OK, How About Every Ticket Costs £500, Suggest Train Companies

Britain’s railway thieves today responded to demands for clarity on ticket pricing from the Office Of Rail Regulation, the industry watchdog, by offering to scrap their byzantine labyrinth of unfathomable fares and replace them all with a crystal-clear price of £500 per journey.

"Tickets, please"

“It’s hardly our fault if the travelling public is too dim to steal our top-secret map of Britain’s rail network, identify each station along their route, enter them all into a spreadsheet, spend a day interrogating thetrainline.com, enter all the prices of all possible tickets along every alternative route, write a function to calculate every conceivable fare combination and thereby save - for example - over £20 on a day trip to Bristol from Plymouth simply by purchasing three consecutive tickets between Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton and Bristol for the same train,” complained an ATOC spokesman.

“Only a complete and utter passenger would fork out £51.50 for the Off-Peak Return simply because we say that’s the cheapest ticket,” he pointed out smugly. “You’ll notice that we don’t for a second suggest that it’s the cheapest journey, of course, because we don’t actually let you ask.”

He added that even undiscovered tribes in the Amazon rainforest knew instinctively that it costs six times as much to get from London to Birmingham New Street by 0915 and back in the evening if they travel from Euston station instead of nearby Marylebone.

Train Company Starts Laughing In Passengers’ Faces

That'll look nice rammed up his arse

Squashed paupers on Chiltern Railways’ hellish commuter services into London Marylebone will be relentlessly tormented by cackling staff, after the bloated train operating company capriciously decided to squander Christ knows how much of their victims’ eye-watering season ticket fees on paying pint-sized baldy Blairite grave-robber Tony Robinson to teach them the knack of professional piss-taking.

Human cattle will be openly mocked with scornful taunts, such as:

“You’re going to spend the next hour and a half with your face in some sweaty fat bastard’s armpit, shortarse”;

“See that smug wanker with the iPod? He’s screwing your wife on Friday afternoons”;

“While we’re parked here at West Ruislip just to annoy you, perhaps you’d like to pass the time by wondering whether you’d arrive on time if you had the balls to leg it over to platform 1 and board the tube train that’s been sitting there for the last ten minutes”;

“If you think London’s a shithole now, wait until the Olympics kick off!”

“We have a cunning plan, my lord,” chortled Chiltern’s comedy manager Chad Collins unhilariously, clutching his heaving sides as guffawing lackeys crammed another hapless sufferer onto the 0655 at Birmingham Moor Street.

Passengers Baffled By Concept Of ‘Worst Train Operator’

Thank you for travelling with First Great Western, suckers

A survey has confused long-suffering rail users by suggesting that one useless, thieving train operating company could somehow be even worse than the other useless, thieving train operating companies, it emerged today.

“As far as I’m aware, the only possible difference concerns the various garish colour schemes they inflict on their trains,” moaned a rail victim at Paddington, who was in a state of shock after being mugged for £264 for a cattle-class return ticket to Penzance on First Great Western’s ‘heritage’ line. “But all of them give me the same blinding headache.”

Meanwhile, at Euston, one of Richard Branson’s hapless prey was being kicked screaming onto the 0803 by fiendish minions after waving his tearful goodbyes to a hard-earned £158 for the dubious privilege of being dumped in a reeking Birmingham cave after considerably more than 84 minutes of nausea, punctuated by a persistent idiot with a trolley but no understanding of the basic principles of coffee.

Hornby Unveils Future Of Train Sets

Train sets are to be boosted into the 21st century and beyond with the announcement by Hornby that, by 2026, all curved track sections will be deleted from their catalogue.

“This will transform train sets as we know them,” said Hornby CEO Justine Greening. “The traditional oval-track design has been keeping speed down ever since train sets were invented.”

