There was a large headline in yesterday's Metro which ran 'Commuter trains like Wild West', the words it seems of a knight of the realm, one Sir Peter Hendy, a senior servant from Transport for London. The short piece which followed, occupying rather less space than the headline, included further examples of the knight's intemperate style, complete with expletives.
I then find this morning that yesterday's Guardian carried the same story, albeit with ratio of headline to copy reversed. So presumably the knight has not been misrepresented.
First, from what I know of commuter trains, and having used them for getting on for thirty years or so, they are not the wild west. They are sometimes crowded, which one must expect as long as there are rush hours, but I nearly always got a seat and they nearly always ran on time. OK, so there were things which I moaned about, but in the round the service (mainly Southwest trains) was OK.
Second, I do not care for senior public servants speaking out in this crude way. They are not affordables from sink estate running on about how 'they', whoever they might be, should do something about it. And one might have thought one could expect a rather better example from a graduate of Latymer Upper School and the University of Leeds.
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