Thame

To Taine, yes, Mr. Hughes.

He said Thame is only about, uh, 12 miles away, sir.

Yes, I know.

Uh, would he be there now, Mrs. A.? Uh, we could go there and fetch him, I would think, sir.

He was bearded like a prophet, sir.

And didn't come back.

I think he forgot about my four and six and caught a bus to Thame like he said.

There's one about noon, sir, or maybe he'll send it to me from there.

They won't get people onto them unless they can use them, and I take, for example, the major market towns around the city in which I live, Oxford.

Until the middle '60s, all of them, let's say Abingdon, Thame, Wallingford, Whitney, just to name but some of them, were connected by rail with Oxford.

And if that connection still existed, then the people living in those towns could come and work and shop in Oxford as, as they try to do.

But as it is, they can't because the railways have been ripped up, and attempting to come in by road is a nightmare.

Is there anything there that Peter said that's wrong?

I very much agree, by the way, that the Beeching cuts...

I imagine the closure of Thame Station post-dated the Beeching cuts.

Is that right?

No one...

Parkway stations, if you look at Bristol Parkway, for example, or indeed Thame and thingy-me-bob Parkway, are enormously successful.

They also obviate the need for people to drive into a city just to take a train all the way out again.

There are, there is abundant sort of evidence in terms of what passengers want and use, and therefore it should inform further investment.

So then on Friday evening, I'd gone to the Chinner game between Tigers and the champ team, Chinner.

It sounds as though we might have... done them a big favour because we could have pulled out of that game because we had the the Quinns game on the Friday evening in the Prem Cup it was certainly a big day for the people of Thame where Chinna play and for Chinna the rugby club a very proud club there was about 3,000 people there on Friday night which is which was great they were very grateful that we that we'd come despite the fact that our selection was let's call it men v boys men against boys pretty literally actually because when our team was named I had to check a few of the lads and see where they played some of them aren't even really in the academy Some of them are going off, as Jeff Parling said, some of them are going off to university soon.

Some of them will come into the academy soon.

But they are players that haven't really played together.

Persistent concerns have led the chief executive, Jo Boydell, to stand down after thirteen years at the firm.

Freddie van Mierlo is the Liberal Democrat MP for Thame, where Travelodge has its headquarters.

He says he wants the investors in the hotel chain to provide capital to fund deep changes at the company.

I've always said that what's wrong is the business model.