First Capital Connect need to pay attention to the details

I regularly use the Bedford to London line for commuting to work and other things. In fact, it is probably fair to say that my life probably wouldn't work without it.

In general the train service is a good one. Well, as good as things get in this country given the chronic lack of investment in our transport infrastructure. Yes it can be tiring and frustrating and when things go wrong they really go wrong. But given the level of usage that this service gets it works pretty well.

I was a little surprised when the franchise to operate the line was changed from Thameslink to First Capital Connect. I didn't think that Thameslink were doing a particularly bad job and I didn't see how, given that the line operates near capacity as it is, First Capital Connect would be able to make significant improvements. I'm sure there are statistics out there that prove things have got better or worse for this aspect or the other. But as a customer I haven't seen much difference.

One change I have noticed, and not one for the better, is a change in the provision of information to passengers. Not that long after the new franchise had started I noticed various groups of workmen replacing the existing platform displays with new ones. The TV monitor style displays we had under Thameslink have been replaced with flatter ones. While the Thameslink displays were never perfect they seem to have been much more reliable than the First Capital Connect ones.

My observations over the last few months have noticed the following failings:

• A far greater mismatch between the information on the boards and what is actually happening on the tracks. This includes information about a particular scheduled train disappearing (and sometimes then reappearing) for no apparent reason.
  
  
• Displays going wrong more frequently and seemingly taking a long while to be fixed. There is a display on Blackfrairs Station that seems to have been out of action for most of this week.
  
  
• Messages, such as those about cancellations or notice of engineering works, that don't display properly on the boards because they are too long. A message that probably looks OK when typed into the master computer only half appears on the screens on the platform, and thus is rendered meaningless, because the system appears not to take account of the actual design of the displays.
  
  
• The way platform changes do not show up very clearly on the displays and the tendency for tannoy announcements of platform changes to come only about a minute or so before the train pulls into the station. This results in a mad dash to the stairs by passengers and is a real pain for those with pushchairs or heavy cases.
  
  
• Finally, there is niggly little grammatical issue that I find slightly annoying. I have seen displays scrolling the message “Do not call at Harpenden....” instead of “Does not call at...”.

All these issues may seem small in themselves, but together they can add up to a headache for passengers. The little things count, especially when you want to provide proper customer service. I suspect that their IT and information systems have been poorly designed.

Come on First Capital Connect, please pay more attention to the details.

The Mary Whitehouse Experience

I rather enjoyed Julie Walters portrayal of famous 'anti-filth' campaigner Mary Whitehouse in last nights BBC 2 TV drama "Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story".

I thought the drama was cleverly constructed. It was a sympathetic portrayal of Whitehouse. Her principled convictions, determination, and personal sacrifice was highlighted and we got a clear sense of her motivation to protect a middle England, and Christian, morality from the forces that threatened it. She was painted as a very suburban heroine.

Yet this sympathy for the woman was frequently undercut by short scenes of real life; infidelity, domestic violence, 'free love' etc., which exposed just how out of touch she was with wider society and how oblivious she was to much of what was going on around her. The scene where the previously very friendly and polite TV camera crew colourfully swore at each other as they left her garden gate, while she and her husband unknowingly waved from the garden, was a particular favourite.

A drama about Whitehouse could so easily have shown her as a ridiculous and grotesque monster. But by highlighting her personal heroism as an individual this drama made the essential wrongness of her views more telling.

The Director General of the BBC, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, wonderfully played by Hugh Bonneville, was shown as a boorish, sexist, unpleasant and slightly bonkers figure. The contrast between the wrong but sympathetic Whitehouse and the right thinking but objectionable Greene was, I thought, a brilliant device which in itself made a clever and subtle point about censorship.

In many ways this drama was as much about the late 60's BBC as it was about Whitehouse. Praise should be given to the set designers. The clever use of décor, and the architecture of Broadcasting House, to portray the self-confident world view, or should that be arrogance, of the BBC was very well done. I also liked the way they also used it to show the relationship between the Director General and the Chairman of the BBC. The use of the carpet and leather chairs was a very nice touch.

A little Luton related note. The Chairman, Lord Charles Hill, shown in the drama was of course Baron Hill of Luton. The former Conservative and National Liberal MP for Luton and famous radio doctor, who was chairman of the BBC between 1967 and 1972.

There seems to be something of a revisionist view of Mary Whitehouse that has developed over the last few years. Which, up to a point, should be welcomed. One point that this drama makes is that the vehemence of the dismissal of her views, and the savagery of the attacks upon her at the time, did stray into becoming a form of censorship themselves. Also that often these were motivated not by a rational refutation of her views but by the wagon circling of institutions and vested interest that felt threatened.

