Where are the IT Companies in the Virgin Fast Track 100?

There was a time when Hi Tech companies dominated the Virgin Fast Track 100 - I worked for Eyretel for a while when they won it on the back of their growth in the digital voice recording business sold in the City.

This Sunday, the list published by the Sunday Times shows a very different landscape with only online retailers qualifying as Hi Tech and there are barely a half a dozen of those in the Top 60 while there are a couple of phone retailers and just one Telco reseller scraping in at 60th in the Top 60.

No software companies, no computer maintenance companies, no online computer vendor, no computer resellers, no accessories companies, no Apple App producers - in fact, the first computer associated company comes in at 62 and it's an ink cartridge recycling company.

Refreshingly, there are plenty of recruitment companies in there although I understand the Hi Tech recruiters are suffering while Telecom resellers starts to sprout up with growing frequency after 60th place. 

After Robert Peston's program last night, it was chilling to see that one of the fastest growing companies in Britain is an Equity Release broker as we all struggle to manage debt and provide for our retirement somehow.

It is perhaps a sign of the times that Hi Tech companies are missing from the Fast Track 100. Amongst computer resellers, insolvencies are up, gross margins are getting tighter and competition remains fierce. The PC market is dropping like a stone as the client device markets change, server shipments are static if lowering - what can a struggling reseller do to change its fortunes?

On page 8 is a small article by a very good friend, former colleague and business partner of mine, Scott Dodds who is now GM of business strategy and marketing at Microsoft UK. Scott points out how smaller companies are embracing the Cloud to help them grow faster and he highlights one of the Fast Track Companies called Gritit who unsurprisingly are making hay while we experience harder winters.

What Scott points out is that small companies can save on IT costs and scale their business faster by effectively outsourcing their IT to the Cloud so that small companies can focus on what brings in sales rather than back office issues like IT.

I think there is a step further to go. Companies like independenceIT go beyond just putting a few applications like email, back up and CRM into the Cloud but allow SME businesses to push the management of their entire IT infrastructure and applications into the Cloud and have it served back to them at a single monthly cost per desktop. As traditional hosters like Rackspace or Fasthosts really offer just the renting of resource, independenceIT offers a true managed service that allows SME companies to scale not just their resources but their applications for as single monthly charge.

There are no capital outlays, just single monthly fee per desktop - all the rest is taken care of using Tier 1 datacenters and giving the highest availability and support.

Scott and I agree, the Cloud is definitely the best way a small business can grow its IT base and I think independenceIT has a unique and compelling proposition for this. For resellers who want to get back into growth mode and be able to offer a true managed service to customers without all the massive outlay, independenceIT have a fantastic solution to help get growth back in your business - profitably.

Please get in touch with me for more information on +44 (0) 207 193 2356.

What a Great Deal?!

You couldn't make it up but I suppose it's to be expected.

Today, our prize investment, RBS, having just got the details of the extra £30bn we are pumping into it, has announced it is shedding around 4,000 jobs.

It makes you stop and think. Recently, there was a lot of controversy in that RBS' investment bankers will be getting fat bonuses this year and, indeed, their CEO, Stephen Hester, is in line for a £9.6m. They may get some deferred but that will really sit well with the 4,000 who will pay for them. In fact, around 16,000 jobs have already been shed from the back room, branches and other places - the sort of jobs that the expensive adverts on TV about NatWest and their push for more personal banking might be lead us to believe have not gone.

4,000 jobs and let's say the average salary is £30,000 per annum - that would be £120m off the wage bill this year. That will probably be less money saved than the bonus bill.

But it gets better. 700 branches of British banks will be sold to other companies in the fire sale of the decade as the EU rules that banks that got state aid must split. Private Equity houses and foreign banks will love this as they will buy already stripped down versions of the banks branches with redundancies already paid for by the taxpayer and because so many branches will be up for grabs they will be sold at rock bottom prices, once again leaving the taxpayer with the mired end of the stick.

It gets better than that. Having given away the jewels of the banking industry cheap and subsidised by us, they will be precisely the same buildings, staff and products as before just owned by someone else who will reap the profit on our loans and mortgages rather than us at least contributing to the value of our 'investments', i.e. the banks we saved. We are told it will promote competition - sure it will. Why would anyone buy the banks and then trash the price when there is so much cash and profit to be made? Prices will remain the same, believe me.

