On the Move

I like travelling, land sea or air, just being on the move I find interesting and fascinating. Having to spend half the week in London it’s just as well. The journey back and forth to King’s Cross can occasionally be tiresome but  watching great swathes of humanity getting from A to B and imagining why they are on the move always holds my attention.

On Thursday evening I boarded the 19.03 from King’s Cross as I do most weeks. More often than not the person who sits next to you opens their laptop and taps out replies to their emails or they open a book or magazine leaving only the imagination to guess something about their lives. Today though was different. It didn't take much to work out that my fellow-passenger worked for the Underground; the logo on his jacket was a bit of a give-away!

I was reading a pamphlet from Network Rail that I’d picked up at a Westminster meeting earlier in the week. ‘Do you work for the railways?’ he asked. ‘No’ came my reply, ‘but you obviously work on the Underground’ I responded.

We then moved onto a discussion about the merits or otherwise of High Speed 2, Crossrail and which of the London airports should expand. Eventually I was forced to admit that I was the MP for Cleethorpes and he reminisced about a visit he’d made some fifteen years earlier. He remembered the train passing the docks and the football ground.

His next comment took me by surprise as being a politician isn't necessarily a guarantee of appreciation and admiration! ‘I don’t know how you put up with it’ he said, ‘no one’s ever satisfied, you’re criticised from all sides, and (I am not making this up) you’re underpaid.’

I expressed my surprise. It turns out that he earns £50,000 a year, gets cheap travel that makes it worthwhile commuting to Peterborough five days a week and the 45 minute journey means he gets home quicker than some of his workmates who live in outer London.

He liked Mayor Boris but thought he’d be disastrous as a Prime Minister, thought the LibDems were out of their depth and that Labour had no chance of winning the next election because people would remember the mess they’d left behind last time and, apart from that, Ed Miliband just didn't measure up to leading the country.

As you might imagine I was beginning to warm to him by now. ‘Do your workmates think the same about Miliband?’ I asked. ‘Even the Labour supporters won’t vote for Ed’ came the reply.

Conversation then moved on, we covered the Humber Bridge, memories of the Humber Ferry, the complexities of major infrastructure projects, petrol tax, how amazingly successful the Olympics had been and aid to India. By this time we were pulling into Peterborough.

So in a nutshell my travelling companion’s manifesto for the Conservatives at the next election would be: build on the Olympics success by getting on with some major infrastructure projects, develop Stansted airport, freeze petrol duty, get Boris into Parliament (but no further), limit foreign aid to obviously genuine cases – Ethiopia yes, India no. For Labour the message is change your leader, face up to economic reality and hope that voters have short memories.  . For the LibDems I guess it could be summed up by staying at home and saving the money it would cost to print the manifesto.

Was my travelling companion expressing the views of the majority? Do you agree with any or all of what he had to say?

To take one of the points raised by the train driver, petrol duty; as it happens only a few hours before my train journey I had been speaking in a debate in which MPs from all sides supported a motion put forward by Robert Halfon the Chairman of the All-Party Fair Fuel for Motorists Group of which I am the Deputy-Chairman supporting an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading and the Financial Services Authority into the oil markets.

We all ask why, when oil prices go up, the price at the pump seems to rise almost overnight but when it falls it takes so much longer to go down? Is it an urban myth or is it true? The pressure is now on the oil companies to justify their position.