Just read how Virgin trains are going to take the government to court after losing their franchise over the west coast mainline service and I came to realise that the Virgin group don't like losing to lower bidding competitors and like to have it out in court so that they can print more money from government given franchises They even sued the NHS in York because they lost out on a bid to an NHS trust and so went to court citing "that the NHS bid was unrealistically low and therefore unfair." Not had good service personally from Virgin and when I read stuff like this it makes me hate the company even more for wasting taxpayers money to slide into their own coffers with outlandish court bids. They say that the FirstGroup cannot deliver for the price that they've offered, sounds like sour grapes to me.
Indeed yes. That's Nut Branson in a shell.! Epitomises avarice and bullying in Brit business. Then again he learned the hard way from King of British Airways. Tom
He was always a bully. His treatment of John Lennon to complete another album was noted in a biography..
I do think that the 1980s war between King's BA and Virgin Atlantic has had some effect on the way that Virgin Group now behaves and conducts its business. But Virgin wasn't always that way. I remember being in a party of journalists flying to San Francisco to attend events in Silicon Valley and San Diego. As luck would have it, we were booked on Virgin Atlantic's inaugural flight to San Francisco. VA's Public Relations department found out about us and had us all upgraded to First Class for both the outbound and our return flight from Los Angeles. Branson was also on that SF flight and presented each of us with a commemorative bottle of (decent) Champers and personally invited us to attend a party held that evening in a swanky hotel where, coincidentally, we were staying. Actually not all in our party were upgraded: our two PR "minders" had to suffer in cattle class and they weren't transported between their homes and Heathrow by chauffeur-driven limos; but they did attend the Branson bash with us. Evidence of the Virgin-British Airways war was very apparent at Los Angeles. We, along with other Virgin passengers, were all "invited" by very persistent BA staff to transfer to one of their flights by claiming that our Virgin flight had been cancelled. It hadn't been, of course, and Virgin's check-in personnel told us that this was a regular tactic employed by the flag carrier. That evening BA was doled-out some bad Karma because its Heathrow flight had to be canceled due to a technical fault. Apparently (so we were told) BA staff used other dirty tricks against Virgin such as phoning the refuellers and under-ordering fuel which caused delays as a further order had to be placed and delivered.
One of our O'Seas sandpit Citizen/Troop withdrawals was gifted to BA. Branson had to ask "why" Virgin was not included as BA was then privatised. Dirty trick's at the highest level The old adage comes true "The abused become the abusers". Lets hope NOT always though Isreal springs to mind.? Tom