And is it good that Tesco buys into a bank? They squeeze the living daylights out of suppliers and only pass on part of the savings to customers which makes them ever more profitable. We are handing them a cash business to make them more money. Meanwhile, Virgin must be laughing as they offered to buy Northern Rock when no one else would and when it was leaching money - now they get to buy the cleaned up good part at a knock down price with a great deal more advantageous loans from the Government to lend at a large profit.

Alistair Darling kept a straight face as he announced all this. He didn't want to let on that we have all just been right royally shafted. The smiles will come later.

'My Farts Smell Better Than Yours'

I think most people would agree a fart is a fart. I suppose there are those connoisseurs of the subject who would claim that some are more powerful, deadly or obnoxious than others but in reality they are pretty unpleasant generally.

Why do I mention this odd subject? Well, I have just listened to the weekly puerile urinating contest which is euphemistically called Prime Minister's Question Time. It has been a dodgy old week for the PM as the news that the size of our economy has been over taken by Italy's was not ideal but the fact that we have now experienced 6 quarters of successive contraction of our economy denoting the most prolonged recession since records began has taken some precedence. It gets worse for the PM as he has been somehow persuaded to go lobbying in Europe to have Tony Blair elected as the first permanent President of the EU. It could not have got much worse when David Cameron fired a few salvos at him about the economy.

Perhaps the PM has led a sheltered life but he grimly clung onto the notion that despite the obviously dire economical position the country finds itself in, when he has repeatedly claimed that Britain had a superb economy and so would not be badly affected by any recession, he actually argued well at least it was better than if the country had followed the Conservative policies. To round that illogical argument off, he claimed that unemployment was ONLY 2.5m and that he had proved that for every decision he had made on the economy he was right and the conservatives were wrong.

It's the kind of daft thinking that comes from desperate people but sometimes you have to believe your own bull. He basically argued that he had 'farted' but at least it wasn't as smelly as Cameron's.

The fact remains that prior to the whole crash the bill for those claiming benefits for being unable to work was at an all time high while unemployment is now at a higher percentage than when Labour took office. Finally, despite all reassurances to the contrary, our recession continues to dog us despite the enormous amount of 'Stimulus' we had given it and we have not even tried to get rid of wastage on the annual public sector budget, let alone start prioritising spends.

It could be described as monumental hubris as opposed to sound financial acumen, yet that has been the path followed in order to get us into this mess so we should not be surprised that it is the same methodology used to try to rescue us.

The one moment of 'victory' for the PM was the announcement that the EC will not stand in the way of the plan to split up Northern Rock so that the profitable bit can be sold off while the smelly bit with all the dodgy debts in is retained and underwritten by the taxpayer. In doing so, the PM claimed this had saved 3,000 jobs by nationalising the bank and now the public could get some of its money back while underwriting the toxic debts of the 'bad bank' left behind.

For those of us with an iota of intelligence, we will have noticed that the first prospective bidder is none other than Virgin who actually made an offer for the bank when it hit the crisis. At that point, the Government argued that the deal did not inject enough capital in and so rejected it for nationalisation instead. A while down the line, Virgin will bid for the profitable bit and not have to provide any capital for the smelly part. It may be argued that the same deal could have been done at the onset of all this and the same number of jobs been saved as the public would have had to have underwritten the whole thing then and now. So we have paid £90,000 per month for Sandler's fees and much more for the army of consultants used just to get back to the same basic position. Some 'victory'.

It about sums up the whole economic policy of this Government - a whole load of knee jerk reactions costing £1.4 trillion which has not got us anywhere. The whole process of rescue has been one colossal 'fart'. But at least it smelt better than the Conservative's fart, had they indeed been in a position to exercise their muscles.

Small comfort as we view the potential cost of the economic mess we are in.

A Few Honest Words

'A few honest words were spoken,' said John Smits, the South African Rugby Captain when asked about his side's second half performance to beat the British & Irish Lions in the 2nd Test at Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria recently.

