by Vivienne Pratfall On Rail Nationalization, The Tuesday Commute, And The Gap Between Policy Achievement And Lived Experience
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Monday, April
I took the South Western Railway from Waterloo to Clapham Junction on Tuesday morning and it was, in the statistical sense, on time, and in the experiential sense, miserable, crowded, and smelling of coffee from a cup someone spilled on the third carriage at approximately Vauxhall. The South Western Railway is now publicly owned. It was transferred to public control earlier this year as part of the Labour government’s rail nationalization programme. The public, in my experience of sharing the Tuesday 8:17 with them, has not visibly altered its relationship to the commute in light of this institutional transition.
This is not a criticism of nationalization as a policy. Half of all train journeys in England are now operated by public entities, with profits that previously went to private shareholders remaining in the public system. This is good. It is also entirely invisible to the person standing in the third carriage wondering whether to complain about the coffee smell or simply endure it. Policy achievement and lived experience operate on different clocks. Labour has learned this the hard way.
The May 7 Context
The local elections arrive in two weeks and the question being asked everywhere I go — in the coffee shop, in the office, at the thing on Thursday that I won’t detail further — is whether Labour has done enough quickly enough. The NHS waiting list has fallen by 330,000. The planning system has been reformed. The trains are being nationalized. None of this has moved the polls in the direction Labour needs them to move before May 7. The London Prat covers the political mechanics. Bohiney Magazine covers the comedy of the gap. londonish.uk covers the commute. The Daily Mash covers the coffee spillage as national metaphor.
Satire Disclaimer: Satirical diary entry. Further reading: India Satirical Journalism and Press Freedom.
More comedy: The Daily Mash
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