The ultra-modern train set, she explained, will whisk tiny plastic figures from the bathroom all the way to your dad’s smelly old shed at the far end of the back garden in half the time it would take today, if little people living in your toilet fancied a day out to take in the exciting scent of creosote. From the shed, the long-awaited CrossRockery line would connect your toy people with routes to your friends’ houses and beyond via the Hedgerow Tunnel, she added - and Hornby are also hoping to extend the route onward into your front garden later.

At last, your little plastic folk will finally have somewhere else to go

Scalextric fans, however, have pointed out that the sections you will have to buy to build your new layout are going up from £3.49 per Long Straight Track (R603) segment to £149.99, while your dad has also noticed that no model trains in the Hornby catalogue are actually capable of taking advantage of the speed potential of the curve-free route - meaning that you will have to import all your rolling stock from Lima or Märklin.

Meanwhile, your sister has raised vociferous objections to the route of your planned high speed model railway passing straight through her designated area of Outstanding Natural Shagging.

Tube Drivers Helping Londoners Not To Spend Last Few Pounds

Don't do it

London Underground’s train drivers are desperately trying to persuade the capital’s population to keep that last pound or two of their overdraft facilities for a rainy day, by selflessly refusing to transport them to the sales.

“If you add up all the odd pounds that Londoners could be spending today, it adds up to millions,” explained ASLEF general secretary Mick Notwhelan. “These days, that’s a tidy sum. Our members reckon it would be prudent for London to hang onto it in case it's needed for something really important, such as paying them even more for the terrible chore of doing their jobs during the Olympics.”

Members of the public are not entirely convinced by the drivers’ cautionary plan, though.

“Want… bargain…” grunted optimistic consumers as they tried to push their Central Line tube train from Epping to Tottenham Court Road, driven by the unlikely conviction that iPads might be reduced to three for £1.99.

Phase 1 Of Boris' Vision Of London Rolled Out

Trains Fantastically Good Value To Taxpayers, Claim Operators, As Long As They Only Pay Tax In France, Holland Or Germany

Britain’s cash-crammed train operators hit back at transport secretary Philip Hammond’s description of Britain’s trains as “rich men’s toys”, claiming that the services they run offered excellent value for the taxpayer, albeit only if the taxpayer in question should happen to be domiciled in France, the Netherlands or Germany for tax purposes.

It's fast, and it's full of happy taxpayers

“Monsieur ‘ammond, ‘e should look in ‘is underpants isn’t it, as your fonny liddle English saying ‘as it,” said a bloated Gallic spokesman for the Association of Train Exploiting Companies, as a waiter carefully lowered an after-eight mint covered in gold leaf into his gaping maw.

“Ze taxpayers of France, ‘olland and Germany, zey pay ‘ardly anyzing at all to subsidise zair glorious state-run ‘igh-speed rail systems,” he added, pausing only to vomit gallons of paté de foie gras into a platinum bucket. “Not since ze SNCF, NED and ze Deutsche Bahn came up wiz ze, ‘ow you say, ‘wizard wheeze’ of renting ze creaking buckets of rust off ze banks, sending zem on zair wobbly way along ze rickety British tracks, zen ‘itting ze ridiculous British commuters wiz zair silly bowler ‘ats an’ zair peculiar Times crosswords for all ze eye-watering fare increases an’ ‘uge government subsidies zey could get away wiz.”

“Ze glorious taxpayers of France, ‘olland an’ Germany ‘ave never ‘ad it so good,” he added, before exploding. “Zo shot op an’ cough op ze £120 for ze peak-time return from Birming’am to Euston, you stupeed liddle rosbif.”

Government Finally Abolishes The Word ‘Honour’

Enough said

With the award of a knighthood for Brian Souter, the rapacious and homophobic head of Stagecoach, for working harder than anyone else to give Britain a transportation system worthy of the third world, dictionary compilers have accepted that the word ‘honour’ – as in ‘Queen’s Birthday Honours’ - has now officially lost all meaning and will be deleted from future editions.

