The average price of standing between a handful of sweaty commuters whilst the will to live is squeezed out of you is to rise by around 2.3%. Again.

“Crowding thousands of sleep-deprived zombies into a handful of shittily designed carriages while 4 first class carriages sit empty isn’t cheap,” said Virgil McFirst, a spokesman for the deliberately too complex to lay blame in one place rail system, “the companies that provide this service don’t make any money but do it because they love us. The government aren’t getting anything out of it either, so stop it with your snide ingratitude!”

A government spokesfibber told us that tourism was partly responsible for the rise:

“We want people in Europe to come see people paying ridiculous amounts of money for terrible, unpunctual public transport. It’s really quite novel as you could travel the length and breadth of Europe for the cost of a standard day return from Lancaster to Crewe and get a seat!” said Conservative MP Fuller Bull-Anprowd, adding: “So you see it’s foreigners that are to blame.”

Meanwhile the passenger lobby group, Rail, Underground,Bike, Bus, Infrastructure’s SHit, announced plans to be thoroughly peeved, write some strongly worded letters and then pay up.

“At least it’s not terrible like when it was all nationalised,” said unelected Prime Minister Theresa Might, “back when trains were reasonably punctual and even the poor could afford to stink up the trains! Ugh! I want to vomit just remembering. Do you like my leather pants? They cost the same as a ticket down the West Coast Mainline! Bargain!”

We were going to include some pictures of train overcrowding but couldn’t afford to get tickets and a man with a whip chased off the platform shouting something about vagrancy.