Getting my money's worth: A Northern Rail adventure - Crewe

"The 08:31 Northern service to Manchester Piccadilly via Manchester Airport is currently running 16 minutes late."

Well that's a good start. The train I want is running 5 minutes late because of this. Oh good. First train of the day, and I already face delays. Well, it's a good job I factored in delays longer than this. If only this were Japan, where delays of over a minute are very rare.