“Brian Souter is the perfect capitalist bastard,” said a spokesman for the Oxford Dictionary. “He spent £500,000 on his own dodgy ‘referendum’, publishing a stream of misinformation and lies in an effort to stop councils from saying that homosexuality was acceptable whilst strenuously denying that he was in any way homophobic. In the same vein, although he cut his drivers’ wages and broke a strike with scab labour, this didn’t seem to strike him as incompatible in any way with his proclaimed support of trade unionism.”

“But then, this is a man who says, ‘ethics are not irrelevant but some are incompatible with what we have to do, because capitalism is based on greed’, yet firmly believes he’s earned his place in his Calvinist heaven,” he added. “No doubt David Cameron thinks these are admirable values which deserve recognition, in much the same way that he seems to think that we’re all too stupid to notice all the gongs he’s thrown at his thieving City mates, because we’re so happy that dear old Brucie finally got a K for not letting senility get in the way of his earnings. But please, let’s not call this circus of shame ‘honours’ any more. Language has to retain some shred of meaning.”

Londoners Aghast At Having To Use Bus, Car or Walk Like Everyone Else

Jeremy Paxman may well die here if somebody doesn't rescue him

The world officially came to an end at 5pm today, as a Tube strike cruelly forced people who work in the media and other Londoners to use the same modes of transport as the rest of the country.

“I’ve just walked two sodding miles out of my way to North Finchley bus station,” a puce-faced sub-editor from the Guardian roared at a hapless Metrolink driver. “No bugger saw fit to inform me that I could get on at that funny stick thing just round the corner from my house. Why isn’t this kind of essential information available to the travelling public? Oh, you are so going to get shit for this in tomorrow’s edition, my friend.”

Similar tales of misery were being repeated all over the capital, as bolshie bus drivers not only flatly refused to take credit cards, but even had the sneering impudence to ask if passengers had anything smaller than a £20 note.

Meanwhile, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has officially been reported as missing. He is believed to be trapped on a circling bus because of a tragic inability to say ‘excuse me’ to standing passengers blocking his exit.

'3,000mph Trains? Sure, Why Not?' Shrugs Transport Secretary

Speaking from the top of his shiny head, Lord Adonis today announced an exciting futuristic vision in which everybody was whizzing round Britain at 3,000mph on special anti-gravity trains.

"In the future - either next week on in the year one billion - all trains will be ten miles long, carry a million passengers and draw their power from a star in a carbon-neutral pocket universe," declared the transport secretary brightly. "Here, hand me my crayons and I'll draw it for you."

As he scrawled, the visionary minister went on to explain that the rail network of the future could easily be financed by minting really big coins worth a hundred million thousand pounds each.

"As people travel longer and longer distances to work, they will think nothing of a daily commute from the Outer Hebrides," he gushed excitedly. "Because they will only just have settled into their hover-chair and downloaded the Daily Telepath directly into their second brains, and they'll be at the City of London Spaceport - where a teleport taxi will instantaneously whisk their molecules directly to their desk-podules."

"It's completely brilliant," he added. "Aren't I a clever boy? I need to go to the bathroom."

The Association of Train Operating Companies are said to be carefully studying Lord Adonis' mainly-orange plans on the walls of his play area, but have already issued a press statement declaring that they welcome any improvements to the infrastructure of the rail network, as long as they don't have to pay a penny towards them.

Londoners Now 'At Shocking Levels'

London is now crammed so full of horrible, selfish bastards that non-Londoners often have to psych themselves up to travel there, according to a report published today.

"I got on the Tube this morning, and I was outraged to find other people in MY carriage," bellowed an insufferable shit from Islington, as he beat a ticket inspector senseless with a rolled-up copy of the Financial Times. "How DARE they?"

The report's authors found that many awful Londoners have developed strategies for making travel on the Underground as hellish as possible - including staring aggressively at the nearest passenger whilst rubbing their genitals, violently swinging a carrier bag containing a jagged sheet of armour plate, and spraying their armpits with stale urine.