He was referring to what his team did at half time when they had been comprehensively taken apart by a stunning Lions performance in the first half. They sat down and talked honestly to one another about their performances. For all the training and experience these guys had in winning the World Cup together, they changed their game profoundly by doing just doing a simple thing like talking to come back and win the game. Egos were forgotten. There were no prima donnas there despite the roll call of famous names - they collectively and individually took the criticism and made a commitment to one another to put it right. The results were spectacular.

That's what makes good teams become great - the ability to analyse themselves honestly and collectively agree to put it right. Smits had captained his side on no less than 56 occasions previously and he did not need to berate them - they knew that they had let themselves and their team down.

Fast forward to England's cricket team who pulled off an amazing draw in the First Ashes Test at Sofia Gardens, Cardiff last week and everyone is pussy-footing around the likes of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Strauss. You can imagine what was being said - but for one bad shot KP would have scored a 100 while Strauss unlucky despite being guilty of a poor shot and poor captaincy. They will not change anything - they will just play the same and likely get beaten by an ordinary Australian side, not a patch on the 'Incredibles' of 2005.

From Sports To Business

It's a common held belief that charismatic, bigger than life characters lead businesses best. The most prolific companies, in our eyes, are those led by people who are household names, like Virgin or Ryan Air. If you read Jim Collins' book which maps out those companies that sustain greatness from being good, then you will see that often it is the most understated leaders who make companies truly great - and they are not afraid to have superb people around them. While Ryan Air debates whether it should have standing passengers and just stools to strap onto for landing in order to cram more people in with scant regard for comfort or safety perhaps their minds should be turning more to how they can make air travel more green and safe as record numbers of planes fall out of the sky this year.

'A few honest words..'.

It seems a simple remedy but regardless of who the people are in the team, no matter how experienced, no matter how good they think they are, no matter what their past deeds have been, if they cannot face honest words from others then they will ultimately walk into a failure.

Recent History

I would say that when the dust settles on what has been the most tumultuous times in business since The Depression, there will be many leaders who will finally limp out from their cowering positions hoping the worst is passed. These are the people who could not face honest words or straight facts and ran their companies into disastrous positions and then handed the whole lot to cost cutters to try and rescue the business. Many leaders cannot take criticism from their peers and certainly not from their staff - they see it as an affront but most have that unshakable belief that only they know best.

These are the people who walked their businesses into the mess. Take a look at Willie Walsh at BA. He has presided over a business that has gone from record profits to record losses in a single year. Yet common sense would say that premium customers would desert the business if there was a recession - no more Vodafone middle managers cramming Club Europe for one hour hops to Dusseldorf or Accenture Consultants going First Class to the US for a one hour meeting. The problem with BA was that their whole business was propped up by the profit they made at the front of the plane. When that diminished, they had no contingency plan to adjust the business as the low price airlines cut them to pieces. And here's the really stupid factor - they actually INCREASED their prices through the crisis and instigated more rigid rules about changing flights, taking away vital flexibility for travelling business people. Immediately, people like myself, swapped allegiance to other airlines and travelled with those who had the most flexible policy for the price - and I found it was just about every other airline.

'A few honest words.....'.

Leadership And Honesty

We talk a lot about honesty, particularly when it comes to Political leadership where there seems to be so little these days, yet we cling to their every word and believe most of the claptrap they come out with. Very few at the top accept the opinion of others unless it has a bearing on their popularity. Gordon Brown, as a for instance, truly believes he is an economic genius despite the disastrous outcome of his policies and he's hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the past even before we have cleared the current crisis.

When you look at the facts about the wars we are fighting, as we tackle two separate and major engagements we are actively subtracting from our military resources and axing regiments, while we now know that not only equipment was woefully inadequate for the kind of warfare our troops faced, we now have to borrow helicopters from our allies.

A few honest words......

In business, it is absolutely critical to be able to engage with leadership and discuss ideas and thoughts. Specifically, in times of crisis, the last thing that firms should be doing is ignoring what its own employees know and can do rather than just cutting them to pieces - particularly when it was the leadership that led the company into the state it is in. Communication and the ability to talk openly and honestly to management at all levels is critical in all businesses.

