I wish you well, but this is First group - notorious for this sort of thing.
Vicky, thanks, yes ... it was interesting to see how First won the franchise with a huge bid to pay the government 1.1 billion pounds over 10 years taken from profits, the within days were taking their begging bowl around to all the County Councils in the area to discuss the funding of services that they felt might be uneconomic. It was also interesting to learn how certain high level officials at the Department for Transport, who awarded the franchise, are former directors or Great Western. Of course, there's plenty of cases of Poacher turned Gamekeeper that work out, but it does require a transparancy that I've not seen. First point at the DfT as the ultimate decison maker, and the DfT tell us that First are perfectly free to run extra trains. Our local county council tell us that - although the line is of high importance in their local transport plan - they can't actually afford to put any money in whilst approving a bypass for the town of Westbury along the rail route, which will pour all the more traffic through bottlenecks just along that road.
Please excuse the rant.
What WAS encouraging was to listen to Chris Grayling, the man who'll be the Minister for Transport if the Conservatives win the next election, speaking very strongly, and on the record, on behalf of the service. And to speak with our own MP, a former transport minister in Scotland and hear of activities both behind and in front of the scenes that he's undertaking on our behalf.
I'm making plans, personally, to ensure that my work doesn't suffer if we loose the train. I'm not making any rash claims like "I'll eat my hat if we don't win" because there's a strong chance I would end up having to do so. But we do have a superb case, we do have the moral high ground, we do have support from right across the political spectrum .... and it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that we'll end up with something rather better than what we're being told is all we can have at the moment.
Oops - rant mode off [/rant]
If anyone's missed it -
http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/
