Great Western Coffee Shop

Quoting (myself on Facebook):

Have you your tickets yet for Any Questions at the Assembly Hall on Friday 14th July? Three panel members have been announced - Thangam Debbonaire MP, Richard Foord MP and John Glen MP.  Both Thangam and John are MPs from within our region and I was involved with them in rail campaigning a couple of years back; big respeect for both of them. Richard is the MP for Tiverton, where I was admiring the museum the other week; he has been tweeting on ticket office closures within the last 24 hours.

Questions of Friday need to be national but will be very interesting.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001npgh and tickets via https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/booking/select/RdiEJKhzXNnT

This evening - 14th July 2023 - the BBC's "Any Questions" on Radio 4 will be broadcast live at 20:00 from Melksham. "Alex Forsyth presents political debate from Melksham Assembly Hall in Wiltshire with Thangam Debbonaire MP, Richard Foord MP, John Glen MP and Katherine Bennett."

It will be repeated at 13:10 tomorrow (Saturday 15th July) and that will be followed by "Any Answers" after the 14:00 news with Anita Anand hosting a follow up phone-in.

It's just possible that there might be someone in the audience wishing to ask a question about ticket office closures.  I have interacted with both John and Thangam on rail topics such as the loss of he Bristol Temple Meads to London Waterloo service, and Richard has been tweeting his concerns about the closure of his local ticket office in Tiverton within the last couple of days.

More details at http://grahamellis.uk/blog924.html

‘Loss of the Bristol Temple Meads to London service’?

I have added a "Waterloo"

The worst effected were Trowbridge and Bradford-on-Avon but there was wide co-lateral damage and both John and Thangam were engaged with the campaign because of that. John Glen as perhaps the least effected, as he's the Salisbury MP and has little direct interest in people just passing through his constutuency.

Given that his constituency includes a particularly congested length of the A303 that makes up the roads-based alternative to the region's very weak rail system, he should certainly be interested. There's surely plenty from his constituents.

Mark

Radio 4's Any Questions heading to Lostwithiel on Friday 1st September. 1800.

Lostwithiel Community Centre.

Tickets available

Right on cue the Stonehenge Tunnel's just been given the green light.

Mark

What, another one?

Must be a slack news day or something.  I'm sure this project's had more false starts than the Olympics

Must be - according to the local BBC TV news this one's a tunnel under Stonehenge!.

Of course it's "under" Stonehenge; if it wasn't, there wouldn't be much of a high profile story if you said it was hundreds of yards away from the stones. "Don't let the facts......................"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001npgh

Ticket office question, and what the panel had to say when asked - from 40 minutes in.

Last Night, MPs John Glen, Thangam Debbonaire and Richard Foord, and Katherine Bennett (CEO of High Value Manufacturing Catapult) address questions in Melksham Assembly Hall on the BBC's "Any Questions" hosted by Alex Forsyth.  Questions were asked on the government's acceptance of the pay review body recommendations of 6% to 8%, on whether news interesting to the public was always in the public interest, on whether Ukraine should be more grateful to us for our help, on NHS dentists, and on what people who cannot use machines should do for rail tickets once the ticket office at Chippenham (and almost all others) closes.

The show repeats today on BBC Radio 4 at 13:00, and is followed by "Any Answers" at 14:00. It is also available to listen online at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001npgh

All very interesting - my personal question was the railway station ticket offices one. I am in total agreement that approaching 90% of ticket sales can be made electronically, and that's what John Glen told me.  Katherine Bennett reassured us that this was just a consultation and the outcome was not yet know. Richard Foord expressed concern for various groups such as the blind who simply cannot use the Ticket Vending Machines. Thangam Debbonaire answered the question, fearing that this group of people who cannot use TVMs or the internet will be put off rail travel and the change will make travel by train - already difficult - even harder for them to the extent they'll be put off.  Richard, Thangam and Katherine all encouraged responses to be put in to the consultation and one of them - Richard or Thangam - pointed out that the consultation and input calls are largely electronic and may not reach the very people who are put off (and perhaps put off already) by being forced down the TVM and online route.

You got a clap on introduction, nice. 38m45s is where you'll find Alex's intro.

I didn't think Thangam got long & was nearly forgotten it seemed. There is a postal response available to Transport Focus.

Big big THANK YOU to BobM who has extracted .wav files of the pertinent (for this forum) bits of the broadcasts.

Any Questions at http://grahamellis.uk/lib/AnyQuestionsGJE.wav

I emailed overnight (Friday) to Any Answer and they called me up during the discussions on the show
Any Answers
full segment on station ticket offices at http://grahamellis.uk/lib/AnyAnswersGJE1.wav
for a shorter listen, just the chat with me at http://grahamellis.uk/lib/AnyAnswersGJE2.wav

Discussions with TWSW, WWRUG and here on the Coffee Shop convince me that it's correct that the rail industry update its ticketing systems as a whole, including ticket offices.  But closing ticket offices ahead of sorting out a straightforward, uniform, easy (emotionally and physically) for all to access journey purchase system should come first.  It would be good if that should involve the fare system being made fit for purpose (of understandability and fairness and modest prices that encourage use) as well.

The consultation is on the wrong subject. We are required to answer station by station while the overall setup needs to be considered first and foremost - someone is diverting our campaigning and protesting zeal into a direction where they can pick us off one station at a time.   Transport Focus, as a DfT funded organisation is working with the DfT in this direction.  It will be interesting to see if they take questions at their board meeting on Tuesday, and if they do how they address them, and whether it then makes any difference.

BBC "Any Questions", a sort of distant cousin of the radio programme "Down your way" that ran from 1946 to 1992 perhaps?

Mark

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076ydj

Any questions has a long history of its own - it started in 1948 according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Any_Questions%3F) it was perhaps the model for the BBC Television programme "Question Time" and is very similar in format. 

Down your way was a very different type of programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_Your_Way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_Your_Way)

Thanks for this.

Mark