What this recession has exposed is a layer of poor managers in business who rarely engage with their workforce and even more rarely take honest criticism and advice. We have also seen the role of the non-executive director being exposed for what it is. It seems to be a circuit of jollies for a preciously small band who butterfly-hop from firm to firm earning fat fees but having zero responsibility. It is time that Governance in companies was taken far more seriously and this needs to be a source of 'Honest words' into the executives that run companies.

British business and politics has a lot to learn from this crisis and we all need to take the opportunity it has provided us with. Honest words need to be spoken in business and leaders need to understand that they have a duty of diligence in their risk taking to their employees so it is as well to be more open and honest with them in the future.

It will take a long time to restore the reputation of British business - a lot longer to restore the reputations of the list of failed leaders.

The Nature of The Beast

'Banks are in a dangerous frame of mind: they feel isolated, the whole system of mutual support and syndication has broken down and they are not doing what the government tells them to do.'

The words of Lord James of Blackheath, or to you and I, David James the renowned Company Doctor. Interviewed in this month's Director Magazine from the IOD he insists that in over 55 years in business he has been through 8 recessions and has seen nothing like this one.

At Christmas, a good friend of mine had a very good business, growth was good year on year, his customers seemed buoyant and he was very dismissive of how the recession could affect his business. We talked about diversification and protecting customers by offering them extended deals early but he dismissed this as he 'had never offered a discount in his life'. In February he made 5 people redundant justifying it on the grounds that the chosen people were poor performers. By the end of this month he will have made a further 7 people redundant - in total nearly half his workforce has gone in a single quarter.

Here's the rub. He isn't short of cash - he's short of sales. In a single quarter, his major customer indicated he was no longer in the market for his services and then a few more hit with the same message. Of course, he had reviewed the pipeline and tried to reason that each deal was good but he had failed to talk to his customers early and address the issue of those who might actually not continue to buy. By the time he had realised what was happening, a massive drop in sales left him with no course other than to cut costs radically.

Economic Shock

I have blogged before on the extreme speed at which this recession has hit. But there are survivors, there are losers and there are winners in the tumult. While Sainsburys reported a recent rise in sales, Marks and Spencers have just announced a 4% like for like drop - they have already announced the closure of many of their smaller outlets which had so much captured the public's eye at service stations and the like.

David James asserts that anyone who tries to expand through bank borrowing is likely to find their funding withdrawn - and this echoes concerns I raised yesterday that many small businesses are not getting access to the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme as put up by the Business Secretary which made sure banks were only liable for 25% of any loss on lending. Yet little of that money has been released to businesses while banks are busy converting current lending to the scheme by offering small top ups and then getting 75% of previous borrowing covered.

It's a blatant scam and as usual the Government's implementation of what on the face of it was a decent idea has been incompetent to say the least.

The emphasis from senior business luminaries (and not people like Ruth Badger) is to look at cash-based rather than sales-and-margin-based sales. This will put a pressure on the social cycle we all want like suppliers paying on time, which has been an exaggerated problem in the last few months for many, but the advice is that we should also pay our suppliers on longer terms and conserve our cash while offering incentives for sales which bring cash in quickly. In the same breath we are advised to cut capital spend, cut people, take no risks, do nothing novel and batten down the hatches or go bankrupt. This is the advice of Jon Moulton, founder and Managing Partner at private equity firm Alchemy.

As he puts it, 'When there are seven of you and only five seats in the lifeboat, what else do you do?'

Risk in A Recession

No one could argue that Moulton's advice is not sound. In the teeth of the worst economic recession since the 1930s, it would be suicidal to start taking daft risks. However, that does not mean that there are not opportunities out there. Yesterday, I gave the example of Richard Branson seizing the opportunity to sponsor the new F1 Team Brawn who had formed from the ashes of the Toyota Team. With two decent drivers and a team, Ross Brawn has developed a car that is not only competitive at the first time of asking, but actually qualified in positions 1 and 2 on the grid and finished the race in the same order. Branson, not even an F1 geek like some sponsors, seized on the fact that there was not a single logo on the car and signed a hastily put together, tentative deal by his standards, to sponsor the Brawn cars. It could not have been a more spectacular coup for a man known as the master PR expert.

