Tube Sleeping in Jobs Bloodbath

The Evening Standard must pray for days when they can inflict dramatic doom & gloom on the London Underground. British Telecom cutting 10,000 jobs over the next year is bad, but is it really a "bloodbath"?


Lucky that some people can still sleep through such murderous times. Just a short while after seeing the gory headline, and changing lines, I saw a guy flat out on the Tube.


At least he had the sense to use his evening paper as a seat protector rather than actually read it.

Pants in St Pancras

New York started No Pants Subway Day, but today at St Pancras station we'll have Pants Day or a Pant Flash. Hundreds of people will brave the weather to make the largest gathering of people wearing underpants. It kicks off at 9.30am this morning (Thursday 13th November) at The Betjeman Arms, a pub inside the new St Pancras International railway station, on the Upper Concourse.


You get a free pairs of kecks (sadly not the Animals on the London Underground underpants above) if you join in and a shot of whisky to keep you warm.

I'd be surprised if people travel on the Tube in their underpants as it is a bit nippy today.


Full details of how to take part, plus the inevitable photo shoot at 10.30am are on the Pants to Poverty blog.

Perhaps this does mean we'll be getting closer to the first No Pants Tube Ride next year. It's just unfortunate that pants in the US and pants in the UK have different meanings as a No Pants Tube Ride would either lead to some serious chafing with people going commando. Or some arrests for indecency - if you really wanted to display yourself properly.

UPDATE - It's official the Pants people are record breakers - see the video on CNN!

Tourism Minister apologises for London Transport Delays

Whenever people discover that I blog about the Tube, it gives them the opportunity to tell me their London Underground woes. On Monday night, while I was at bloggers rum cocktail tasting, one of the guys from Elements 8 said "Oh my God, the Olympics is going to be embarrassing. How are we going to cope? Wouldn't the money be better spent elsewhere? Have you blogged about that?"


Obviously I had blogged about 2012 & london transport (a number of times) and although it's still several years away, I currently have no more confidence in the system making us proud. Particularly with the recent mess at this week's World Travel Market. Yesterday, Tourism Minister Barbara Follett, issued an apology after problems with the DLR and heavy congestion on the buses delayed the arrival of 50,000 people attending the largest travel and tourism trade show in the world. This is being held at ExCel in East London which is an Olympics venue.

Follett said "I apologise on behalf of the Government for the difficult journey that you have had for the two days reaching here. The weather and transport system can be variable in this country."

The weather is variable in many other countries and their transport system doesn't have major delays whenever there's some heavy rain. It's not as rain is something unusual in the UK.

John Probyn, the festival director at Live Nation, the country's biggest events promoter, told The Times that London's transport system had an awful international reputation and felt it was getting worse. "For a major city, it's so frustrating in London sometimes. London Underground do try really hard but they are not allowed to get creative with their scheduling [for improvement works]. It's not good enough. You go to New York or Singapore and you can go anywhere you want, any time of the day."

I think that's going to surprise most visitors to London in 2012, the fact that the Tube doesn't run 24 hours or at least for much after 12.30am. When I was in New York recently, I saw loads of engineering and repair work being carried out late at night, and the subway ran perfectly well while this was going on.


Maybe I'll be proved wrong and the London Underground will run like clockwork in the summer of 2012. There'll be no threat of Tube strikes, it won't be hot, stuffy and overcrowded, we won't have cartoon giant fans as air conditioning and everyone will get to the games on time. But then again pigs might fly.

Tube Strikes planned for November 16th

Just when you thought we hadn't had any threats of industrial action on the London Underground for a while, RMT have announced two 36 hour strikes.

After a 21 to two majority, 25 RMT "shift testers" responsible for fault-finding and maintaining the electrical supply to the Tube will not book for turns. That's "unless there is a direct and imminent danger to human life." If it's danger to pigeon or rat life, I guess they'll stay on strike.


On the RMT site union leader Bob Crow said "Shift testers at EDF Energy Powerlink are seeking nothing more than parity with their day-work colleagues, who some time ago received a £3,000 rise in exchange for flexibility in signing on and off. Shift testers have also displayed flexibility and have seen their work-life balance turned upside down by the change from 10-hour days and 14-hour nights to a 12-hour shift system."

If the pay agreement is not reached, this strike by 25 staff, has the potential to shut down large sections of the London Underground. The workers are planning to stop working from midnight on Sunday November 16th 2008 for 36 hours and again from Sunday December 7th.

Watch this space and the news for further updates.

Valuing the past - Vintage Railway Posters

On Saturday I visited the Antiquarian Book Fair at Chelsea Old Town Hall. Mainly to marvel at the old books on display, and also to see if I had any unexpected hidden gems on my own bookshelves. Turns out that some of the first editions I bought for ten quid are now worth about £50, but I was amazed at the value put on some posters & maps:


Sadly we couldn't take photos inside but there was an absolutely beautiful map of the District Line from 1898. It had hard covers & was printed on that hard wearing old map paper (the name of which completely escapes me) - that the very old Ordnance Survey maps were printed on. I was pretty scared to unfold it. It was being sold for £175 which you might think quite expensive for a London Underground map.

However, just round the corner I saw a signed first edition of District and Circle a collection of poems by Seamus Heaney which was first published in 2006. The title poem is about a journey on the District and Circle Lines. This was valued at £300. I think this is a huge amount of money in comparison. Clearly I would be rubbish at valuation.

Do you think you'd be any better? I took some pictures of some old British railway posters from the Vintage Travel Posters catalogue pictured above. As a guide, the lovely poster for National Railways of Mexico below is from 1950 and is £550.


The posters below are from 1922 to 1960 and promote the delights of travelling by rail to Southend; Greatstone by the world's smallest public railway (which I visited a few years ago); an exotic looking Cleethorpes; Portcawl (which has everything including mermaids) and Sunny Rhyl, where donkey hugging means a healthy happy holiday.






See if you can guess the price of some the posters. No prizes, but just the satisfaction of knowing whether you'd be able to give the Antiques Roadshow guys a run for their money.