Standing up for 'different types of people' (From Watford Observer)

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Standing up for 'different types of people'

5:27pm Monday 22nd February 2010

Sir Nicholas Winterton’s recent comments about first-class carriages made my blood boil. Apparently, the better class of people like Sir Nicholas - he’s an MP - actually need the peace, silence and surety of a seat to ensure that they are able to work while they are travelling.

Fulminating against the reforms of the House of Commons introduced in the wake of the expenses scandal, Sir Nicholas - no slouch himself when it comes to claiming - exploded: “They want to stop Members of Parliament travelling first class…So are we supposed to stand when there are no seats?…I’m sorry, it infuriates me.”

I had to read that line twice when I first saw it.

All I can say is that it’s a jolly good thing that he doesn’t travel on my trains every morning and evening, where the possibility of me getting a seat is even more remote than the likelihood of me winning a medal in the female heptathlon at London 2012.

Digging himself more vigorously into his dinosaur trap, Sir Nicholas went on to complain on BBC Radio 5 Live about the “totally different type of people in standard class”.

“There’s lots of children,” he explained, “there’s noise, there’s activity. I like to have peace and quiet when I’m travelling.”

Personally, I’d just be grateful for the occasional seat. I’d happily forgo the apparent nirvana of ‘peace and quiet’ to be able to park my bottom, and breathe for 35 minutes each way, instead of being crushed in the middle of a standing crowd and stifled by a raised armpit. But then again, I’m obviously the ‘different type of person’ Sir Nicholas is worried about meeting in a standard-class carriage.

Actually, there are hundreds of thousands of us ‘different types of persons’ - hard-working, tax-paying - voting - ordinary people crammed into the mobile Black Holes of Calcutta that apparently pass for rail carriages these days.

If it were up to me, it’s not just MP’s I’d ban from first-class carriages, it’s everyone - at rush hour at any rate.

Rail companies bleat about the importance of revenue gained from offering first -class travel and, apparently there’s even a government obligation on them to offer these ridiculous anomalies. But anyone who has had the misfortune to travel like a sardine in standard class during the morning and evening commuter peak will tell you that there’s nothing more likely to make the average ‘different type of person’ want to storm the barricades and shout ‘Vive la Revolution’ than the sight of an empty first-class compartment.

Considering that my incredibly busy line, ‘First Crapital’, seems to offer at least three of these abominations on each train - even when the usual eight-carriage trains have been mysteriously and regularly swapped for four-carriage ones - I think you’ll agree it’s time for the government (even if that unfortunately includes stegosaurs like Sir Nicholas) to reconsider.

Just last week, an elderly woman with a walking stick clambered unsteadily aboard my morning train and was forced to stand (amid a score of others) in the area separating standard class from first class.

Even if someone in the standard-class section had wanted to offer her a seat it is unlikely that she would have been able to reach it through the crush of bodies.

Noticing her discomfort, I disengaged myself from the coat sleeve of the man wedged between us and leaned round him to suggest that she should take a seat in the totally deserted first-class carriage behind us.

“Ooh, I couldn’t do that, love,” she answered, “it’s against the law.”

I was furious.

Since when has it been lawful to compel frail, elderly ‘different types of people’ to suffer, so that people like Sir Nicholas can do their paperwork in peace? Sometime around the birth of Queen Victoria, I venture.

Describing the various horrors that might befall an MP forced to run shoulders with the very people he purports to represent, Sir Nicholas added: “If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulders the entire time.”

My heart bleeds for the old torysaurus. I mean, it must be bad enough not having peace and quiet to fill out your expenses claim, without having people watching you do it.

****

Plenty of ‘different types of people’ like me thoroughly enjoyed listening to stylist Gok Wan on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs a couple of weeks ago. To be honest, it was a bit a relief to hear someone I actually recognised for once.

Generally I tune in then tune out when Kirsty introduces her guests, mainly because they are usually hugely worthy, but incredibly dull physicists with a deep interest in dirgy, obscure classical music played on violins.

Perky Gok not only had an interesting and moving story to tell, but he also chose some songs I knew.

Wracking my brains, I can only recall this happening twice before, once with comedian David Walliams and once with Hugh Grant. (I imagine that if you are a psychiatrist reading this column, I’ve probably told you more about myself here than I’d like you to know.) Gok’s appearance on Radio 4’s Holy of Holies has apparently raised the ire and eyebrows of the programme’s usual devotees - presumably the sort of people who recognise dirgy violin music. Scores of them have complained about him lowering the tone.

I think his selection was just too noisy for them.

And continuing this, unfortunately, unquiet spirit of Sir Nicholas Winterton, came this week’s spat on the Today programme between a couple of music critics - one from The Times and one from the Telegraph.

The pair defended very different views of ITV’s reality programme, Pop Star to Opera Star, where second-tier celebrities attempted to kick-start their flagging careers by competently belting out a couple of verses of something by Verdi.

The man from the Telegraph was aghast at the prospect of Nolan Sister, Bernie, swapping the seminal notes of ‘I’m in the Mood for Dancing’ for Puccini’s ‘One Fine Day’, while the chap from The Times was all for the programme’s efforts to popularise an area of culture that usually seems excusive and elitist.

As I listened to the debate, while getting ready for work and girding my loins to join the other cattle herding on the platform down at the station, I realised Sir Nicholas’ fears about encountering a ‘totally different type of person’ in standard class were probably shared by the Telegraph’s opera buff.