So I see HM Government have finally seen sense and terminated National Express's franchise to run the train line from Southend to London Liverpool Street.
And not a moment too soon. National Express have failed on so many levels to deliver a service which could be deemed even vaguely satisfactory. I often can't get a seat on my evening train, while the first class carriages sit completely empty. The filthy carriages are littered with drinks cans and newspapers (most of which are discarded copies of the vile celeb-obsessed propaganda sheet Metro.) The toilets frequently overflow with sewage and toilet paper. The staff, already overworked as a result of staff cutbacks, were offered insultingly low pay rises this year, which led to strike action.
No money whatsoever appears to have been spent on development on the Liverpool Street line since its privatisation. Fare-dodgers walk through the station barriers with impunity. People travel with their feet on the seats, jabbering inanities into their mobile phones in spiteful disregard of the notices asking to respect fellow passengers, knowing that they will never see a ticket inspector. All the while, us regular commuters endure the daily grind by scrabbling for second-class seats with a third-rate provider.
And it's not like I haven't done anything about it. My letters of complaint to NX have been met with insultingly simplistic responses which were clearly cut-and-pasted from standard documents, while my suggestions about abolishing first class and freeing up the space for commuters were carefully sidestepped in their responses to me. Perhaps they thought I was joking.
I predicted that NX wouldn't last the course. There is, actually, a lesson to be learned here - the trains ought never to have been privatised in the first place.
The only real shame here is that National Express's other franchise, c2c, which has an exemplary track record, is also being stripped of its licence; a case of guilt by association, perhaps.
