Bollocks. The difference is that the north is predominantly Labour whereas they don't have a hope in hell of being elected in the south west!
Ah, the conspiracy theory of rolling stock allocation. So if it's for political advantage, why are they taking trains from Labour-voting South Wales to give to
FGW▸ ?
And the last time I looked, Plymouth, Exeter and Bristol were in the South West, with seven Labour
MPs▸ between them (and they held Camborne 1997-2005), plus, more widely, they have seats in FGW commuter territory out to Slough, as well as Reading, Oxford, Swindon, Gloucester, Worcester, Portsmouth, Southampton and Weymouth.
Lose that lot and they would be well on the way to defeat at the next general election, so if it's about politics, they should be pouring trains into FGW territory to shore up their support in 2009 or 2010, rather than wasting them on areas where they will win anyway.
Do you actually think that transport ministers, who usually seem to last no more than a year in the job under both the current Labour and past Tory regimes, have the time and enough knowledge of the rail system to cook up the kind of thing you are suggesting? The
DfT» civil servants do what their fellow civil servants in the Treasury tell them to do - find the cheapest bodge-up way to do things - hence the franchise agreement FGW signed up to.
