I recently went to London with my girlfriend and parents for my 21st birthday. It was a ground breaking weekend as for the first time in my life i spent £25 on for Vodka and mixer's in one round... gutting... but none the less... it was a hotel bar and it was London. Outrageous prices are something you except being a tourist in london, but one thing was a shocker to me and my family and that was the differences in the underground and the taxi service of our capital.
As my dad pointed out, a few years ago it cost him £20 quid for a cab ride to the train station. Quite a lot of money seeing as it was only one person. However it seems times have changed and i can't understand why.
For four of us to go across central London on the tube it cost £16. We wait for the tube admiring the wonderful condition that the station is in, get onto the packed underground train. Stand for a few minutes and dodge around other travelers every time we get to a new station whilst that driver says once again... "Please use all the space so we can cram more of you fuckpigs in" and then enjoy another few minutes of standing before our stop comes up. Well fuck me side ways the Taxi's are cheap now... instead of paying the £16 for the four people and going through what can only be described as a pain worse then death... we could pay £6 and sit in a nice Taxi, not packed... rather spacious actually, and cruise along the now less busy London roads.
The amount of money we saved changing from the tube to taxi's for our trip was unbelievable.
Now don't get me wrong... I do understand that one person would rather pay £4 for the great pleasure of the stinky shitty tube compared to the £2 more it would cost for the nice Taxi that gets you there the same time. So why has this happened all of a sudden?
With Brown in-charge and our economy looking worse for wear as we approach the mayan apocalypse we call the 2012 economic depression... why has it all gone cheap? Surely the hackney law change couldn't make a £14 decrease happen whilst inflation continues on its path to everest. Surely the congestion charges could not be helping reduce traffic that much especially as we traveled during London's busy period...
To be honest... I'm stumped...
If anyone out there is reading this...
If anyone out there can explain it...
Please leave a message at the tone...
But one thing I will say before i go is this.
Rather then travel on the Satanic merry-go-round our capital brothers call 'The Tube', which despite my best efforts just made me want to sing 'London Underground' by the amateur transplant guys, save yourself a bob and remember Cynical's top two rules...
One: Use a Taxi... for some unknown reason they are cheap as muck
Two: Don't offer to buy a round of drinks in a hotel bar with only £30 on you...