If only GMT meant get more trains and get me there!

London commuters wouldn’t be amongst the most stressed in Europe and more often late for work than their European counterparts – Londoner’s also revealed they add an extra half hour every day from their lives to ensure they arrive at their destination on time, which off course many of them don’t.

This half hour used or not is a daily waste spent in a platform to work limbo. S0me of it may be used to contemplate what type of excuse doe’s southern rail accept from their employees when they turn up late for work or not at all, like the 48% of commuters who admitted to being unable to get to work at one time are another due to train cancellations. Or you could chance burning your tongue on another espresso you didn’t really have time for, but really needed because your energy was already zapped before arriving at work and thought adding caffeine and sugar to a stress trigger was a good idea..

GMT  is not a sundial or guide – it tells us where to be and when to be there, to the dictated second, it is autocratic and indifferent – it does not say please or thank you, it will leave you sometimes a little embarrassed having to make apologies for your mishandling of it,  angry and dismayed when saying sorry on behalf of others who mismanaged it.

The USA uses coordinated universal time (UTC) they started using it in the 19^th centuary to ensure train departures and arrivals where on time, they have six time zone’s,GMT was started in the Royal Observatory Greenwich, which is just around the corner for many Londoners who like the rest of the UK have one time zone, you have to see the irony?

A healthy outlook for living in a big city is balancing the conveniences against the disadvantages and avoiding a self pitying  persecution complex. Borrowing from your reserves from time to time is part of it. Some ex-commuters have realised early, how quickly they became overdrawn and arrived at the destination of their own limit, dejected and demoralised they have now given London a wide birth, taking jobs nearer to home for the sake of their sanity.

Others have decided to box on and vented their anger at a recent protest at Victoria station, which was more a cry for someone to come to their mercy as it was about anything else. Stress is unavoidable – life can be a frustrating business some are more prone than others to its caustic effects, which spread to all aspects of  life interpersonal relationships; work, home and social lives all suffer, one of the less laboured and neglected facts about stress is that its infectious and corrosive to mental, physical and collective social health.

Paul Maynard the rail minister after months of nerve fraying cancellations and delays has stepped in with what appears to be an ultimatum: if southern rail can’t reach an internal resolution, a resolution will be foisted upon them and hopefully the priorities of the paying commuters will be given more than a small consideration. This may be primarily an industrial dispute, the rights and wrongs of which, has long since been lost on the long suffering commuters, but in light of what is happening on an almost daily basis throughout Europe where attacks on trains have featured more than once it’s seems an awfully inappropriate time to dispense with the extra pair of eyes, guards provide on trains (crass even).?

Where is the security minister on this, and the department of health, who wouldn’t tolerate an infectious outbreak  anywhere else in London that is a lot less debilitating than stress?

getting through the SHIL