Virgin will be in pride of place at the next race, at the top of the driver and constructor tables and feted as the saviour of the team. Such bold risk taking in hard times is a priceless gift.

Business Myopia

The car industry is an example of a tragic crash in the heart of this recession. Hit by the dual cosh of lack of credit and lack of sales, production has slumped dramatically and this means that the car makers are quite literally in survival mode. Promised a £2.3bn package of rescue by the Business Secretary, none of that money has yet flowed to the companies, and across the UK it is estimated that over 800,000 jobs are directly or indirectly dependent on the industry. In the '80s, Sir John Egan epitomised Margaret Thatcher's industry boot-boy who got out and kicked the unions and slammed Jaguar back into shape after years of fattening under state control. He improved productivity by some 70%, slashed the workforce by 40% and exceeded the cash targets set.

As Egan said recently, 'For all but the grandest companies, cash will be more important than profit right now.'

John Mumford, a former BP executive and now at risk of my haranguing for being on the board of several companies, claims that companies he has worked with, large and small, suffer from what he describes as 'business myopia' - a lack of empathy with introversion regarding what is going on in the real world. I can only agree - too many companies I have spoken to recently who poo-poo'd the recession and claimed that they were having a record year, had a recession-proof business and thought people like me were 'talking up the recession', have had to lay off staff at minimum and, in some cases, tried to get emergency loans.

Mumford believes there is a 'high level of dysfunction in terms of talking to outsiders and seeing problems coming.'

Mumford also believes that in larger companies there is a level of 'group think' and that those who do not share the collective view are cast aside politically. In the past IBM suffered from what was called internally as managers giving 'Good slide' - a vernacular that described their ability to dress up the issues and results. In the aftermath of massive failure, it took a breakfast cereal executive to rescue the company and bring it back to leadership again, though never with the same dominance. Many would suggest that Microsoft could be going through the same problems, Apple did some years ago until Steve Jobs was brought back and more recently, Dell has recalled their CEO, Michael Dell, in the face of business problems.

Too often management just ignore the real world in favour of looking politically good and agreeing. Dissenters are seen as whistle blowers, pariahs or unnecessarily negative.

Company Politics Can Kill

The issue highlighted above does not have to be a large company. Medium and even small sized businesses suffer from inertia due to internal politics. There is an element of group think that suggests that no one should tell the Board or owner that he/she 'has no clothes on' and is out of touch with reality like the fabled emperor.

Sometimes it takes guts to challenge management views and get a taste of reality.

The best way I have seen this work is by staff actually talking to customers and feeding back their views. If you can combine that with some simple research about each customer, an informed report about the actual state of each customer and therefore the dependencies of deals becomes more fact than supposition.

This is vital in seeing the issues companies face.

There is no tried and trusted method as to who should do this. Sales Directors and managers who dare talk to customers about the potential of their orders arriving and state of their company are seen as 'making excuses' for poor performance often but if they can combine that with a realistic action plan then they may be able to be seen as forward thinking.

However it is done, Board Directors and executives need to take a longer, closer and more realistic view of their position and make sure that they clearly understand the implications to their future. The worst that can happen in any business, large or small, is that warning signs are ignored. Face them, act on them, communicate with everyone and tackle them.

After all, you don't want to be branded a real politician, do you?

'Screw it - just do it!'

Having just had a fairly poor value-for-money experience on a Virgin Train going back and fore to Preston the other day, I picked up the copy of Richard Branson's Quick Read booklet of the title above to learn the secrets of running a truly over-priced rail franchise.

It was enlightening and I think everyone should 'Screw it - just do it!' and start their own train franchises as it has made 'Ricky' wealthy enough to buy not just one but two Caribbean Islands, don't you know.

The Virgin Engine

There is no doubt that spread over 200 companies and employing more then 40,000 people, the fresh faced, toothsome lad who started flogging advertising in his 'Student' magazine while still at school, has built up his business with a well-versed formula. And there are things to be learnt from such a booklet.

I draw the line at such pithy remarks from self-help gurus who tell you everything is possible, you just have to apply yourself. That is simply not true, as many are not born into a world of advantages - for many millions, a goal is to survive the day, to get their next mouthful of clean water or food.

