Will you be attempting to travel by train this Easter?

Patrick old chap, when a service or facility is oversubscribed, we British just form a jolly old queue and wait for our turn.

May of our road users will be familiar with this concept, not least those who, at peak times or holidays, use the Cirencester to Gloucester dual cabbageway (A417) or any of our other linear car parks (aka “Motorways”) .

Patrick S’s concerns seemed to be mainly to do with possible overcrowding rather than disruption due to engineering work so, as he managed to bag himself a seat with a table [and hopefully with free wi-fi and a power socket], I hope he had a pleasant journey. It might have been possible to get a cheaper fare with advance booking but surely he bought a return ticket so is getting three-and-a-half hours of pleasant train travel for his £50. Of course he could have flown from an airport within an hour of London to another one a similar timescale from a continental city for the same price but he wanted to be with his family and there is a price on that. I doubt he will be out of pocket in the end and he might have saved time overall. Perhaps he would have preferred the security checks that come with air travel?

Public holidays concentrate a need for high volume travel. Those who travel know that, so why complain about it – they are the ones causing the congestion. Take a day’s holiday and beat the crowds.

Essential maintenance work is carried out at holiday times to avoid disruption to commuters when we’re all going to work – so I understand. It has to be done at sometime. “Journey times will be longer”; we are seemingly obsessed with time. Does it really matter if we take an extra half hour or so to reach our destination on a holiday? Plan for it and read another couple of chapters. In many cases it seems a matter of principle to complain if something goes a little wrong. A culture I don’t like. We all of us foul up in our jobs at some times; do we relish someone sitting on our shoulder ready to pounce and penalise us, or do we learn from it and do better next time?

Which? seems to just stop at petitions with “something must be done” – but no proposals as to what. That seems like either a lack of knowledge, lack of expertise to pursue a constructive investigation, or just headline-grabbing in a lazy way. We have a “Whirlpool must recall all defective driers” – exactly how and what will be achieved?

Come on Which? People in these Convos try to make positive suggestions as to how we can improve pollution from cars, make energy prices fairer, establish a product recall system that might work, deal with unarranged overdrafts………….. Isn’t it time you took some notice and did more groundwork to formulate realistic and constructive approaches to some of these consumer problems? Or get contributors to work with you and tap into their experience? Something must be done…………………….:-)

I agree with you malcolm but what really is Which ?- a independent pressure group ?- A type of NGO – a front for HMG to “try out ” future policy decisions ?- a “pro business ” group helping them to get public acceptance for their business operations ? The word “charity ” obviously means something different nowadays to when it used to be described to charitable causes like the Salvation Army who help every person , great or small and do a fine job , in my opinion , like the Battersea Dogs+Cats home. Now many “charities ” are hard-nosed businesses with entrepreneurs getting in on the act like – the world likes cats , so cat “charities ” have suddenly hit our screens straight out of the American advertising industry -quote- we never miss a chance –to make money. Like you I have an “executive mind ” I like to get things done .

“Which? Policy

The Which? mission is to make individuals as powerful as the organisations they have to deal with in their daily lives. We identify where consumers are experiencing problems, and through programmes of research, debate and consumer dialogue we develop effective, practical policy solutions.”

http://www.which.co.uk/about-which/which-policy/

Strangely it makes no mention here (that I can see) of testing products – a substantial pert of its work, and appeal to consumers.

Its aims (plus testing) are laudable and what we need, but it needs to do more than complain and identify weaknesses; in my view it need to put constructive, practical and realistic proposals to those who can make changes. Whirlpool was a total failure of action.

However, sorry for going off-topic. Lets hope most of those who travelled by train arrived at their destinations without too much hassle.

I won’t go on about it here but I wish we could have a good discussion on the whole world of charities and how they operate.

Just for information, registered charities in the UK have to have at least one of three broad purposes: propagation of religious knowledge, education, or (loosely) welfare. There are also eleemosynary charities which are based on the giving of alms [the relief of poverty]. Which?’s charitable status derives from its educational purpose.

Which? is independent, and not an arm of government or a front for business [although it might appear like that sometimes]. But it is so big and involved in such a wide range of activities that it does need highly-qualified and competent executive leadership, good management, and talented staff. Those are not available on the economy shelf so members and subscribers need to keep an eye on it and hold it to account. We don’t give donations to Which? as we would to a racing tortoise rescue centre and leave it to the charity to spend it how it likes within its constitution; we have legitimate expectations and entitlements in return for our subscriptions.

John Ward – I have obviously had concerns about the Consumers’ Association and its commerical persona but I have for the past four years been looking at charities generally and most importantly the ones that “go wrong”.

I have made submissions to the Charity Commission and my 6 pge submission to the House of Lords Committee on Charities was published as part of the Report released last month.

You can get daily emails from Third Sector and Civil Society which deal with the charity scene.
The Charity Commission do send me emails announcing various things as this week putting more pressure on auditors to report Governance failings such as conflicts of interest. Also email on charities now subject to investigation or production of s report. That some charities pay 90% to a commercial fundraising company is a continuing scandal.

