Sleep stealing Scotrail

Like many others in my hometown of Irvine, I commute to Glasgow on a daily basis. The price is high (£127-50 a month) and the outward bound services rarely run to schedule in the mornings. This I can, and do, live with but their latest nonesense has me ready to blow a gasket!

Up until the Christmas and New Year break my normal morning train was the 08.17, a six carriage unit which has a scheduled arrival in Glasgow Central at 08.52, getting me into my office for 9am. Each and every time I have taken this train since starting back on the 8th of January it has been a three carriage unit. Now six carriages of passengers will simply not get onto a three carriage train and every time I have taken this train I have had to stand all the way from Irvine to Glasgow as have numerous fellow commuters. Indeed I have often seen it so packed that it must be a breach of health & safety rules and people are physically unable to get on at Paisley, which is the last stop before Glasgow.In order to avoid this discomfort I started taking the 07.59 service, which does have six carriages, but found it equally busy and usually have to stand all the way on this one too. To ensure that I can at least get a seat I now find myself taking the 07.43 each morning. By my reckoning that's two and a half hours sleep a week that First Scotrail owe me. Before anyone says stop moaning and go to bed earlier - I've tried it and it doesn't work. I'm a night owl and bed before midnight (for sleeping purposes) = insomnia.

The real point I'm making is that without a by your leave and without telling passengers, First Scotrail have reduced a service and breached their so-called Customer Charter, which states that passengers should not have to stand for more than 10 minutes.

Contacting Ryanair

Working in a Parliamentary office we regularly get complaints about airlines from constituents. In the case of Ryanair it's often difficult to get through to someone directly.
Sharon Hodgson (Labour MP for Gateshead East) wrote to the Guardian the other day with contact details, which I'm delighted to circulate further:
Caroline Green is Head of Customer Services (sic) and her direct email address is:
greenc@ryanair.com (Please don't send mindless abuse).
The direct dial number for their head office is +353 1 812 1212
Hope it's useful.