Virgin have put out a press release: https://www.virgintrains.co.uk/about/media-room/#/pressreleases/virgin-trains-clarifies-labour-leaders-claim-of-ram-packed-service-1530005

There is an attached Word document containing several CCTV^▸ (Closed Circuit Tele Vision) stills.  Mr Corbyn passes many completely unreserved seats.  After filming his piece, he is then seen to return to a seat.  So much for being seatless...

That is true, but the vehicles do have the company logo on the doors.  I doubt they would advertise the vehicle as "[company name] executive hire" if it weren't properly licensed.

I found the local authority has an online search for looking up licensed people.  Every driver I've had is listed there (they send a text message with the driver's full name before it arrives).  No idea why they are not displaying the private hire plate.

The taxis we use for work are the same: usually a silver Merc or other executive vehicle.  No meter (fare is fixed price on account) and no private hire plates.  I've always thought this a bit strange, but it's a large company with many drivers, so the council will be fully aware of their business.

Yes, they cancelled it after getting in the vehicle.  Once you get in, they tap a button on their version of the app to start the "meter".  He chose to press another few buttons, which cancelled the journey.  This was possible as he hadn't pressed to button to say we had got in the car.

TfL^» (Transport for London - about)'s implementation of the contactless system does not actually respect the £30 maximum.  They use contactless simply to capture the card details (i.e. the software on your card is not aware a transaction is taking place).  Later on (usually overnight), your journeys are determined and the fare for that day calculated.  This combined total is charged as one or many "card not present" transactions.

My understanding is that TfL have received special dispensation from the card networks to do this.

Currently there is only one daily fare cap over £30: Gatwick Airport to Zones 1-9 (ex Gatwick Express).

On the desktop website, I cannot get past the reservations and journey details page.  £1.45 (with railcard) to Inverness and back seemed rather exceptional value.

There was a similar issue several years ago, raised on another forum, where London Terminals to Finsbury Park allowed any routeing, provided it included some journey on the East Coast Main Line.  £8 in First Class from London to Inverness and back.

I seem to recall there being some debate about the ethics, but the consensus was the ticket would be valid when accompanied by the itinerary from the booking confirmation.

In the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), it appears to be available in cities only.  This is also dependant on local licensing authorities, e.g. although Uber is "available" in Cambridge, there are no drivers licensed by the council, so you will only ever be able to request a taxi if there's a driver from a surrounding area nearby (highly unlikely).

I recently attempted to get a taxi at 8:30am in Aberystwyth (population approx. 15,000) and failed with every company I tried calling.  Uber is not available there and it is unlikely many drivers would accept such short fares early in the morning anyway.

I've used the taxi requesting app Uber several times in the past, all in major cities to request journeys to/from airports.  Everything worked really well.  Yesterday, I decided to do the same in Portsmouth to travel home after lunch.

I noticed "surge pricing" was in effect.  This is where the fare increases at popular times to encourage more drivers to start working.  The surge was varying between 1.3x and 3.7x.  As the fare was around £15, I had no intention of paying over £55 for the same journey.

Eventually the surge dropped to 1.3x and I requested a taxi which was accepted.  Driver arrived within two minutes and we got into the vehicle.  On doing this, I received an immediate push notification saying the driver had cancelled the journey.  He then insisted Uber had cancelled it (the message from Uber suggested otherwise) and I should re-request in my app.

Re-requested a taxi and the surge had increased to 3.4x!  It seemed to me that the driver was trying to manipulate the system by turning lower fares into higher multiple.  In the end, we got out of the taxi as it would have been cheaper to use a hackney cab from the taxi rank down the street.

A few minutes later, surge pricing completely ended and I had my request accepted by another driver who took us at standard rates.

I can't say I was impressed with the app yesterday.  The availability of drivers outside the main city centre was poor and there's no guarantee that an accepted request will actually turn into a journey.

1072 is the code for London Terminals.  I've edited my original post to make this clearer.

The second looks like it came from a Scheidt & Bachmann Ticket XPress.  The font has definitely improved recently, as previously characters and lines were overlapping.

Neither passengers nor staff seem to like the new design.  Tickets look like receipts and it is slower to determine the ticket validity.

Oddly, non-compulsory reservations are still printed in the old style.  This means you can end up with a new style ticket, but old style reservation (which looks more like it should be the ticket).

And, of course, some machines are still printing in the old format.

Yet more confusion caused by an apparent simplication.

Yes, the current ticket size constrains what information can be printed.  There is a new design on the credit card sized stock but the content looks too squashed.  The new tickets can be as long or short as needed to fit the relevant information and they can be folded easily, to fit into wallets or purses.

The larger tickets were issued by a few online retailers many years ago.  They are still issued by some travel agents and sales agents overseas (they can use the same ticket stock as they do for domestic tickets within their own country).  I seem to recall seing someone with a BritRail pass issued like this in the very recent past.

Examples of the new tickets have been posted on RailUK Forums: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showpost.php?p=2605110&postcount=123

Although the new tickets are currently only being used for on-train sales, I am hopeful that a full transition towards thermal roll printing will reduce the cost of TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) (as they won't need custom printing components) and lead to their introduction at more stations without such facilities.  This would also mean that tickets won't be constrained to a fixed size and multi-leg reservations could be printed on one coupon, rather than this:

Just been in Yr Hen Orsaf at Aberystwyth station.  Staff friendly and pub clean.  Nice outdoorish seating area with views directly out onto the station platform, under the station canopy.

The mixed grill (£9.99 including a pint, not on steak club day) was ok but not very big.  The steak and lamb were quite small but cooked perfectly.  There were approximately 12 chips which didn't seem very generous (I won't go into calculating the volume of each item).



Beers on offer included Doom Bar (£2.45) and a local(ish) beer Dragon's Revenge (£2.19).  Disappointed to see no Brain's S.A. and no "Welsh" products on the menu except flaming dragon curry (seem to recall a steak+ale pie, faggots and something leek related in the past).

Indeed.  I have recently used both the airside 'spoons at Glasgow and Edinburgh airports.  Prices are the same at both.

The drinks are reasonably priced (not Wetherspoons typical prices, but still cheaper than many pubs on the high street): £3.55 for a pint of Doom Bar (CAMRA vouchers accepted).

Food is pricey.  The burgers (typically £4.59 with soft drink or £5.59 with alcoholic drink, outside Central London) were only available as "gourmet upgrades" (typically £6.59 or £7.59) but priced at £10 to £11.50 without the drink and without the onion rings.  Add on £3.55 for a pint and you're looking at minimum £5.96 more for less food.  Also meals like chilli con carne are around £11.50 (again, slightly different meal contents to the standard high street chilli and rice option).  No steak on offer, presumably because steak knives are not permitted airside.  No daily "clubs" (steak, curry, chicken, mexican, fish).

I visited both airports on a Wednesday evening two weeks apart.  In Glasgow, we were the only customers in the pub and speeded through security in less than 30 seconds.  At Edinburgh, the pub was almost completely full and security was painfully slow.  Service in Glasgow was much better than in Edinburgh.