Travel in the 21st century

I read Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, Don't blame the system for winter travel chaos. Stay put, as I sat on a train hoping to get to work, and itemising the claims I need to make to Southern for disrupted journeys. I have stopped bothering to tweet the daily annoyances of my commute from Seaford to Wandsworth and back. On a good day I leave my house at 6.30 in the morning and return at about 7 at night. There have been few good days lately. As I leave, especially on fine days, I wonder what it would be like to stay put, to walk or run on the hills for the day, or watch the seascape from the beach. Jenkins starts from the premise that travel is undertaken frivolously, for pleasure. On the contrary. Modern capitalism is unable to offer work to many of the population. And for those of us who do have jobs, we cannot work where we live, but are required to make complex and lengthy journeys to workplaces far away. There are many organisations nearer home where I could use my skills and talents, universities, colleges, public libraries, government departments, cultural organisations of all sorts, but none of them are recruiting; indeed most have frozen recruitment, or are, like the University of Sussex, making people redundant. Yet, having required us to travel these long distance to work, capitalism is incapable of organising an efficient transport system to get us there.  When there is snow or ice, they pack up altogether. On the day I read Jenkins, with no snowfall, Southern offered only an emergency service.  The railway system is now largely foreign-owned and, as far as I can see, Southern does not give a fig whether I get to work in the morning or home in the evening. It has over £4,000 of my money for my season ticket and, for them, there the matter ends.