Andrew Swan
Corby Crisis Appeal
Fundraising for Oxfam GB
Story
"As Croydon is to London, Corby is to nowhere"
That is until February when Corby proudly opened its new train station. You can now get there from St Pancras but once you step off the train you are committed. There won't be a train back to civilisation until dawn. There is ONE train per day in each direction.
This advert sums the place up brilliantly: people must be paid to move there. Perhaps it is a coded cry for help from one of the staff at the marketing campaign responsible for that ad. Equally sharp maths skills are wielded on the transport page of that site, promoting the 65-minute commute to London on the 06:37 train which arrives 78 minutes later at 07:55. The train back from London gets you home at 19:19, leaving those of us not from Corby able to calculate that if we were to move there, work in London and sleep 8 hours a night we would only actually suffer three conscious hours in the town per day. That must be the selling point, because the £85 day return fare that they neglect to mention certainly isn't.
A curious website has a number of collections of photos of what we must assume to be Corby's highlights. First up is the the cinema, then we have the boating lake, the roundabout, the station and the village (how quaint!) Further inspection of the miscellaneous section will reveal some shops with their shutters down and empty pavements outside. That's the most striking thing about all of these photos: the total absence of people.
Our visionary photographer's hopes are being borne out in the real world now. An orbital by-pass road is under construction which when finished will help motorists safely avoid the town. The train service is clearly for evacuation purposes rather than commuting. The marketing campaign optimistically lists sea and air as alternative escape routes, though a quick glance at a map casts hundreds of miles of doubt on their viability.
The message is clear: people are trapped in Corby and they need our help. The train is their best hope, via which the whole town could probably be evacuated in under a year. £48 per ticket is a big ask, but if we follow Darwin's teachings and save only the 8.5% of the working-age population educated to degree level (the lowest proportion in Britain), we only need to raise £155,000.
(Photo by Ben Coulson)
That is until February when Corby proudly opened its new train station. You can now get there from St Pancras but once you step off the train you are committed. There won't be a train back to civilisation until dawn. There is ONE train per day in each direction.
This advert sums the place up brilliantly: people must be paid to move there. Perhaps it is a coded cry for help from one of the staff at the marketing campaign responsible for that ad. Equally sharp maths skills are wielded on the transport page of that site, promoting the 65-minute commute to London on the 06:37 train which arrives 78 minutes later at 07:55. The train back from London gets you home at 19:19, leaving those of us not from Corby able to calculate that if we were to move there, work in London and sleep 8 hours a night we would only actually suffer three conscious hours in the town per day. That must be the selling point, because the £85 day return fare that they neglect to mention certainly isn't.
A curious website has a number of collections of photos of what we must assume to be Corby's highlights. First up is the the cinema, then we have the boating lake, the roundabout, the station and the village (how quaint!) Further inspection of the miscellaneous section will reveal some shops with their shutters down and empty pavements outside. That's the most striking thing about all of these photos: the total absence of people.
Our visionary photographer's hopes are being borne out in the real world now. An orbital by-pass road is under construction which when finished will help motorists safely avoid the town. The train service is clearly for evacuation purposes rather than commuting. The marketing campaign optimistically lists sea and air as alternative escape routes, though a quick glance at a map casts hundreds of miles of doubt on their viability.
The message is clear: people are trapped in Corby and they need our help. The train is their best hope, via which the whole town could probably be evacuated in under a year. £48 per ticket is a big ask, but if we follow Darwin's teachings and save only the 8.5% of the working-age population educated to degree level (the lowest proportion in Britain), we only need to raise £155,000.
(Photo by Ben Coulson)