Irritations and ideas (Trains / Global Warming)

Hello everybody welcome to my 1st blog on things that irritate me, ideas I have and stuff that I just want to get off my chest.

Trains

First things first. The TRAINS! I don’t know if anyone else gets the One Great Eastern trains at all but great is probably the overstatement of the century saying they are great is like saying Rik Waller is average size. I have to pay £29.20 per week for these trains. Here is a line from the frontpage of their website ‘At 'one', we pride ourselves in the service we offer to our customers.’ Is this some kind of joke? My train is not even painted. It is a metal shell and those that are painted. Are painted with white primer that’s it. They are not air conditioned. The seats are falling apart and they are always late. My brother goes to work on the C2C. He pays the same money I do and the difference in the trains is like comparing Ian Dowie to David Beckham.
And what about the reasons they come up with for delays! If it’s hot then it’s too hot and the tracks have warped. If it rains we get power failures. In the autumn we get leaves on the line. In the winter its snow. The only condition the trains can run in is like 50-60 degrees overcast but not raining that’s perfect. Oh but then we are delayed due to shortage of staff of lack of trains or carriages. Can someone please tell me how this happens? There were enough trains yesterday where have they all gone? We know that have not gone go in to get the seats fixed or air con added or to be painted. You don’t go to the airport and they tell you sorry your flight is cancelled coz we don’t have enough planes. Or sorry we can’t find a pilot.
And there then is the underground. My god if they tell me that they are pleased to announce a good service one more time i'm going to scream. And they say it with such pride like they have achieved something. NO NO NO a good service is the minimum service that you should be supplying us with. It is the service that we are paying good money for. You go to the airport. And they announce only the planes that are delayed. They don’t sit there saying we are please to announce that the flight you paid for that is scheduled to leave at 5pm will leave at 5pm. They just don’t say anything coz that’s what we expect to happen. And if a plane is delayed an hour or so, I can understand that. Hundreds of planes all owned by different companies weighing tones flying in confined spaces you can see why there are problems. But with the underground I don’t really see that much of an issue.

Global Warming

This is my new number 1 irritation. Global warming. Save the planet stop the co2. Every news broadcast every paper everyday. Please just stop. Everyone going round saying oh my good the ice is melting the polar bears how will they survive? WELL!! I’m pretty sure that polar bears have been around for over 100 years and it has been hotter before there has been less ice than this before and they survived then, they will survive now.
So now the government must take action. Must help to reduce our co2 emissions. How do they do this? By taxing us more. How silly of me to think there is another way. Think back to when you were a child. When I was young I used to have a dummy. To stop be from using my dummy my mum told me that if I lasted the night without it then I could pick a sweet from the sweet tin to eat for every night that I made it. And you know what I never used that dummy again. And that just goes to prove my point. Had my mum said for every night that you use your dummy you are going to get a smack them yes I would probably still have stopped using it but not because I wanted to but because I did not have a choice.
So if the government wants us to stop using so much power or petrol etc then for god sake give us an option. You can’t say cars pollute too much, petrol is bad so we are going to put ‘Green Tax’ on petrol. I don’t care what my car runs on as long as it runs. Give me another option. Don’t just say ill have to pay more. How does paying more for something make it better for the environment? Extra fuel charges for flights. People are always going to go on holiday so paying a bit more is not going to work is it they will just spend £50 less on food or clothes over the year to pay for the extra cost. How does that help the environment?
So how do all the big companies become carbon neutral? They use carbon offsetting. So I looked into this. And guess what to offset all the carbon used by the average American which is far higher than then average person is the UK is a whopping $90! Yes $90, £45. That’s it. So why are we paying £50 extra just for 1 flight. If you look at everything that is spozed to be for the environment such as the congestion charging zone. Fuel surcharges, extra tax on petrol. I can pay £45 and I am carbon neutral. If I pay £90 not only am I neutral I am cancelling out 1 other person as well. So does this mean that I don’t have to pay the tax on petrol of the extra tax on flights or the congestion charge? Yea right. Lets not be fooled here this is all the money making scheme the government care about as much for the environment as you do about what I had for breakfast. Although you would pretend to care about what I had for breakfast if you would make millions and millions of pound out of it.


NEXT WEEK. MY VIEWS ON THE SMOKING BAN.