and have no experience of Virgin Trains. I use them a lot for business and they are clean, punctual and far better than First whose carriages are cramped, have little luggage space and always look grubby.

You are, of course, 100% correct Mr Valleywater.

First Great Western got so bad that passengers organised a fare strike and refused to fork out for their overpriced standing around. It had the reputation of being one of the worst train companies in the UK.

Here's a link from that highly esteemed newspaper, the Daily Mail so it must be 100% true!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... otest.html

Scotrail which is also run by First has had a similar reputation.

As Branson pointed out the last couple of times they had lost bids prior to the West Coast Line one, the companies which won by producing reduced price bids, went kaput.

And apparently the First bid is based on being profitable primarily because they think they can greatly increase capacity on the line during the length of the franchise up to the mid 2020's. Someone should tell Justine Greening that because the main reason HS2 is being built is because the rail network is "close to capacity".

"Obviously you must all live Darn Sarf and have no experience of Virgin Trains. I use them a lot for business and they are clean, punctual and far better than First whose carriages are cramped, have little luggage space and always look grubby."

I have never travelled by train in this country Arginald, so I'll take your word for it, that was not my point, It seemed incredulious to Branson that someone else should be given the chance to run the service, then threatning to spit your dummy out and give up trains altogether. Virgin trains as with so many other Virgin brands are only part owned by him anyway, I believe he owns 49% and stagecoach own the rest. I recall him bidding for the lottery and couldn't believe he lost out to Camelot, well, they don't seem to have made a bad job do they. Branson is style over substance in my humble opinion, lets see what happens with Northern Rock.

Here is some more compelling reading about the subject of Britain's Favourite tycoon..

When the Cross-country franchise was renewed a few years ago I thought taking it off Virgin was good but now think maybe it would have been better if they had retained control.
While Virgin were in control ticket prices rose well above inflation and off-peak restrictions increased. Also Virgin replaced the admittedly old trains of 6+ spacious coaches with mainly 4 coach trains that are cramped as well as significantly fewer seats so profit before passengers.

However under Arriva the fares have continued to outstrip inflation and off-peak ticket restrictions have been further increased but they have not lengthened trains nor added additional trains. Of course if Virgin had continued they might have done the same and more.

Take one journey of about 140 miles I occasionally make. An off-peak return ticket priced by Cross-country is just under ?75. However by buying 3 separate tickets where each part is priced by another operator the total is just over ?47. Remember this for tickets bought immediately before travelling to use on the same Cross-country operated through train.
If I was to book in advance and commit to specific trains I could probably get an even bigger saving.

I found when on holiday some of First's fares in Devon and Cornwall are relative cheap.
Only time will tell how they run the West Coast line.

sparky wrote:

However by buying 3 separate tickets where each part is
> priced by another operator the total is just over ?47. Remember
> this for tickets bought immediately before travelling to use on
> the same Cross-country operated through train.
> If I was to book in advance and commit to specific trains I
> could probably get an even bigger saving.

There's an app for that, on iPhone, it's called Tickety Split, don't know if its available on other devices. Tell it your start and end point, and it works out if split ticketing is cheaper for you.

I'm no great supporter of Branson but in this case he is talking sense.

The link below describes the whole sorry story of GNER bidding the most for the East Coast contract back in 2005 to renew their franchise and going bust shortly after.

Their replacement, National Express, as GNER did, made all the promises about passenger number increases that First have. They lost ?22 million in a six month period and basically did a runner.

East Coast which currently runs the route is owned by the Department of Transport.

In the above examples, any seeming advantage of getting more dosh from the train companies was more than wiped out by them going kaput. It's the old story - offshore the profits, nationalise the losses.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... ffers.html