Archive for April, 2010
A rail passenger from Boreham Wood has been jailed for five months after racially abusing a First Capital Connect inspector.
Zimbabwae born Hilton Materke was working as a Revenue Inspector at the time of the incident at Elstree and Borehamwood station.
Charles Law (pictured left) of Stratfield Road was found gulity of Racially-aggravated assault.
PFAS belives that this mans behaviour against a member of rail staff doing his job in accordence with the rules, is totally unacceptable. This man was also convicted of the same offence at the same station some months previous. PFAS hopes that FCC will seek to gain an ASBO to ban this male from any FCC stations and trains upon his release.
We have asked British Transport Police and FCC to comment.
Arriva the transport operator with it’s fingers in many pies including Arriva Cross Country, Arriva Trains Wales and many local bus operators is to be taken over by Deutsche Bahn in a deal worth £1.6billion. It is the third biggest bus operator behind FirstGroup and Stagecoach.
DB is owned by the German State. DB recently took over EW&S railways, Chiltern Railways and has stakes in many other operators, including London Overground and the Tyne and Wear Metro.
It was rumoured that SNCF that was also interested in Arriva, but they pulled out after talks broke down.
Deutsche Bahn said the group would have to sell Arriva’s German rail activities to meet EU anti-trust rules.
DB is also known for it’s agressive cost cutting and anti union policies. It recently cut jobs at freight operator EWS and has frozen non essential recruitment at Chiltern Railways.
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So your the Prime Minister in London and fancy a trip to Stevenage, what do you do? You get a train of course.
“Ah but what a seat as were travelling at peak time Mr Brown?” your special advisor whines at you.
“No problem Jeeves, I’ll just take over a whole carriage on the 09:52 from Kings Cross”.
“But it’s peak time and it will be busy.” he whines back at you.
“Sod them, I’m the PM, I can do what I like.”
So there’s the senario, except it’s not fiticious it’s real (we dramatised the conversation).
Gordon Brown, the current Prime Minister, caught a train from London Kings Cross this morning at 09:52 to go to Stevenage to speak against Tory plans to delete DNA off the biggest database in the world, after 3 Years.
He was joined by a few press reporters and photographers. The Home Secretary was also present.
We have been told that the carriage that was taken over had only a few people in it. The rest of the train was full and standing!
An average train carriage (class 365) has 56 seats excluding First Class (add 12), (if anyone knows the exact number please add a comment below). So did Gordon Brown have a ticket? Did anyone pay for their own ticket? Did First Capital Connect get any money?
What percentage of that carriage was actually full (around 10% full we’ve been told)?
We have also been told that 5 managers were involved in the run up to Gordon Browns visit to Stevenage. Five!! Somedays it’s hard to find just one!!!
PFAS would also like it to be known that we knew about Gordon Browns visit to Stevenage at 18:00 Thursday night and his demands to take over a whole carriage, however in the interests of security we have choosen to publish this story at a later date.
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We reported last year that the local transport operator in Liverpool, dubbed Miseryrail by its passengers, was forcing people to purchase a £3.00 day ticket before they would be allowed onto the train.
We are now advising passengers to purchase tickets in advance, so that Miseryrail will not be able to take advantage of you, and rip you off. Train fares for that particular area are one of the worst value in the country based on the rubbish service and trains that are over 40 years old.
You can purchase your tickets in advance for £2.25 single (Aintree to Liverpool Stations), for travel on Saturday 10th April (which is the last day of the Grand National race meeting).
We have E-mailed miseryrail asking them what they intend to do in regards to the policing of the station area and also what they intend to do with regards to ticket sales.
The National Rail strike involving signallers has been called off, for now. Managers at Notwork Rail decided to invoke anti trade union law against the unions instead of sitting down at a table and talking.
The RMT union has vowed to do a re-ballot of workers.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, said: ‘This judgment is an attack on the whole trade union movement and twists the anti-union laws even further in favour of the bosses.
‘Workers fighting for the principle of a safe railway have had the whole weight of the law thrown against them.
‘Our executive will meet this evening with a recommendation for a re-ballot. Our fight for safe working practices on Britain’s railways goes on.’
However the RMT’s 12,000 Notwork Rail maintenance workers, and TSSA’s 800 members working as supervisors, will continue to stage an all-out strike from 06:00 on April 6 to 23:59 on April 9.