The government also waded into the debate, pointing out that the influx of millions of foreign tourists for the 2012 Olympics should make life in London so unimaginably appalling that spending eternity in the fires of Hell would seem like a stroll in the Cotswolds.

A Transport for London spokesman said the organisation was spending billions of pounds on upgrading the network, replacing trains with approximately a quarter of a million single-seat 'Tube taxis' which can be hailed and ordered to go anywhere on the network, causing instant traffic chaos on the lines and bringing London to a standstill in seconds.

"Happy now?" he demanded. "Of course you aren't. Because you're Londoners."

One Man In Britain Actually Surprised By £1000 Train Ticket

A Scottish hermit emerged blinking from a disused tin mine in Cornwall today, for the first time since British Rail was split up into over a hundred companies and given away to thieves, and was somewhat surprised to learn that a first-class return from the arse end of England to its Scottish equivalent now costs over a thousand pounds.

"Ma puir old nan's deid, an' the funeral's Friday," whimpered Wee Jimmy Bampot, as he sold himself to a Bulgarian pimp to raise the necessary funds.

Until today, nobody had ever bought the £1,002 ticket from scenic, vomit-stained Pewquay to picturesque, deserted Kyle of Locharse, according to a laughing spokesman for Cross Country Trains.

"If Mr Bampot's grandmother had taken the trouble to give a couple of weeks' advance warning of her imminent demise so he could book ahead, he would only have had to pay a very reasonable £561," he giggled. "That's less than a sixth of the cost of chartering yourself a twin-engined plane and pilot, you know."

Thoughtful Motorists Carefully Weigh Pros and Cons of Parking Charge Plans

Millions of enraged motorists sitting alone in their cars punched their steering wheels, dashboards and windscreens until their fists bled today as they sat in traffic jams this afternoon on the way home from work, on hearing the news that the government intends to charge their town-centre employers £250 for every member of staff who drives into work.

The levy is to be trialled in Nottingham in 2012, with councils in Milton Keynes, Oxford and Cambridge also expressing an interest. The scheme is designed to raise funds for local councils to spend on public transport infrastructure.

"How dare the government interfere in my God-given right to drive my beautiful car wherever I bloody like, whenever I bloody please?" thundered a red-faced Nottingham motorist who had just popped into town to get a pint of milk. "Fuck it - as soon as I get home I'm to fill my car with explosives, then I'll be right back to drive it straight into the front of the Guildhall. That'll teach the greedy, thieving bastards to fuck with my human rights."

"'Course, with all this bleeding traffic that could take an hour," he added furiously, "And I only live a mile away, would you believe?"

"Everyone knows that public transport is just a sort of mobile drop-in centre for mentals and coffin-dodgers," shouted a fuming woman in a cute red Mini she called Horace for some reason only known to herself. "I'd rather kill myself now than be gang-raped by a busload of perverts while the ape-like retard at the wheel jumps up and down on the pedals in some kind of voyeuristic frenzy."

"Now we really are living in Nazi Germany," yelled a man in a white van at a set of traffic lights. Dozens of other road users cheered their agreement, then screamed, "Fucking wake up and get a fucking move on, you dozy fucking twat."

Jeremy Clarkson is reportedly under heavy sedation in hospital, after swearing his lips to shreds when he heard of the plans.

Nationalised Express

Lord Adonis, the mythical god of transport, has announced that he will be taking direct control of the East Coast rail franchise, and is furiously trying to wrestle current operator Hornby Express away from a transformer with a big knob on the front.

As an ageing toy InterCity 125 grinds intermittently round the oval track - labouring under the weight of dozens of successive coats of paint, and emitting sparks from its rusty wheels - a glistening Lord Adonis put the franchisee in a headlock and told reporters that he was also seeking to take control of the railcars and puffing billies of Hornby Express' other franchises, East Anglia and c2c.

