OPINION - Evening Standard Comment: Restore rush hour timetables to help Londoners get back to the office

The Great Return to the office and to central London threatens to be undone by a paucity of train services. Lines where capacity is down to two trains an hour instead of the usual four, six or more undermine the very recovery we all — not least the train operators — want to see.

Londoners are at present facing long waits before struggling to board packed carriages, neither of which will encourage more people to return to the city and to normal.

This is compounded by the RMT’s scheduled longest Tube strike in history, which is hampering weekend travel and is planned to persist for months. We again call on the union to end this industrial action for the good of our city. And we urge rail bosses to restore full rush hour timetables to help Londoners get back to the office.

Art of London

A brisk walk apart, there are two very different aspects of British art on show this week. At the National Gallery, Gainsborough’s celebrated Blue Boy has returned to London from exile at the Huntington Gallery in California; it’s 100 years to the day today since he left London, to general dismay.

Before he left, a century ago, some 90,000 people came to see him at the National Gallery. It’s good to have him back, even if it’s only until May.

Over at the Royal Academy, there’s a new Francis Bacon exhibition, Man and Beast, the first in London since 2008. And there we can find some of the most unsettling art of the 20th century.

Both exhibitions, very different in scale and character, are a reason to come to town. London isn’t just open for business but for the most wonderful art.