About Me

On a mission to spam the spammers. With spam.

Monday 1 February 2016

Northern Rail

Northern Rail have customer service posters on their trains inviting feedback on the service and providing an email address. They were literally asking for this...

Dear trains,

I travel by train quite frequently and have some suggestions for how the service could be improved so thought i would share them with you.
It's often been said that train services in this country fall some distance behind those of our continental cousins, and being a proud Englishman i feel that instead of trying to catch up with those smelly foreigners we should be striving to imbue our rail network with a sense of true 'Englishness'. Never mind what Johnny Foreigner does in their train time, let's celebrate our insular social vision and get our trains reflecting what is really great about this country. 

In the first instance i feel we should address the 'first impressions' that we are greeted with upon entry to your trains. One of the things i think about when i think about England (usually when i've just got out of the bath and i'm vigorously drying my testicles) is our great English sense of humour: that shared unspoken narrative we all subscribe to which allows us the freedom to point and laugh at the foolish, the pompous, the arrogant and the mentally ill. And cripples. So to encapsulate this sense of fun-poking joviality i think it would be a really nice idea to have a movement-activated sensor upon entering the train which triggers a spotlight and pre-recorded soundbites from the X Factor judges. Simon Cowul going "Hahaha you're rubbish you bastard!" and (in a more condescending tone) "Well look at you limping onto the train, it's like watching a legless hippo trying to navigate a hobby horse you pathetic worthless tramp of a man!". Or maybe Louis Welsh saying "Ya look loike a cunt, ya sound loike a cunt, ya ARE a cunt!!" 
'Cos we all like a laugh don't we??! And what better way to welcome immigrants into our country than to remind them straight off the boat that in our class-driven society they are worth no more than the piss off a rats pubes. 

Once on board the train, let's reinforce the notion of our famous English sense of awkward politeness and enforced good manners by removing all the seats in the carriages, leaving just one in the centre so passengers can spend their entire journey either in a ridiculous Mexican stand-off with the person next to them, verbally to-ing and fro-ing along the lines of "You sit down" "No really it's fine, YOU sit down" "No honestly i'm ok standing, have a seat" "I'm only going a few stops seriously, it's fine. I'm fine" etc etc etc. Or alternatively getting on the train and not daring to take the one seat then when someone actually does risk social ostracization by sitting in it, silently seething for the entire journey with an internal monologue about how 'people these days have no manners'.  

I also think trains should celebrate our 'cool' English cultural icons, so here are just some of the ways we can represent a few of them to remind those foreign types who's best:
  • Chris Martin of Coldplay - embody his unique blandness and milquetoast banality by smearing all the handrails with mayonnaise and only serving Skol lager and cottage cheese sandwiches in the buffet car
  • Steve Wrightintheafternoon - recreate the tortuous experience of having to listen to this smug piece of shit by having your conductors jab people with forks as they walk past whilst spouting a recent piece of scientific research as a 'factoid' (fucking 'factoid', what are we 5 years old??) followed by an ill-informed opinion on it which completely ignores any sense of nuance or context
  • Piers Morgan - fill your trains with Piers' sense of deluded entitlement and gargantuan level of shit-headedness by listening in on all the passengers phone calls and then broadcasting their private business over the tannoy because it's 'in the public interest'
Finally, make us all practice that most English of traits, the 'stiff upper lip' in the face of adversity, by making all your trains late. Oh wait, you already do that one. Well played! 

Peace,
Niesche x