However, the purple-faced operator gasped that the East Coast franchise was in fact run by a completely separate Special Purpose Vehicle, set up under the relevant Department for Transport rules in order to provide the parent company with minimal financial liability and legal responsibility, and warned that if Lord Adonis tried to take any of its sister companies' rolling stock out of their sidings he would be up in front of the fat cat controller.

"You can keep your manky old East Coast line anyway," it huffed angrily as it broke free. "There's a dead connection in the tunnel, so you have to poke the train out with a ruler - and the curves still aren't nailed down, so if you take them at any sort of speed the track comes apart, the train falls off the table and the cat goes shooting up the curtains out of fright."

Lord Adonis carefully rearranged his flowing locks and pranced out of the attic to design what he promised would be "a dynamic new colour scheme fit for the train operating companies of the 21st century". Meanwhile the untended model train jumped the buffers at Edinburgh Waverley Station, sending sections of platform skidding across the bare board.

"I just want a train that goes as fast as they used to in the days of steam, arrives roughly when it's supposed to and doesn't require a sodding mortgage for the privilege of being wedged into cattle class with an intimate view of somebody else's dandruff," said one long-suffering passenger as he sat patiently on a platform bench." Or is that too much to ask?"

"I'd much sooner travel by Scalextric any day," he added crossly, "But some bastard appears to have glued me to my seat."

He was then eaten by the cat.

Rest of Britain Feels London's Pain

The millions of provincial Britons too dull and uninteresting to live in London were moved to tears by the unimaginable suffering of the capital's residents on this, the second day of the devastating Tube strike.

"Oi got no idear wot a choob be, but oi'm sure oi cuddent servoive a minute wi'out wun," said Mr Wurzel McSpreader, a bumptious legal executive from quaint, rustic Birmingham. "Oi sorr all they bootiful Lunnen fowks on the goggle-box down Currys when I brung me pig ter maarket. Them porr buggas wuz orl sobbin' an' wailin' at a bus stop, and me 'aart furr wen' owt to they."

London's fabulous citizens have been advised to plan their journeys and to allow extra time for travel by alternative means. Mayor Boris Johnson, meanwhile, claims to have discovered something called 'feet', which he believes could be used to travel for short distances, especially in Central London. Haggard Londoners, however, reacted to the suggestion with fury.

"See these?" screamed one hysterical traveller, pointing at her shoes. "They're Manolo Blahniks, damn you. I didn't spend £800 so they could be torn to shreds on these ugly, rough pavements. If Boris bloody Johnson wants me to walk, he can jolly well spend a bit of my council tax on carpeting South Kensington."

Shocked by such hardships, straw-sucking bumpkins from the sticks have been moved to organise fund-raising events, hoping to buy a horse and cart to send to the aid of their betters before they die of apoplexy, inconvenience and despair.

"Oi be orkshunnin' moi proize turnip, see?" said Mr Denzil Cesspit, from the sleepy hamlet of Manchester. "Rowl opp, rowl opp, oo'll gimme a groat fer this 'ere luvverly swede 'ere to 'elp they faancy buggers daarn sowf? C'maarn me luvvers, 'ave a 'arrt!"

Plymouth Now Up To 1985, Say Time Warp Experts

The city of Plymouth - which, following a top-secret scientific experiment carried out by the Navy which went horribly wrong, was sucked into a time warp several decades ago - is reported to have caught up with the 1980s at last, according to reports that the Conservative-led council has just discovered Thatcherism.

Council leader Vivien Pengelly took time out from bleaching her hair to say that her plan to sell the city-owned bus company to a rich friend of a fellow Tory was inspired by Post Office Telephones' amusing Busby cartoon character and the gas board's elusive Sid.

"Sadly, Plymouth is a democracy, and I need to convince the scum that this is in their best interests, rather than just a spurious attempt to make it look like I've single-handedly wiped out a £39m budget deficit when next year's council elections come around," smiled a blue-suited Mrs Pengelly. "Perhaps we ought to spend a few million quid of their council tax on an advertising campaign featuring a lovable cuddly character, possibly called Vivien."