Self-help books in the Third World are useful only for mopping up dysentery.

However, Ricky Branson has built a Virgin brand which does hold true to the original values. If you buy a Virgin product you can expect the slight maverick instinct, the understated emphasis on fun or entertainment and in general an expectation of value for money pervades. I wonder if Virgin Funerals could be a new business opportunity.

To some extent, I have felt that Virgin brands like Virgin Atlantic cocked a snook at the Big Guys like BA and rather than take them on as a cheap alternative, the focus was on providing competitive products, with a bit of flair and an eye to woo customers. They invented the concept of 'Premium Economy', the idea of having some more comfort and leg room but not over-paying for some plank of a bed and warm meals with semi-expensive wines. Upper Class struck at BA First Class yet at a Business Class fare, and together with in-flight massages, there was a real feeling of going that extra yard. In the spirit of fun, I was always surprised that membership of the 'Mile High Club' was not included.

We could go through business by business but each one took a swipe at the incumbents and gave a little extra zip that engendered great loyalty, even down to alternatives cans of cola although I really did not like the Virgin chewing gum found in toilets - dumb idea and tasted foul but blew great bubbles.

What I like about Richard Branson is that he was not experienced in any of the businesses he started beforehand. He was not a pilot nor an experienced manager of an airline, he never manufactured soft drinks, he never ran a bank or an entertainment company yet he started those businesses. His ethos of 'Screw it - just do it!' is a very real part of his being.

It's a lesson for all those companies out there who demand the next employee to have 'direct experience' of the job - you are almost certainly missing out on very capable people who apply business skills on a wider level and entrepreneurial types who can make things happen. But then again, no one ever got fired for just recruiting poorly, they do for not following procedures - another of my pet hates.

So What Happened To Virgin Trains?

The Virgin Train experience starts out nicely. There are always nice people at ticket counters, everyone looks smart in their tailored Virgin suits and coats, the trains themselves are modern, smart and fast. It looks and feels great. But then you you buy a ticket. You can feel the credit card crunch each time as you get nothing cheaply on Virgin Trains. Whether Standard Class or First, expect a severe lashing.

The onboard environment is good particularly in First Class - nice seats, power to laptops, lights for reading. Then comes the food. There was a time when Virgin travel franchises went to famous chefs for advice - well not many make good sandwiches by the looks of it. The ticket prices remain pricey after peak time but the food and drinks served are actually cold sandwiches and are very bad. I can't remember the last time I travelled with them and hot food was served, the rules are so daft - and that really hammers the 'Value For Money' experience you expect. On top of that, I cannot remember the last time the train left and arrived on time. Granted the fiasco at Milton Keynes the other night was beyond Virgin's control but I had asked a nice Lady at the Virgin Ticket Counter in Preston if I could travel on the earlier train and having already paid £271 for a return ticket, I was told to get the earlier train back would be a further £130! The train was virtually empty.

The Point of All This

Where the Virgin Brand has excelled is by providing the almost maverick alternative to the status quo products and services that epitomises what Branson himself modestly calls 'The Rebel Billionaire', his TV program (what, you don't have one of your own?). We buy because we too are two-fingering BA and the large airlines who have had to respond accordingly with better service and lower cost flights and it has revolutionised Trans-Atlantic travel, make no mistake.

BUT, when it comes to running a franchise, unopposed, Virgin has slipped into jobsworth mode. They can afford to charge what they like, make as much money as they like, provide whatever level of service they like, charge stupid money for transferring one train to the next - but wrap it all up in the Virgin livery and we think it's the same as before.

It isn't. When Virgin are unopposed and providing a service for which there is no real competitor, they are just as poor as the rest.

Competition Maketh The Man

So what Ricky's book did say is that Virgin is a maverick, fun-loving business that takes old and crusty services and products and provides an alternative which gives extra often for less with a bit of an air of fun thrown in when in competition with that old product or service, and it's good at that. But what it did NOT say was when it comes down to cashing in on a monopoly winner like a Rail Franchise, it operates like an old, crusty service provider itself.

It's a bit harsh as it started out so well with lovely, fast-rolling trains, but sometimes those who believe every word of their own bull need a short sharp reminder that not every aspect of their business is as smiley, shiny and maverick as they think.

