“How Europe is trying to get people moving by train”

Nov 2, 2022 | In the news

This week I endured, rather than enjoyed, a train journey north and subsequent return. On the way: ‘We apologise for the overcrowding, the previous service was cancelled due to driver shortages’. On the way back: ‘We apologise for the overcrowding, we seem to have lost (sic) five carriages on this service’. Then I heard Greta talking about her love of trains and train journeys. ‘Could you get to Stockholm by train?’ she was asked. ‘Yes, quite easily, from here to Brussels, then to Cologne and Hamburg, then on to Copenhagen… I do love to be on a train’ she said. Is she mad? No, she’s European, travelling on European trains which on which you do not have to employ guerrilla tactics to secure your reserved seat (staff obviously keeping a very low profile in these circumstances); and so there’s a fighting chance that the railways can compete with both air and road travel. In this country, not a hope.  

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“The working-from-home illusion fades”

“The working-from-home illusion fades”

Are workers working from home more or less productive than those catching the 7.02am to London Bridge every day? ‘Probably sitting at home in their bleedin’ jim-jams’, said someone recently of a less-than-helpful call centre employee, the assumption being that, were they surrounded by colleagues and with a manager cracking the whip, he or she would have sorted his energy bill more efficiently.