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.'

Rugby League teams to receive 2 extra players under Levelling Up plans

Following the sad news that HS2 will stop at Watford Gap Rishi Sunak is to announce a bold new plan to level up the North by providing an additional two players per rugby team.

‘Look, we know that places with fifteen players per rugby team do well and places with only thirteen are grim hellholes with, you know, Greggs pasty shops and women pushing prams in their pyjamas. We’re going to transform these towns with twenty seven hundred billion pounds of Government money to provide two extra players per team’.

Economists agree that rugby union towns are more prosperous than league towns so the plan is economically valid, though some have questioned whether twenty seven hundred billion is an actual number.

Labour would like to announce a plan to level up the North but every time they say something Fiona Bruce asks them for a fully costed proposal, which kills the mood somewhat.

image from pixabay

How Great Britain was built, the HS2 way

'Dear Druids,

Thank you for choosing HS2 to provide all your engineering and logistical solutions for the building of Stonehenge.

'Unfortunately, after spending 40 billion sestertii and taking the best part of two centuries, we have not been able to complete the delivery of 3,000 tons of blue stones from the Welsh Mountains all the way to Wiltshire, and have instead dumped them in a field outside Chepstow.

'Give us another 100 billion sestertii and 3,500 years, and we may think about finishing the job.

'Not promising anything, mind.'

'Dear Mr Isambard Kingdom Brunel,

'We at HS2 are delighted at having failed to build your design for the world's first Suspension Bridge across the River Avon at Bristol.

'We decided it would be unfeasible to extend the structure across the entire span of the Avon Gorge, meaning that it is now a weird type of pier - off which stagecoaches and hay carts take terrifying falls.

'We also felt it was unfeasible to extend the voyage of your revolutionary new steamship, the SS Great Britain, all the way across the Atlantic - so we let it sink somewhere off the Azores.

'But we have to make our money somehow, so we are invoicing you 100 billion florins for this letter.'

'Dear General Eisenhower,

"Thank you for asking HS2 to organise the landing of one million allied troops on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, to end the war in Europe.

'Unfortunately, our estimate of 40 billion dollars was not enough to cover the full cost of this operation. So instead, we landed the one million troops on the Isle of Wight - which is now excellently defended.

'For 100 billion dollars, we can plan an operation to drop atom bombs on Japan, to end the war there. But we can't be bothered to go all the way to Japan. Can we just drop them on Southend, instead?'

Image: TheDigitalArtist - Pixabay

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