00:00 Really, I think that's the conclusion I have reluctantly drawn.
00:03 Certainly we've got the most anti-rail Prime Minister we have ever seen.
00:07 I mean, Rishi Sunak prefers helicopters to reach Southampton than he does catching the...
00:13 Why do you say he's anti-rail?
00:14 Oh, he's completely anti-rail.
00:15 Well, take the air passenger duty on domestic flights.
00:20 So the beneficiaries of halving that in April last year
00:27 were people who fly between Edinburgh and London
00:30 and therefore giving the plane an advantage over the train.
00:34 He's got no interest in settling the incredibly long running -
00:37 we're now in the third calendar year of strikes by as-left train drivers -
00:43 and it's now, I think, increasingly seen as an election wedge issue.
00:48 So the government doesn't really care.
00:50 The Department for Transport has been promising easier ticketing.
00:54 Really, since I've been working as a travel journalist,
00:57 which as you can imagine goes back some decades,
01:01 and it never happens, and Londoners, I think, are inured to it.
01:05 It's just a shame that visitors on who we absolutely depend
01:09 from a tourism point of view are being penalised in this way.