I could start on Bill Gates next on this subject but maybe another time.

Get Out of Your Cars And Use Public Transport

When New Labour swept to power, a certain blubber-mouth boasted we would have 'An integrated transport system'. Of course I am talking about John 'Judge me on my achievements' Prescott here and he is known for the odd word gaff - perhaps he meant 'disintegrated transport system'?

Trains - Don't You Just Love Them

OK, so you detect I have had a bad experience lately and that's true. I was one of those unfortunates who swept up to Preston yesterday having paid £195 (single) for a First Class Ticket to do some work. Not only was the power not available, the train some 45 minutes late and the 'breakfast' a sumptuous mixture of dried leather and glutinous Stilton between dry bread slices that tasted like a baby's nappy but I was comforted by the two people on the next table who bragged they always buy second class and sit in first because even if challenged they pretend to be foreign. Having arrived suitably late and angry so missing my connecting transport, I got to my meeting late and literally cheesed off.

No worries, I thought, the relaxing journey back, a snip at £76 (single) would ensure I arrived home content and unstressed as a celebrity in a rail advert. Not quite. The Pendalino ran out of juice at Milton Keynes, as had all other trains. I had been served exactly the same sandwich (probably re-packaged from the morning trip), a banana and a drink. At least the power worked - until we got to Milton Keynes, that is. It turned out that desperately close to my home, power line failure meant all trains had ground to a halt somewhere between North Wembley and Hemel Hempstead and we were stuck in the land of Concrete Cows.

Milton Keynes - The New Utopia

Maybe John Maynard Keynes was angry I had taken his name in vain recently and blighted me from beyond the grave but I was stuck in the town sharing his name - surely no coincidence when it comes to failed theories. They say that when the town planners were designing the layout for the New Town, they used the map as a table cloth and so wherever they put their tea cups down, Irish Navvis built a roundabout. It has a ring of truth to the story.

Having spent about an hour on the rapidly cooling train, I decided to seek advice and found helpful station staff shrugging their shoulders in a display of customer service worthy of Fawlty Towers. Having got to the message boards it became clear there were delays. After a further hour in the freezing station it became apparent that the trains were not going to move again and other transport would be laid on for the fairly quiet bunch of 200 or so commuters trapped in the Neverland that is Milton Keynes. Fortunately, I managed to get a family member to drive up to get me and my SAS survival training paid dividends when I found a nearby Indian Restaurant which allowed me to sit in their waiting area sipping a Cobra while I waited. When I left, still 200 slightly frozen commuters anxiously awaited their laid-on buses in the positively balmy temperature of minus 6 Centigrade.

Jokers Galore

Of course, it's not worth trying to claim back a penny as I haven't the energy or life expectancy to get an answer from the Complaints Dept at Virgin, so that's a total of £271 for a round trip of total dissatisfaction. And before you say it, Second Class would not have been much cheaper.

Tomorrow, as I often do, I will travel to London for £22.50 return plus £5.80 parking (plus annual price hikes) and have the privilege to stand for the 20 or so mile trip. Off to jail should I wait until 9.30am and get an off peak ticket and then travel back at the wrong time, even though there is no price option to do that. You get fined as you walk out at St Albans Station for the criminal you are.

Quite what makes any Government Minister think we are going to get people out of cars and into Public Transport at that level of price and service is beyond me. As Richard Branson laughs all the way to the Bank on his extortionate prices (they offered me a chance to go on an earlier train for a mere £120 extra one way) and the supposed 6% hike in prices are scorned on the nice-earning green belt servicing lines, and don't forget the car parks ramming up astronomically prices on pieces of land they pay peppercorn rents on, it turns out the commuting public are the jokers as we put up with it.

We will never solve the issues of carbon emissions and congestion this way. We have to somehow provide public transport at affordable prices and a good service, and join it all up. It can be done as others do it. I recently travelled from Verona to Milan - fully 220km - on a decent train, with a seat, in rush hour and all for €11.70. It was blissfully only 3 minutes late and arrived at one of the most magnificent buildings in Italy - Milan Central Station - complete with Christmas Market outside.

But we Brits love a moan and where would be without the railway, eh?