I’ve long-given-up wondering just how low the Daily Mail will stoop for their latest non-story, but this takes some beating.

“Hi honey, did I ever tell you that I hate you? And by the way I’ve invited some photographers around to capture the moment for posterity”

As if commuting on public transport wasn't bad enough, this report suggests that more than one in four commuters has bacteria from faeces on their hands!

What's wrong with these people?

Overcrowding, terrorism, outbreak of the shits - I think I'll walk.

In my view, the selling-off of the railways to cowboys like StageCoach was one of the more heinous crimes committed by the last Conservative government in the name of free enterprise. Now I'm all for private sector involvement, but with the knock-down price and no meaningful incentive/penalty for improving things for commuters, it's little surprise that we remain lumbered with an inefficient, dirty and over-priced railway service....sorry wrong meeting!

Well the point of all this post is that I am currently embroiled in a dispute with SWT over a penalty fare and I am hoping that by posting this message, someone in their PR team may pick it up on Technorati, or a similar alert service and get it resolved for me.

My dispute centres around the fact that I have a season ticket to travel between London and Sunningdale (cost c £2,800). One evening when the Sunningdale service was delayed, I jumped on the Woking train instead, only to find when I reached Woking that my ticket wasn't valid and that I had incurred a penalty fare.

This is despite the fact that the Woking trip is run by the same train operator and is 50 pence cheaper than the corresponding fare to Sunningdale - the equivalent of buying a Zone 2 ticket on the tube and getting fined for jumping off in Zone 1, if you will.

I have appealed to the Independent Appeals Service and other than a standard auto-generated letter, nothing. Ditto SWT's own customer services address.

The introduction of the Oyster scheme on the underground completely simplified the way we pay for tube travel. Why can't SWT and the other train operators do the same and stop picking on genuine fare-payers like me?