Our transport system is not even ‘Third World’

To Liverpool to chair the annual conference of the British Chambers of Commerce, stout yeomen of the country’s small- to medium-sized businesses. I’ll let the train take the strain, I thought, and burnish my green credentials, even though I planned to travel on a Sunday, which meant the normal two-and-a-half-hour trip would take an extra hour. In fact, it was my wallet which felt the strain first: Richard Branson’s Virgin charged me £320 for the privilege of a first-class return from London, an obscene amount of money for a modest train ride. (I can fly business class to Nice and back for less!) Undaunted, I arrived at Euston in plenty of time for a 4 p.m. departure. That’s when it all went pear-shaped. The concourse was packed tight with people all staring at departure boards displaying the same word in capital letters: ‘DELAYED’ (to be strictly accurate some carried another word: ‘CANCELLED’).