The Domestic Terrorist - The Reading Fiasco

THE READING FIASCO

England is notorious for many things. The proclivities of our MP’s. The repression, traditional stiff upper lip. Carry On movies.

But the one thing Britain is probably best known for is our stupidity. We all have our national stereotypes, and we, the Brits are thick. Where else in the world would a government spend millions on a gigantic dome full of tat and close it after a year? Where else would we tear down the finest football stadium ever made … to replace it with another one on the exact same site? And not just once. Twice. We already made that mistake in Cardiff. Now it’s Wembley’s turn.

But one thing really, really takes the biscuit. In fact, it doesn’t just take the biscuit : it steals the tin.

Every year on the August Bank Holiday, the towns of Reading and Leeds grind to halt as they play host to the biggest corporate rock festivals of the year. A total of 80,000 people flock to the Reading Festival to see hundreds of bands on dozens of stages over three long hot summer days : 80,000 people armed with tents, warms tins of beer, and a license to Rock!

So what finer time then, for British Rail to decommission the London to Reading train line than the busiest weekend of the year for any train station anywhere in the country? The one weekend where the trains get to carry about a thousand times more passengers than any other weekend?

I told you the Brits are stupid. I’m not trying to be prejudiced in any way. After a decision like that it can only be a simple fact. The August bank holiday weekend this year will see Paddington and Reading besieged. Armed with kit bags and muddy t-shirts, the British Popular Army of Nu-Metal will descend - in its thousands - upon the hopeless bureaucracy of National Rail (or “Failcack”, as their employees call them) and once again, Britain will reap what it sows. It’s not just a disaster waiting to happen. It’s a disaster pre-ordained by local councils : and so perfectly timed you can set your watch by it.

It’s not though, as if, they didn’t get any warning. It’s not as if the Reading Festival is a new thing. It’s been running for thirty long hard-rocking years. Almost as long as Status Quo. And this year, there are no trains. Not one. Just a replacement bus service between London and Reading.

Reading – which already looks like a car park for the whole of the Bank Holiday Weekend, will just get worse : despite what you think, it is possible. Just.

Last time I went by car to Reading, I was stuck in a traffic jam for eight hours. People were running tag teams, going up to the chip shop and coming back with trolleys full of freshly battered sausages and chips. It was the Good old British Spirit, triumph and good humour in the face of stupidity. And this time the chaos wasn’t even the fault of The Hun. No air-raid sirens to cause the population to cower in terror beneath their windscreens and sing the national anthem (“Wonderwall”) to rally the spirit. You couldn’t even grit your teeth and blame the Boche.

And that was when the trains were running. I dread to think what this year will look like. I dread it. People sleeping on streets, on train platforms, back gardens, anywhere they can find. There will be bodies piled high, tempers even higher, and of policemen looking for a bit of crowd control.

Last year, Railtrack did roughly the same thing, when it closed Brighton Station for hours at a time, the weekend that Fatboy Slim did a free gig on the beach to a quarter of a million people. When there were thousands of people sleeping on Brighton’s beaches, in it’s alleyways, and on it’s doorsteps, that was all Fatboy Slim’s fault. It wasn’t anything to do with the fact that National Rail closed the stations and didn’t put on any extra services. Oh no. Do we never learn?

Instead of cancelling trains, they should run trains all through the night on major routes. There’d be people on them. The only reason there aren’t that many people on the trains at the moment is because it’s too expensive, the service is awful, and the trains stop running after 11 o’clock at night. And we all know that nothing good starts until after two minutes to midnight.

They can do it in Europe : when I went to Sweden, there were trains running every twenty minutes – even at 3.40 in the morning – and they were dirt cheap. And that’s what civilisation is all about. Planning. And punctual trains.

And all of this because the British Rail Authority are too darned stupid to do their train repairs at a sensible time. All I want to do is rock. And use rolling stock. But good old Bureaucracy can’t even do that. Viva Idiocy!

Good old Britain. I think I’ll go and watch Glastonbury on the telly instead.

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