Our Ridiculous Railways

Travelling anywhere on the trains these days is a massive, expensive ordeal. A return ticket from Ipswich to Manchester (that's about 250 miles if you didn't know) costs me around 100GBP, if I buy on the day. In addition to this it takes forever, is regularly replaced by a coach service (with no compensation offered), often late, and is generally a load of shit. This we all take as red...

But why oh why, on top of all this bullshit, has the industry decided to take on an airfare style approach to pricing? It's a fucking train for God's sake, I don't want to spend hours working out what particular combination of time and place will save me tenner. I don't want to understand the logic that says if I book the train from Ipswich it will cost me one thing, and if I book it further along the line it'll cost me a tenner more. Under what possible logic does it cost me 14GBP if I book from Leeds, but 30GBP from Manchester. And what a fucking faff to get all the way across the pennines to save three quid. And why is it cheaper on the Saturday than the Sunday?

How about this for a piece of logic? Why not have 2 fare variations - off-peak and peak, advance and on-the-day? Then even out the prices so the big fares are less and the tiny fares and normal. HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT!?