Isn’t there another way of looking at this. We seem, in a very British way, to be focussing on the class structure here.
A year or so back I did a lot of travel on cross Country services up and down from Scotland. After a couple of journeys that I would describe as heavily / unpleasantly overcrowded through the north and midlands, I decided (and paid) for first class tickets for the rest of my journeys. To me it wasn’t about the “free” paper cup with a teabag and some UHT milk in it, nor the marginally larger seats, it was about effectively guaranteeing a seat, and travelling for 8 hours in some level of comfort (being able to get to the toilet easily etc)
The subtext of the article seems to be “first class travellers seem to think they are more important than me, f*** that, I’m going to sit there”. Ignore the class argument, In my experience, they are just people willing to pay to avoid travelling in the crush conditions he’s complaining about.
As ever, his real (very badly put, it seems) argument, is about insufficient capacity on these services (widely acknowledged on threads here about cross country overcrowding, I see). But moaning about the TM or BTP doing their jobs will do little to lengthen a 170 !