P.S. Your penultimate paragraph I think misrepresents matters. The nine man executive Board of the National Trust together earn less than the top three of Which?/CA. Bearing in mind NT has 6 times the members, ten times the staff, and over 4 times the income one might feel that there is a problem with our charity paying £480,000+ to its CEO.

As a rider I would say Which?/CA does have talented staff and of course does some good stuff. However when you see 5 members of staff deployed making a video on an electric unicycle costing £990 which is not legal in the UK you may take a view the plot has been lost.

I have no idea if they were loaned the two machines [likely] or bought them but what a waste of time, and effort, and did nothing for the image of the organisation judging by the comments on YouTube.

I was reading a good article on Mother Earth on sharpening garden tools which made me think that Which? surely should enable itself as the go to place for subscribers for anything. In this instance subscribers could be directed to the article and Which? could link to sharpening implements available in the UK.

Incidentally Which?’s advice ” How can I keep my kitchen knife sharp? Most plain-edged knives need sharpening to maintain a safe, sharp cutting edge. The secret is to sharpen little and often.” rather leaves a definition of “often” out of the advice. One of my books claims two onions diced is sufficient for a knife to dull.

which.co.uk/reviews/kitchen-knives/article/kitchen-knives/your-kitchen-knife-questions-answered – Which?

I agree with your comments, Patrick but do not think it would be right to pursue this discussion in the middle of this Conversation. I wished to take a more general view, from the overall perspective of consumers’ interests in charities as supporters or beneficiaries, and not focus on Which? or on picking faults with specific organisations.

According to reports (PEYE) smart card flexible ticketing is currently dead in the water. DfT have spent £45M developing it for the 11 south east franchises but, because of the relatively short length of franchises, the companies are unwilling to invest in the equipment. However, it is in use – Essex to London Fenchurch St.

It’s a vacuous statement, to be sure, but Which? has fallen into the trap of assuming what happens in the SE is the standard across the UK, which it isn’t. Virgin, for instance, has never performed less than perfectly in my experience, but I do understand that some of Southern’s passengers may have cause for complaint. So I would not sign the petition, since I have no cause for dissatisfaction.

As a simple example, during my day out from Gloucester to Worcester this week, both outward and return trains ran on time, the carriages were not at all crowded and the seats were clean and in as new condition.

That’s absolutely disgraceful, Derek. Whatever has happened to service and standards? I’ve had exactly the same experience on Chiltern Line. Maybe we should survey people to see how many have had such service and see what can be done about it?

” Which?’s official opinion on the railways is that “Our railways are plagued by delays, cancellations, constant overcrowding and hideous train conditions“. ”

I suspect this is based on their personal experience which is limited to commuting in and out of London.

Gosh, . . . thanks Lauren: I wrote that so long ago I had forgotten about it. I cannot fault the survey responses but the extrapolation and interpretation seemed to veer on the side of sensational. Let me be a bit sensational too:

Why should national rail commuters expect their journeys to be any more comfortable and uncrowded than London Underground journeys? And it’s only because they have a public timetable that they know whether their train is late or not! tube trains do not run according to a public timetable and people don’t fret over the odd delay. If a train delay is repetitive then the timetable is wrong.

I think there is a pessimism bias in passenger transport surveys but it is impossible to put a statistical value on it so we have to make up our own minds on how we interpret them. I have a lot of sympathy for commuters but my perspective differs from theirs.

London Transport does run to a very strict underground timetable, partly ensuring that trains do not have to stop in tunnels. There have been times when I’ve heard announcements of a train being cancelled or late, but because they are normally so frequent it really makes little difference.

Did Lauren’s train get delayed over Easter so has only just got back into the office?

Commuters, like people who choose to live near airports, know the game, Nothing will improve until we stagger working hours and move businesses out of heavily-populated towns and cities so commuting can be reduced. That requires longer-term planning, not something 5 year governments seem to want to tackle.

Agreed, Lauren. It happens on the roads, on ferries, and in the air as well. Until we can teleport ourselves, I tend to go along with Malcolm’s outlook.

The London Underground certainly runs to a timetable [the working timetable] but it is not made publicly available so passengers are unaware of it. The Metropolitan and District lines were the last to have timetables displayed on the platforms; now, so far as the travelling public are concerned, they operate on a service interval basis and inter-station timing information. The national rail services are much more complex [with many more interconnexions and junctions where train presentation in the correct order is essential] which means that the train operating companies are under more pressure and where one small delay has knock-on effects over a whole peak hour service. As I said earlier, half the problems are cause by Network Rail but the train companies get it in the neck; if we can achieve automatic delay-repay at least the companies will be less able to profit from NR-attributable delays by claiming more in compensation than they pay out to passengers.

A lot of Which?’s spite is directed at the train operating companies but many of the problems are due to track faults, signalling failures, and other infrastructure problems which are Network Rail’s responsibility. And then there are suicides, and people who crash into level crossing gates, or jump down onto the tracks to retrieve their mobile phone.