Virgin Trains founder Richard Branson has been roasted by passengers on Twitter after he said his pet hate was people turning up late.
The general public fired off a host of stinging comments, saying his Virgin rail services were the reason many of them were late for work.
The billionaire who spends most of his time in the Caribbean posted a message saying how important punctuality is alongside a picture of him running to a meeting to avoid being late.
He wrote: “There’s very little that annoys me in life, but people turning up late really does. Punctuality shows organisation and respect for others.”
But customers who have used his West Coast and East Coast services hit back, saying his train services did not apply the same philosophy when it came to being punctual.
Retweeting Mr Branson’s initial tweet, Rebecca Reid wrote: “About 30% of the times I’ve been late it’s been because of one of your trains mate.”
Another tweeted: “I’m sorry, Richard. I set off on time but my Virgin train was late.”
According to Network Rail statistics in the period between 2017/18 the service had a public performance measure score of 90.8%, which shows the number of services that arrived within five minutes of their allocated times for short journeys and 10 minutes for longer ones.
The East Coast service was this year re-nationalised and is now called the London North Eastern Railway.
The Virgin Group has not commented.
This comes as Richard Branson has once more criticised Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, saying Brexit was a “tremendous mistake” that is “already affecting the lives of my countrymen”. This was reported to an Italian media outlet where he was visiting a shipyard in Genoa.
The tax exile who spends most of his year in the Caribbean on Necker Island believes Britain’s exit from the EU “is already affecting the lives of my countrymen, for the worse, and it saddens me”.
Mr Branson is an outspoken critic of Brexit and earlier this year he called on MPs to vote against the Withdrawal Bill at the end of Brexit negotiations.
During an outspoken interview with Bloomberg news earlier in the year he said:
I’ve been an open book as far as Brexit is concerned. I thought it was a disaster for the UK, very sad for Europe. I think the facts are now beginning to be very very clear what a disaster Brexit is going to be.
Sadly it’s the very people who voted for Brexit out in the rural areas of Britain that the latest research shows are going to be the hardest hit by Brexit.
I’m still hopeful when all the facts are on the table in front of the House of Commons and people realise just how damaging it’s going to be for Great Britain that Britain does what Ireland did and they change their mind at the last minute.”
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Lead Correspondent | David Clews is the Lead Correspondent for UNN, with over 20 years of political/campaigning experience and a wealth of social media and communication skills David gets to the heart of what is really important to the real people of the UK.
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