Dear Network Rail.

The following is a draft of a complaint letter which will soon be wending its way towards Network Shysters. You may have heard of me speaking about them before (allegedly they're the company which privately owns our rail system 'Network Rail' - my name is much more fitting and logical). Sit back, this may go on for a while (assuming I don't get too distracted by Vancouver on mah TV).

'To whomever wishes to abnegate responsibility,

I am writing to you with a swelling heart, and a flowing sense of pride: pride in our great nation, in our one modern dream of a system of transport which links our developed nation together. That is, of course, how I would start this letter if I had fallen through a space-rip and had landed in 'opposite world'. Instead, please see if you can answer the following question: why do you constantly expect myself, among thousands of other people, to continually pay out of the ear for 'service' which is so below par if it were an animal it'd be nothing but an amoeba? I will regale you, if you please, with my tales of woe; and then I will follow it up with a few choice questions which could perhaps aid you in answering my initial query.

In the past 6 days I have caught around ten-or-so trains. I have travelled up to Birmingham, from my other house, and then around Birmingham. I have travelled to and from my house, from my other house. I would like to extend my gratitude to the providers of Cross Country trains for their timely journeys, comfortable - and accessible - carriages, and affable staff. Consider that the only nice adjunct you will enjoy. Whilst in Birmingham I met with no problems: no delays, no queues, no exorbitant rogering of my fiscal virginity. The only problems I met were when I was homeward bound: I was delayed for around an hour, before being shunted onto a train which seems to have somehow survived the mass-scrappage of the Auschwitz rail-system. It was quite frankly the most rancid thing I have ever set foot in, and the miasma was made only worse by the fact it was my only option. If this were an isolated incident I would be ready to forgive and forget, and move on - even if you had charged me out of the ear for the 'privilege' of using this 'service' - alas, this is only isolated in that I eventually caught a train that was useful for me.

Take today, for instance: I aimed to catch a train from my house to my house; a journey of roughly fifty-miles, and of just over an hour. Well, again, that's what you'd think -- but you'd be wrong. I instead caught a train to somewhere. And then to somewhere else. And then to my house. And it took just over 2 hours. And you expected me to, as usual, pay the full fare for this abomination. Please, suggest to me that this - again - doesn't happen often, and that no service is infallible. If you do I would be more than happy to engage with you over a hot-chocolate where I can recite the eight-thousand other times your trains have let me down. Please, let me continue for the sake of verisimilitude.

I'm not sure if you - whoever you are - have ever been on the 'the shit one where I live' line (though it's a stretch to call it a 'line'. It's about as much of a 'line' as your 'service' is a service). If you haven't, I'll just fill you in on a few choice facts:

i) The average speed of your train must be about 3mph, because it takes over an hour and a half sometimes to travel 50 miles.

ii) This service - in the 15 months that I have lived here - has never been on time, nor has a fast train ever been an option.

iii) This service - same time-frame - has been delayed, cancelled, or re-routed countless time.

iv) For the past one and a half years you have insisted that I catch a bus if I wish to travel this route on a Sunday. Not only that, but for the one weekend where all university students would be travelling back after their break you replaced the trains, again, with buses. Not only buses, but buses which would be more suited to a Ghanaian sojourn over a mountain or something awful like that.

v) Not once have I been offered any form of fare-reduction, compensation, or replacement train.

I'm again unsure if you've ever been to station near my house, or station near my uni house for that matter, and to be quite blunt I'm not even sure if this is your responsibility. I am not fussed to research whether or not it is, however, because you never seem to extend me the courtesy of performing, so why on earth should I? In case you're wondering why I brought this up, there are a couple of reasons really: there is no facility for buying tickets at station near my house- I have never been able to purchase something there. Ever. Station near my uni house, for the past 5 months, has had no provision for purchasing tickets from a human being, and your automated machines are so convoluted that even your own staff advise purchasing a ticket on-board, rather than have it out with the machine. Let's refresh: is this service?

I could go on and on and on, but I really cannot be bothered with this anymore. Your system is laughable, lamentable, terrible. And not laughable in a giggling-schoolgirl sense, but more the kind of angry grimacing laughter you might reserve for a friend's unexpectedly timed funeral. If you care for specifics I will happily provide them, though of course because you provide such a thorough 'service' I am assuming my words will be taken as truth.

So back to my original query: is this service? Would you pay for a product which you took home and it only worked half the time? Would you use a cleaner who only cleaned on top of your tables? Would you buy a car with three wheels? Let us quickly just define service as I see it in this situation: a transaction of money from one party, for the provision of something in return. Your 'something' is getting me from A to B in a timely, comfortable, and enjoyable fashion. My 'something' is giving you a patently ludicrous amount of money. I have done this, time and time again - and yet you insist on raping me over and over again. This isn't 'service' in any sense of the word, this is nothing other than naked-profiteering by a company hell-bent on masturbating over their piles of money. Consumer advice is nil, friendly staff are nil, timely trains are nil, decent concessions are nigh-on-nil.

Yours (begrudgingly because I have no other option),

Jack 'end of the world' My surname.

P.S. To the person initially reading this, I apologise: please forward it on to someone who deserves this tirade. I am sure you know who he/she/they are. And never fear 'he/she/they': I have never received anything of quality from you people before, so I don't expect a timely, full, or useful reply -- just spit on a piece of paper and post it to me or something.'

Something like that anyway.