Maybe Mussolini couldn't make the trains run on time, but he didn't exactly have a computer, or we'd consider a functioning first-world economy, did he?
Commuters frustrated to the point of committing ritual suicide on a daily basis over the incessant delays and cancellations of the UK’s Rattle Track train service got hands-on direct access to Transport Minister Lord Adonis when he embarked upon a Norse saga rail voyage across Britain this week.
Traveling incognito to avoid being spit on and verbally abused by multitudes of passengers – or physically assaulted – Adonis told a reporter from the Choo-Choo Review that he wished to experience the horrors of UK train travel from a personal hands-on level.
The minister boarded the Paddington to Truro sleeper on Easter Monday - armed with his laptop and a standard class Rail Rage ticket - kitted out for the journey with copies of Ray Mears ‘Survival for British Rail Travellers’ and the Dalai Lama’s best-selling ‘The Art of Infinite Patience’.
Adonis’ baggage also included copious supplies of Prozac, toilet paper, Preparation H haemorrhoid cream, packets of tortoise-flavoured crisps and several litres of Sunny D’s aspartame-plus mutant orange drink.
The Adonis Express schedule, reckoned by many to be more at delusionally optimistic than realistically based, is as follows:
Monday night: London to Truro via Shitford Sands.
Tuesday: Truro to Newquay via the Isle of Dogs - then onto Exeter, Yeovil, Wareham, Bournemouth and Brighton via Stoke-on-Toast.
Wednesday: Brighton, Ashford International, Margate – via Cambridge to Titsford, Gravesend, Twatbury, Upminster, Rumpford, Sodomy-on-Sea and Norwich.
Thursday: Norwich to Peterborough, Birmingham, Chester, Holyhead, Crewe, Manchester, Preston and Carlisle via Liverpool’s Slime Street.
Friday: Carlisle to Newcastle via Truro and Cuntthorpe - then on to Inverness via Euston, Edinburgh and Falkirk.
Saturday: Inverness to Edinburgh via Luton Central before ending the tour with a visit to the National Headbangers’ Asylum at Smegmadale-on-Sea.
On Saturday he hopes to reach Smegmadale after a 25,200-mile trip taking him as far north as Cape Wrath.
Lord Adonis said he wanted the terrifying "first-hand experience" of the rail service and the trip was "deadly serious" and not just a publicity exercise.
Adonut added: "I think it's very important for ministers who are in charge of public services to really experience intensively the services they are responsible for overseeing.”
“For instance if I were Minister of Defence I’d be out there in Afghanistan and Iraq, carrying an assault rifle, getting shot at, eating shitty food rations and breathing in all those nasty depleted uranium fumes.”
The minister's journey will involve a minimum of 145 trains – more if the regular and forecast derailments and breakdowns occur.
Adonis further revealed that when on official business he travels first class, as the taxpayer is footing the bill, but on all other occasions, when paying himself, he buys the regular cheaper peasant class tickets.
He also mentioned that if trains were too crowded to find a seat, he would have to stand along with other passengers.
"I won't have any alternative if I get on a train and it's full, that's what I'll have to do – slum it like all the other poverty-stricken job-hunting unwashed public scum.”
Lord Adonis was appointed minister of state for transport in October 2008, having served over three years heading the House of Conmans Select Committee for Cover-ups and Whitewashing.
In January the government announced plans for a new high-speed line, which will run between London and the West Midlands, and possibly on to Scotland if there’s enough rail line left over.
However critics are swift to point out that the boasted 300 mph trains are a New Labour fantasy as they can’t even keep the damn things on the tracks when travelling at 80 mph.
In one mirthful aside it was noted by Tory back-stabbers that Ladbrokes bookies are giving 50 to 1 odds Lord Adonut is never seen again – and definitely not before the next general election.
Have you experienced a nervous breakdown while travelling on Rattle Track?
Should Mussolini be our next Transport Minister? Do you believe Thomas the Tank Engine’s smiley face is real or a put-on job?
Fill in our online questionnaire below and you could win a deluxe reserved seat trip on the Chattanooga Choo-Choo from Birmingham New Street to Birmingham Old Street – via Truro.