Mary Whitehouse wanted to protect a set of values and a way of life that she saw as being based on decency and morality. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in that. She wanted to protect these from a changing world that she saw as threatening and corrupting. But a changing world that, and I would of course agree with them, a majority of people at the time saw as improving and liberating. She, and this is where I think the revisionist view of her is right, provided a useful function in making us question the assumptions and some of the aspects of that changing society. She did make us think about whether we were sure we were getting everything right.

Where she was wrong was to see the media as the main cause of this social change. Where she was dangerous was her advocacy of censorship in an attempt to stop it.

Crewe and changing my mind

This post* is my reaction to the Crewe and Nantwich by-election and my current thoughts on the general political situation.

What does the result of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election mean for the Liberal Democrats? Well according to leading Lib Dem bloggers the answer is "not a lot" (James Graham) or "not a whole lot" (Stephen Tall). So take your pick. Looking forward James is optimistic, although Linda Jack remains to be convinced, while Stephen warns of the dangers of getting squeezed by a resurgent Tory Party.

I have nothing particularly different or original to add to what has been said in other places. My view can be summed up in James' words;

"the result this morning does nothing to dispel the notion that we have already turned the corner and are finally making progress after two years of going backwards. Whether or not we can recover enough to hold our own or even make net gains in the next general election remains to be seen."

A view that also mirrors my take on this months local elections as being a good set of results and several degrees better than our worst private fears. Yet also being nothing particularly spectacular and with the worrying issue of what to do about London.

All this is further evidence that nationally we as a Party have consolidated our position enough in areas where we are strong to avoid falling back significantly when under pressure, and even in some cases have the potential to make modest gains, but outside those areas we are currently in too weak a position to be able to make the most of the opportunities that the political climate is opening up for us.

In short, the Liberal Democrats have consolidated our position and are making some modest progress. But while we have remained largely static, the real story over the last 18 months has been elsewhere.

Until recently, if you had asked me, my prediction for the outcome of the next General Election would have been, although heavily qualified, a Labour win with a small majority.

My reasoning was that, despite David Cameron having done a lot to make the Tory Party electable, a sufficiently large section of the electorate would remain unconvinced. Plus, whatever the ups and downs the Labour Government would face, by the time the election came their campaign machine would have managed to put together enough of a fightback to allow them to squeek home. Whatever the level of disillusion with Labour, I reckoned, in a time of economic uncertainty there wouldn't be enough voters prepared to risk a Tory government.

I have now changed my mind.

In line with what appears to be a growing consensus I am now of the view that it is the Tories that are on course to be, at least, the largest Party.

I noticed that over on PoliticalBetting.com Mike Smithson nails his colours to the mast and is betting on an overall Conservative victory.

Why this change of mind? Simply Gordon Brown.

As this post from July last year shows I have somewhat misjudged Brown. One of my reasons for betting on a Labour victory was that the change from Blair to Brown would, while remaining essentially New Labour, provide an opportunity for enough change and refocusing of Labour to give the electorate reasons to give them another go. Brown's brief honeymoon period last year shows that this opportunity was there, yet he failed to make use of it.

Since then I have been astonished, not by the various cock ups and disasters the Government have fallen into, but the lack of direction displayed from the top.

Given all those years plotting to be PM, you'd have thought Brown would have spent some time thinking about what to do with the job.

I do believe that the potential is there for Labour to turn the situation around. If not enough to make them confident of victory at least enough to ensure they avoid a catastrophic disaster. Yet to do this they will need to make some dramatic changes. Something that looks impossible for them to do with Brown as Leader.

Unless something dramatic happens soon, it looks like momentum is with Cameron and the Tories.

* As you can probably tell the outcome of the "concerted effort" mentioned in my previous post has rather come to nought. Another batch of half-written articles but nothing actually posted. I am rather struggling with time, energy and conflicting priorities at the moment.

Blockages

'Process Guy' has been rather quiet of late. This is not because there has been any shortage of things to write about. Far from it. I've been getting exercised at varying levels of intensity about a wide range of topics. Yet, while not exactly writers block, a number of things have been getting in the way. In part it has been a curious mixture of when I have had the inclination to put together a post on something I haven't had the time, yet when I have had the time I haven't had the inclination.

Another part of this 'blockage' has been something I am discovering about my attitude to this blogging lark. I frequently have ideas for things to write about but want to attempt to come up with a least a half-decent argument in the subsequent post. But I am not one of these people whose thoughts flow easily out of my brain and on to my keyboard. I have to work at it in order to come up with something coherent. So often, while I have a good idea, the time I have available to work on expanding it into something worth asking someone else to bother to read is not sufficient. In the desire not to write rubbish I end up writing nothing at all.

“If that is the case, how come this rambling effort?” I hear you ask. Well, one of the few pieces of advice I can remember hearing about writing was that if you are finding it difficult to write what you want just start writing anything. You can attempt to write your way out of the difficulty. Also blogging is habitual, but once you fall out of the habit it can be difficult to fall in to it again.

So after some weeks without anything appearing on this blog I thought I had better make a concerted effort.