Time…

So I’ve been away from this wretched hell hole for a while now. I arrived back as many of us always do, through Heathrow, which may be the most terrible airport in the world (more on that at a later date). After walking the five miles from airplane to immigration, I decided I would treat myself to the worlds most expensive train ride. After coughing up the £15 required for the journey I sat back and relaxed hoping for a quick end to the advertised ‘15 minute journey into Central London.’

It took me 3 hours. 3 miserable hours to get from Heathrow to Paddington. Honestly what the FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? You would think, after ruining your day and charging you for it, that the people who run the train would offer some sort of compensation to those people affected. But NO, if you read the fine print, they are not responsible if someone decides to kill themselves in front of the train by jumping off a bridge in Ealing (another MISERABLE SHITHOLE).

So yeah, we had not one but two people jump in front of the train, one was successful and the other was British.

British Activism

My favourite thing about the British, especially Londoners, has to be their resolve. They have got to be the only people in the world that know that they’re in a miserable position, yet they’ll be damned if they admit it. If you are trying to alleviate a problem that everyone knows exists… Watch out, because the people who will probably benefit the most from it will be up in The fruits of this wonderful and cheery outlook on development can be seen in the wonderful infrastructure of London and the rest of the UK. The highways are creaking because everyone sort of forgot that you have to build your infrastructure up in order to keep up with a growing population. They also conveniently forgot to build new buildings closer to the city center instead of spreading out in all directions. The average person in London commutes over an hour to get to work. That is quite frankly RIDICULOUS. These people sit in their cars, the trains and the tubes for HOURS each day just to get to work. Work, mind you, is a pretty miserable place to be. Walk around the streets of London on any given day at any given time and you can see the miserableness of everyones lives darkening their already ugly faces. You would think for a government that charges you £8 every day just to drive into town with fines for illegally stopping for 5 minutes on the side of a street running up into the triple digits would be able to afford to bulldoze a couple of dilapidated houses on major throughfares and build some extra lanes. Hell even reducing the number of traffic lights on intersections would be a start. The first time I drove around the A406- The North Circular, I was appalled. You are buzzing along on a 6 lane highway type road, only to turn a corner and have to merge all three lanes into one and pass these miserable sheds masquerading as houses with signs in the windows that read “NO EXTRA LANES FOR THE A406.”

ARE YOU GUYS RETARDED?

No one is going to bulldoze anyones house without paying them anything. Do these people who live in these miserable places not have enough sense to know that the destruction of their rat infested home would be the best thing to happen to them ever. They would get paid, be able to afford to move to a house that’s not on a major roadway. Have some common sense. Go on. Take the Money and Run. I just fail to understand why no one speaks up. Less rat infested houses mean more room for roadways, meaning less waiting merging from 3 lanes into 1 for 7 miles before getting back into a normal traffic pattern. Getting around this town is a horrible mess. Getting anywhere takes forever, not because there is too much traffic, but because we have 2007 traffic on roads built for 1975 traffic. Get a clue. Stop protesting just because thats all you know, and start thinking. Maybe some change can be for good. Build some more roads, and then maybe we can all start thinking about how to prevent people from getting the Black Lung from the Tube.

WIHL

The Tube

Even now, I can already tell that one of the major themes of WIHL will be how London is just a bloody rip off. One of the biggest ripoffs in London however is the Tube. The Tube system charges you a ridiculous £4 per single ride. They don’t care if you’re going one stop or 10, they are going to fleece you for the whole £4. You would think in a city that has so many cameras per square foot that it makes 1984 look like a privacy activists wet dream, the authorities would be able to figure out how to charge the rider a floating rate for distance traveled. But no, I suppose the British education system just doesn’t teach anything other than extortion.

Once you’ve coughed up the GDP per capita of a number of nations to get into the tube station, which more than likely has random holes in the ceiling and water damage on the roof. Let me tell you, nothing quite makes you feel safe below ground in a tunnel than seeing random chunks of the support structure missing or numerous cracks caused by water damage everywhere. Classy London. Very Classy.

So you’re sitting below ground in a tunnel that is probably a nudge on the Richter away from absolute collapse and you get onto the actual train. Now keep in mind how much money you have paid to ride on this rickety piece of garbage. The trains that they run in the tube obviously are not modern nor are they reliable. Not a single day goes by without there being some sort of problem with the whole system. One day, you’ll have a derailed train. The next, a gas leak will cause the whole system to shut down. Even if the trains are running smoothly, you’ll be liable to unforeseen delays on your journey because the train will randomly decide to stop for twenty minutes below ground with the lights flickering on and off. HOORAY!

All I’m saying is that if they insist on jobbing you out of all your cash in order to get a 15 minute ride in the worst subway system in the world, they could at least spend some of that money on improving the network. You would think that the two go hand in hand. I mean the excuse for closing the tube at 1230 is that they need to do maintenance on the track. What the hell are they doing maintenance on when the next day you wake up to Major Delays on the Circle, District, Bakerloo and Metropolitans lines?

Charge less or stay open longer. Oh and Transport for London could probably do with hiring people who are competent at their jobs, maybe then everything won’t break down all the effing time.

WIHL

Nothing is ever open

So yes, I Hate London. On the face of it you would think London is not that bad, it has a couple million people from all over the world milling around in a city that has a couple of nice big parks and a river running through it. But no. London is a shit hole. It’s a miserable city where the people have their miserable lives and go to work in the miserable tube or in the extortionist taxis. It is a place where you can’t do anything ever because everything fucking closes at 7 or 8 or if you’re really lucky 10pm. What the fuck is the point of going out when you get fucked by the prices everywhere and then end up not being able to get back home because the fucking tube is closed because it’s a terribly late 12:30am. Then when you actually do get home in a cab that has railed you for every last pound in your pocket you can’t find a place to get some effing food because apparently people here don’t understand that if they stayed open they could make some more money that would help them have that much less of a shitty life in their shitty house with one bedroom on a major highway or backed up onto the railway tracks.

The 7.5 million people in this hell hole really need to figure out that extra hours mean extra cash and extra cash means less credit card debt.