So you're telling me the drivers have gone and told Joe Public their reasons for their action?
Majority of FCC customers are oblivious. If I were not a rail enthusiast I wouldn't know either.
In an ideal world, the customers would boycott FCC. In Bedfordshire there is the ECML, WCML and MML. I know In reality that'd never happen but it would be nice if they made the effort.
Ha Ha! I have just laughed my f***ing head off at your last comment.
Try flagging down an EMT Meridian at Leagrave in the morning. For local passengers there are no alternatives. I could drive the 15 miles or so to Leighton Buzzard and pay a King's ransom to park there or the ten miles in the opposite direction to Arlesey and do the same thing. One choice is still FCC and the other, London Midland is only marginally less appalling. I could drive to Milton Keynes and try to squeeze onto a Virgin Train, but I'd rather walk the ten minutes to my local Thameslink station and save a few polar bears in the process.
FCC already has my £4,000 for this year's legalised extortion it likes to call an annual season ticket and couldn't give a stuff about its "customers" or staff by the looks of it. The reason Sir Moir Lockhead was able to give himself a fat pay rise this year and pay the shareholders 10% was that First Grope has been given a series of highly profitable monopolies on FCC, FGW and all the trains in Scotland (plus half the buses).
If the amount that each rail franchise raises in profit over and above the generous subsidy I already pay as a taxpayer isn't enough, then the keys can be handed back just like GNER and Nat Ex have done with the ECML.
Reality is that the BR monopoly has been replaced by a series of corporate monopolies, no, make that a cartel of transport companies.
The drivers have been strung along and are doing the only thing they can do short of a strike. Lord Adonis or whoever the Secretary of State for Transport is this week needs to drag Sir Moir into a his office and kick his backside. With DfT stipulating which trains must run where and at what time as well as controlling the purse strings that control who gets new trains and who gets the cast-offs, the railways are effectively Nationalised, its just that any money sloshing around the system is soaked up by corporate lawyers arguing over who was at fault for the last delay and how to put together the cheapest franchise bid for the next available cash cow (sorry I meant franchise).
FCC has an on-line "Meet the Directors" coming up in December via its flashy website and I heartily recommend everyone to post as many questions as possible about this topic until the management get it into their thick heads that they're a SERVICE INDUSTRY.
