If you buy a train ticket any reasonable person would assume that you have paid to travel anywhere between the two ends of the journey you have paid for. If you wanted to get on part way along the line or get off at a railway station before your journey ends you would be perfectly justified in believing you could do so. Not so apparently.

Below is a link to the BBC website where you can hear an interview with a traveller who decided to get off his train one stop early and was landed with a penalty charge of £155 for invalidating his ticket by getting off the train early.

The train operators response was that this was in the terms and conditions and the charge was entirely valid and justified. I am gobsmacked that a company can treat it’s paying customers in such a disgraceful fashion. The traveller had paid for a ticket which took him further than he needed to travel. For the train company to hold him hostage and only release him on payment of that additional payment of £155 is beyond belief.

The lessons from this sad tale are

1: Don’t travel by train because the train company really are out to get you and rip you off.

2: If you do travel by train you should first get a lawyer to read through the Terms & Conditions for the purchase of your ticket.

BBC – PM: Great Railway Journeys of the World.

The Icelandic ash cloud led to a complete shutdown of UK airspace on Thursday lunchtime and it has been closed ever since. It wasn’t as though nobody knew about it or noticed the result of this action since it was all over the news and there were interviews and yet more interviews with UK citizens who were stuck in airports hoping to get home as soon as possible.

I accept that there was not a lot the government could do to make the cloud go away and for flights to begin again but all those Britons scattered around the world were steadily becoming more desperate as they ran out of money after spending days living at airports around the world.

Finally we are now seeing some government action. The British government’s emergency planning committee, Cobra has finally met after 5 days. It’s a good job the fire brigade and police don’t wait for 5 days to decide if something is an emergency.

As a result of meetings the Navy is to send ships to unspecified French ports and one ship is en-route to Spain to collect army personnel stuck on their way home from Afghanistan. Spain to help find a way to get some of these people home.  I’m just puzzled that it has taken so long for this to happen.

Weather forecasters have been suggesting the weather conditions were such that the current situation could last for some time over the last few days and so it has proved to be. It could be that the weather will change and the cloud of ash will be blown away sooner rather than later but it would have done no harm for Cobra to have met last week instead of this and to make some contingency plans for dealing with the trapped passengers at the airports.

There is little doubt it is causing chaos in all the countries affected and that is not just the ones where the cloud hovers menacingly in the air. There are travellers trapped air-side in airports all over the world who are on route to Europe but having been forced to land short of their destination do not have the correct papers to leave the airport of the country they arrived in. It must be a pretty miserable experience and presumably there are people who are due to return home but can’t and they are having to somehow survive in foreign countries having run out of money. My thoughts go out to them but it will be something to tell their grandchildren one day. These are historic events.

I suspect a lot of schools will restart after the Easter break and find they are short of both teachers and pupils who have been marooned in the places they took a short vacation. Apparently the cabinet are meeting this afternoon to discus matters relating to the ash cloud and I am sure there must be a lot of people spread all over Europe and the world who could do with some physical and financial support. Hopefully ministers can stop electioneering long enough to make sure there is support available for those who need it.

Finally, on the subject of the ash cloud. What if this were to reoccur in 2012 around the time the Olympics were to due to take place in London? It could mean half empty stadiums and a lot of absent athletes. I wonder if there is a contingency plan to postpone the event if some natural disaster was to occur or would it just mean that Britain would win a whole heap of gold medals because nobody else could make it? Every cloud has a silver lining, as they say.

What shocked me most about the story was that the cyclist had gone through a red light. There is no question the woman driver who hit him was driving recklessly but if the cyclist had obeyed the traffic laws he would still be alive today. If he had been driving a truck then it might have been the young woman who had been killed.

Many cyclists seem to think they can ignore the rules of the road and I can understand, from my own experience of cycling why they would want to but it seems harsh to blame the person who was doing the less dangerous action. Would anybody dispute that to drive through a red traffic light is an extremely dangerous and hazardous action?

Speeding can be dangerous though so much depends on the particular situation of the road, traffic and weather conditions. It is a total lie when the police spew out their standard line that speed kills. If that were true we would all be dead because our planet is speeding through space at the most incredible speeds. According to the police we should all be dead just from the astronomical speeds we are all travelling at even as we sit still.

Speed is relative and a simple, blunt, statement that speed kills is just plain wrong.  It is shameful that any police force or person should promote what is so clearly a lie. Speed relative to a situation is a very different thing and doing 45 mph in a 30 mph limited area sounds very excessive and dangerous.

Texting on a mobile phone whilst driving is very distracting, no one would dispute that and if you are distracted then you are paying less attention to your driving. On todays busy roads we all need to keep our wits about us. We need to remain focused on driving and texting on a mobile phone is not something you should be doing.

So there is no question that the young woman was driving carelessly and perhaps dangerously but to say that it is her fault that the young cyclist died seems to be stretching the point. On a scale of 1 to 10 of dangerous things to do on the roads then driving through a red light has to be right up there at number one. If you drive through a red light you stand a fair chance of being killed or seriously injured and anybody who does it should surely be aware of the risk they are taking.

I have enormous sympathy for the family of the cyclist. It is a sad and unnecessary loss of life but I would argue that he knew he was taking a risk and was flouting the law. He should not have been in front of the car that hit him.

We should encourage cycling. It is of benefit to the cyclist from a health point of view, it is beneficial to the local area because it reduces traffic problems and it benefits our planet because of the reduction in carbon emissions compared to using a car. We should be doing much more to make it easier and safer for cyclists to travel around.

If we had a system of roads just for cyclists that were seperate from traffic there would be far more people prepared to cycle. There could and should be a real national network of cycle routes that are well maintained and safe to use. It would be an expensive undertaking and have an initially high carbon footprint but over the long term it would save the healthservice money, benefit the environment and we might all lead healthier and more enjoyable lives.

Politicans pay lip service to such schemes and there are around 10,000 miles of designated cycle routes around the country but only about 30% are on routes free of cars and trucks. If we are serious about helping cyclists we need priority for cyclists where they and other road users meet. Cyclists and cycling need to be supported and encourage and most importantly of all,  protected from other road users.

I am sad to hear of the death of this young cyclist but it should not be accepted that cyclists can or should feel the need to cross a red traffic light it is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. We have to find a better way promote cycling and keep cyclists safe.