The Government, or what is left of it, needs to take urgent action to allow commuters of the Southern Railway and Thameslink services to get on with their working lives.
After weeks of delays and cancellations, some passengers are now complaining that their actual jobs are on the line as they struggle to get into work. Labelled by many as the worst rail company in Britain, it has made the unprecedented decision to introduce an emergency timetable, allowing it to cancel another 350 trains a day.
As a war of words rages on between the rail company and unions over high levels of staff sickness and strikes, in a row over the role of conductors, passengers are left high and dry. Despite imposing fines amounting to £2 million, the situation seems only to worsen. Maybe the only way to stop this in the long-term and to show other rail companies that they cannot mismanage their services to this level is for the Government to do what was done on the East Coast and allow Directly Operated Railways to run the routes under public control and in the interest of the general travelling public.