please empty your brain below
Bravo!

DeDomenici | Homepage | 26.01.24 - 7:12 a.m. | #

Don't worry - it will all be swept away in the new Euston when HS2 gets there - .....oh

Timbo | 26.01.24 - 7:18 a.m. | #

It would help if the alternative was uncompromisingly committed to reversing this, but they seem to believe that what the public want is more of the same, only a different colour. I hope I'm wrong.

Ian | 26.01.24 - 8:07 a.m. | #

One further example of why we should be less confident of the truthfulness of politicians when they tell us how free we are.

Brian | 26.01.24 - 8:11 a.m. | #

DG for PM!

I'm sure you'll get negative comments soon enough, including "keep politics out of it" types, but sometimes Things Need To Be Said.

David F | 26.01.24 - 8:15 a.m. | #

Thanks for setting out your manifesto.
Is there an election looming?

Caroline | 26.01.24 - 8:57 a.m. | #

Brilliantly put DG.

Pamela | 26.01.24 - 9:03 a.m. | #

It is not politics or similar, just the way time and tide march on. A large part of the population run their lives now nose down to a phone screen, fingers constantly flicking output. The old days of yesteryear appear quaint with low profile advertising, but in a few years Mr Orwells Thought Police will probably be amongst us peddling constant subliminal media intrusion and manipulation that will become the accepted norm, unfortunately.

Scrumpy | 26.01.24 - 9:21 a.m. | #

See also: the creeping increase in adverts on the National Rail app.

Anon | 26.01.24 - 9:23 a.m. | #

It’s also a product of the massive leaps forward in LCD technology over recent years, whereby we’ve gone from a fixed maximum screen size to one that’s essentially infinite (and could, if your dreams were sufficiently banal, be wrapped around a giant ball-shaped concert venue). What has ruined Piccadilly Circus from an aesthetic standpoint is now robbing us of actual public service information. It’s not good.

Philip Downer | 26.01.24 - 9:34 a.m. | #

Well said.
Your admirable rant could be supplemented by deploring the way many news sources are tainted by the same broadcasting of their owners' nasty interests and attitudes.

Malcolm of Kent | 26.01.24 - 9:35 a.m. | #

"voters think they want more money in their pockets"

Ah, the old false consciousness argument (rolleyes)

David B | 26.01.24 - 9:49 a.m. | #

Well said!

Colly | 26.01.24 - 10:00 a.m. | #

Absolutely right. Where did it all go wrong? We pay more than ever and get less for it.

Alex McKenna | 26.01.24 - 10:11 a.m. | #

I believe the term for this and numerous similar phenomena is "enshittification".

CJS | 26.01.24 - 10:12 a.m. | #

Why would a "green energy" firm want to waste so much power on a screen like that?

ap | 26.01.24 - 10:14 a.m. | #

Yep. But as Mannie Shinwell said “people will never vote for a party that’ll make them poorer”, or words to that effect. People see tax cuts, not long-term decay through under-investment. I’ve also often been struck by the contrast with nineteenth-century Britain — perhaps the height of unbridled capitalism, yet still able to put through major public service reforms dealing with eg education, water supplies, even the civil service, and civic reforms that benefitted the wider public.

Labourer | 26.01.24 - 10:18 a.m. | #

More power to your elbow.

Trevor S | 26.01.24 - 11:26 a.m. | #

I agree!

Fred Slab | 26.01.24 - 11:37 a.m. | #

Well said.
About 10 years ago I read a book called 'Eleven Minutes Late' by Matthew Engle where he was trying to travel the length of the country by train.
He showed how resistance to government spending on the railways has been there right from the start!
Also, current politicians like to claim that we are 'World Beating'. We were certainly World Pioneering once, but other countries looked at what we rushed out, and then did it better!
I think, in that respect, little has changed over the last 200 years!

Cornish Cockney | 26.01.24 - 12:13 p.m. | #

Wonderfully put, sadly I do not think this is an electoral error that can be corrected, as no meaningful correction is being offered (perhaps because it is now impossible). I hope I am wrong.

E | 26.01.24 - 12:51 p.m. | #

I agree with your mini-"jeremiad" about the ongoing enshittification of public services.

MilesT | 26.01.24 - 12:55 p.m. | #

Brilliantly summed up- can I quote you?

Simon newson | 26.01.24 - 1:40 p.m. | #

That big para near the end had me standing and cheering. This x1000.

yeoldemother | 26.01.24 - 2:19 p.m. | #

Very succinctly put, and as Scrumpy suggests almost Orwellian in its awfulness.

bloke down the road | 26.01.24 - 2:26 p.m. | #

And that's without the station being run by a Public Private Partnership! I worry for how HS2 might turn out with the latest whispers.

Down under, Melbourne's Southern Cross has suffered dearly from that.

matthieu1221 | 26.01.24 - 6:27 p.m. | #

Cleverly put. Our hope is that enough people see through the bullshit too.

Jack31439 | 26.01.24 - 6:56 p.m. | #

After all that, I strongly recommend you exit the front of the station and bear left past the buses. The Doric Arch (formerly Head Of Steam) is very welcoming. I can't guarantee Becks, but I believe there is a departures screen.

MartinL | 26.01.24 - 11:23 p.m. | #

I also wonder if Network Rail is trying recoup profits lost from removing commercial units at stations, including Euston and Victoria where they are increasing ticket barriers.

yashmak | 27.01.24 - 12:28 a.m. | #

It's all about money.

Patrickov | 27.01.24 - 1:49 a.m. | #

You good, bro?

Stepen | 27.01.24 - 5:06 a.m. | #

Is that your longest sentence ever? I cannot recall a longer sentence on the blog in the last twenty-whatever years that I've been reading.

graybo | Homepage | 27.01.24 - 11:20 a.m. | #

(I've now moved a dozen comments to the special box partway down this post, all from people who didn't take the hint)

diamond geezer | Homepage | 27.01.24 - 10:12 p.m. | #

Network Rail released the research into effects on passenger flows recently.

Jen Parker | Homepage | 31.01.24 - 9:35 p.m. | #











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