Trains

It's an old and well-worn argument, but if train services are getting persistently worse, surely a price hike is ill-advised?

Every month, I get a train from Reading to Swansea on which I can't breathe, let alone find a seat, for three-quarters of the way. I'll have to keep getting the same service next year, only difference is, it'll cost me a few quid more. Except it won't, because I'm getting a car and polluting the planet before I squeeze past another bloke in a suit shouting into his Blackberry to say his train will be an hour late.

Train travel is overcrowded, overpriced and thunderously late, and it doesn't need to be. The argument will probably be made this week that if people paid their fares rather than dodged the guard, prices would come down. I live in a bumpkin town in Surrey - people have the money to buy tickets but with no barriers and no guards, why bother? Stick a barrier in front of every entrance to the station (there's only three, one's a hole in the wall) and you solve the problem.

You don't even need to employ staff at the gates - if people don't buy a ticket they can't get on the platform. Easy. Then you start to make enough money to add more carriages, fix the tracks properly and avoid having to squeeze more out of commuters who, if they went to a small claims court, could successfully sue train companies for the negligence, delays and just overall shiteness that is associated with so many journeys.