TransPennine trains to set off hours ahead of schedule so they won't be quite as shamefully late

'We admit that our record for punctuality is abjectly, toe-curlingly, hog-whimperingly bad,” a TransPennine Express spokeslocomotive told a rail users' meeting in Darlington station sidings.

'However, we are determined to try and make the figures look better, and that is why most our trains will now be setting off some hours before they were due to leave.

'From tomorrow, some 30 or 40% of our services will depart two or three hours earlier than scheduled, and another 20% four hours earlier.

'In that way, our passengers will probably still arrive late at their destinations, but at least we'll be able to say that they got there quicker than if they had walked, or crawled, the entire distance.

'And we may be running some services the previous day, to make up for the dozens of trains we’d cancelled.

“But we can’t say which particular trains will be setting off before their scheduled times of departure, because then we'd have given them a new official departure time - and we’d be right back where we'd started, wouldn’t we?

'Frankly, the best way of working with our new timetable is for all you passengers to turn up at the station approximately six hours before you plan to travel and then grab the first service that trundles your way.

“We realise that waiting six hours for a TransPennine train to appear is pretty much what you’ve been doing all along - but this way, we won’t have to pay out so much in compensation to you for the failings of our pitiful excuse for a railway service.'

Stationery Minister denies there will be a delay in the delivery of HB2 pencils

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Customs officer explains why he believes the government is delaying applying import checks

Checks on imports are required to ensure goods entering a nation meet the required safety standards and any taxation due on them gets paid. Since Britain left the EU, however, no such checks have been applied and a date for implementation of import checks has been pushed back further.

Newsbiscuit asked HMRC to explain why the government appears reluctant to apply the checks and was told it's complicated.

'We have to work within the letter of the law,' explained a customs officer. 'The rules say we shouldn't allow anything rotten or harmful to enter Britain, so technically, if the government told us that checks needed to be applied, it would mean we would have to bar Tory MPs from returning from their holidays. With a bit of luck, the next government will insist we start checks asap.'