Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

I was in Cardiff the weekend before last, and while I was walking through St David's Centre I saw a large group of students studying a large mural. I wondered what was causing so much excitement, so I decided to check it out for myself. This is what I found. (I know the photo isn't great, because I took it with my phone, but there's a reason for that.) It's a clever idea, isn't it? Grafting Cardiff and the suburbs onto the Tube map – that iconic piece of design which evolves as the network grows and changes – proves that someone at the South Wales Echo (where it originally appeared) has a sense of humour. Unfortunately, it had totally confused the youngsters. A couple of Chinese students were having a very animated discussion about it; a few West African girls were equally enthralled by the idea of the Barry John Line, the John Charles Line, and the Cardiff Arms Dart. I looked at it with them for a few minutes, took a couple of photos, and then turned to them and s...

A couple of months ago I told you about the late-night shenanigans I experienced while travelling home from Cardiff (see I Don't Like Thursdays ). Well, you can imagine my surprise when, on 5 December, an email from Arriva Trains Wales pinged into my inbox: Case Reference: ATW-161007-BFD Dear Mr O'Gorman, Thank you for contacting us about your journey on 06 October between Cardiff and Aberdare. I am sorry to learn that your journey was disrupted, and that you were caused a delay as a result. In order for me to fully investigate and resolve your compensation claim I do need some more information from you. Could you therefore please confirm the following? • As you have requested to be paid by bank transfer please confirm the account name, sort code and account number we should pay your compensation to. I look forward to hearing from you in due course. Yours sincerely Neil Curness Customer Relations Advisor Arriva Trains Wales I emailed them back with my details, and congratulated...

It only occurred to me a few days ago that October 2016 marks thirty years of bus 'deregulation' (i.e. privatisation) across most of the UK. You won't have heard anything about this momentous occasion on the TV or radio news, of course. Nor will you have read anti-nostalgic articles about 'the bad old days' in the national press. That's because bus service were only deregulated outside Greater London – and, of course, as far as the Westminster Bubble of politicians, journalists, newspaper columnists and business lobbyists are concerned, that's pretty much the extent of the Observable Universe. As for the rest of us, as I've pointed out on several occasions, deregulation panned out exactly as the prophets of doom (myself included) said it would. The results included wonderful spin-offs of the capitalist system: cheaper fares initially, which quickly shot back up after cut-throat competition forced smaller operators off the road; fewer services running on...

I was reading the  Wales on Sunday when I came across an item about the Plaid Cymru conference in Llangollen. The party's leader, Leanne Wood, had given her keynote speech, and among the topics she covered the South Wales Metro got a mention. Leanne and I discussed this briefly at a public meeting in Mountain Ash, back in the early spring. She'd come up to talk about the party and outline its vision for the future shape of Wales. During the Q&A session afterwards, I put my hand up . Cerith Griffiths, our former Westminster candidate and (at the time) Assembly candidate, spotted me and invited me to speak. I started off by saying, 'I'm sure there'd be a lot more people here tonight if every bus in the Cynon Valley didn't disappear at six o'clock.' That got a laugh from everyone, so it was a good start. I went on to outline the plight of people working outside the Cynon Valley, arriving back in Aberdare or Mountain Ash in the Twilight Zone, and then h...

The South Wales newspapers have run three stories about public transport in as many days. I thought I'd summarise them here. On June 28, Rhodri Clark reported that bus use in Wales has fallen to its lowest since records began in 1982. (The witty headline to the piece alludes to the fact that everyone in Wales – except me, because I know half the drivers by name anyway – will call the man behind the wheel 'Drive' when they get on or off the bus.) In 2013-14, 107 million passenger journeys were made on Welsh buses. This nadir coincided with the Welsh Government's decision to cut subsidies by 25%. Further reductions in services are planned as cash-strapped local authorities struggle to balance the books. I know correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but it's difficult not to draw your own conclusions, isn't it? According to the industry body CPT Cymru, some 800 services have been axed across the country. Passenger numbers fell by a further 3.3% in 201...

Since leaving politics, the former Conservative MP Michael Portillo has carved out a new career as a broadcaster. His Radio 4 series The Things We Forgot to Remember looks at major historical events from angles which don't normally get covered in books. However, in my opinion, his real triumph started from a brilliantly simple idea: to use a Victorian guide to the British railways as a basis for exploring the history and culture of these islands. Great British Railway Journeys does exactly what it says on the tin. Mr Portillo criss-crosses a section of the country by train, visiting places which were mentioned in George Bradshaw's guides from the 1860s. At each stop he meets a local guide and gets a potted history of some of the events which shaped this country's development in Victorian times. I watched three of these programmes back-to-back last night, and only stopped because my medication had kicked in. To be perfectly honest, I could have watched them all night witho...

There's a potentially fascinating event taking place in Cardiff tonight. Some former members of the Black Panthers are giving a talk at Butetown Community Centre, about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s. Tom F. sent me an invitation a couple of weeks ago, and I was very tempted to go. I shouldn't be at all surprised if my friend Leon C. was involved with organizing it. I haven't seen him for ages, but he's passionate about history and politics, and as a Black Cardiffian he's almost certainly had a hand in putting this occasion together. I'd love to have gone to the talk. It's an aspect of modern history which has interested me since I read an interview with Jalal Nuriddin, the founder member of The Last Poets, when I was about eighteen. Martin H. fancied the idea too; he used to send money to the Black Panthers when he was a radical young Oz -reading hippy. It would probably have appealed to Lew M. as well, and I can think of a few more friends w...