Liars and cheats

Since the days of the tragic death of British Rail, our railways have been infected by a slew of tawdry liveries most of which lack even a semblance of class. One of the few exceptions was GNER:

These fine folks bought the East Coast Mainline -- "the Route of the Flying Scotsman" -- and hired top international designer Massimo Vignelli to design a very grown-up livery in deep blue, with splashes of red, and gold lettering:

GNER's livery was one of the best of the privatised companies -- as, indeed, was their standard of passenger service.

Alas, all that is a long-distant memory and, several changes of owner later, the East Coast Mainline is in the hands of the prosaically-named Directly Operated Railways (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DafT, or Department for Transport).

These cretins have now wasted tax-payers' money on this abominable livery, shown here in all its putrid glory defacing an awesomely powerful Class 91 locomotive (an "InterCity 225"):

The puke-inducing main colour bleeds into a cold, chemical grey at the ends closest to the coaching stock, while the vivid yellow nose (which anyway clashes in a particularly nauseous way with the bilious magenta/mauve) is "decorated" with a giant, kiddy-style thistle:

Quite what that has to do with the trains operating between, say, London and Leeds is beyond me.

The final evidence of the idiocy of both the client and the designers comes when the loading-bay doors of the van are pulled back, and the legend is then clearly readable as this:

I despair for them. And Britain is supposed to be one of the world's great creative centres for graphic design excellence? They're just morons.