"This new 'privatisation' idea will bring untold benefits to Plymouth," she continued. "A bus company owned by a respectable get-rich-quick taxi operator will reduce fares to zero, run 24-hour services to your doorstep, purchase a fleet of luxury buses with armchairs and topless waitresses and transform this city into a veritable paradise, where everyone will be a millionaire. Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!"

However, Labour group leader Eddie Tudor-Pole expressed anger that he hadn't thought of the idea in the days when he was running Plymouth as his own personal fiefdom.

"Selling off one of Plymouth's few remaining assets is irresponsible, short-sighted opportunism which will come back to haunt the city for ever more," he said. "Mrs Pengelly herself told me when I tried to sell the housing stock. And I told her the same thing when she carried on selling the housing stock."

"Hello, we exist," said a token Liberal Democrat, whose party has no seats on the council.

If the sale goes ahead, Mrs Pengelly plans to use the revenue to buy a small rowing boat and declare war on distant Exeter.

"It's very sad really," said an expert on relativity at Plymouth Polytechnic. "One day Plymouth is going to discover that the British Empire no longer exists, with dire consequences for its entirely navy-centred economy. Although it may take 25 years for them to realise it."

Sir Francis Drake was not available for comment, although he is expected back from his round-the-world voyage any day now.

Rail Fares Now More Expensive Than Chartering Your Own Private 747, Probably, Warns Watchdog

Millions of Britons fell off their chairs in surprise today, on hearing the astounding news that UK train fares were a bit pricey.

The national rail-users' group Passenger Focus announced their astonishing discovery this morning, saying that annual season tickets for short journeys were up to 88% more expensive than in France - the second most expensive country in Europe. Some long-distance journeys were theoretically cheaper, admitted the watchdog - but only for one lucky passenger who happened to book at the exact moment when the affordable seat on the entire journey appeared unexpectedly in the booking system.

A three-ton ginger spokestom for the Association of Train Operating Companies explained the fares structure in unusually succinct terms, telling reporters to "Piss off." The same sentiment was also expressed by the Transport Secretary and stripper, Lord Adonis - although, when threatened with a wet towel, he pointed out that rail fares had actually gone down in relation to the cost of a loaf of bread.

Lah-Di-Dah Welshmen Too Far Up Own Arses To Propose On Chavmobile, Complains Arriva

A bus company has hit out at the stuck-up people of Wrexham for having a modicum of taste, after nobody sank low enough to fall for their tacky marketing ploy of renting out a tarted-up bus for romantic dorks to propose on.

A spokesman for Arriva Wales said that, despite displaying "Will You Marry Me?" on its destination board and bearing choice treats from the master chocolatiers of Lidl and a bottle of best bubbly Lambrini, "not a single snooty Welsh ponce" had come forward with the cash to hire the 'love bus'.

"We ran the same offer in Yorkshire and found a willing mug," he fumed. "But obviously the lords and ladies of Wrexham are far too bloody high and mighty to roll up in a garishly-coloured bus and pop the question while hanging on for dear life in the baby-buggy stowage area as the driver stamps on the pedals. Well, bugger the lot of them - since they're so bleeding posh, the fares are going up on Monday."

"Next year, we'll give it a go in Swansea," he added. "They'll lap it up down there, they're not proud."

However, several prospective grooms from the city claimed that other factors had dissuaded them from declaring their undying love on a bus - for example, it didn't go anywhere near their loved ones' house, it would probably turn up late or not at all, it would swiftly fill up with freeloading coffin-dodgers using it as a day centre on wheels, and the back seats would certainly be infested by shouty teenage chavs whose vocabulary consisted mainly of the word 'fuck'.

"I can get all that down the pub, can't I?" commented one amorously-inclined Wrexhamite. "Which is where I'll be proposing to Sharon tonight, after about ten pints of SA."