Thursday, October 03, 2013

The Great Tory Train Robbery

"Dear Colleague, will you join me on Friday 4 October to campaign against the Great Tory Train Robbery?  Please click here to register and I will put you in touch with activity near you.

Over the last few weeks I have been campaigning against the Tory Mayor’s plans to hike fares above inflation and close every TFL ticket office in London. So far I’ve campaigned in Barnet, Brent, Camden, Southwark, Croydon and Tooting.

There was more coverage of our campaign in the Evening Standard yesterday, but we need to keep the pressure on the Tory Mayor if we are to persuade him to freeze fares next year.

We are holding a London-wide weekend of action on the 4th, 5th and 6th of October. We will be leafleting tube stations in London and holding street stalls in all parts of the city.

Will you join us? Click here to register.

In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, Londoners simply cannot afford another inflation busting hike to the cost of commuting, especially while the Mayor is closing ticket offices – making commuting more difficult less safe and costing thousands of jobs.

I hope to see you there,

Sadiq Khan
Shadow London Minister

P.S – please tweet about the campaign using #GreatToryTrainRobbery

P.P.S – If you haven’t already, please sign our petition here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Train fares are expensive. Train drivers earn £40 to 60k. It is the price for a decent wage. Why complain?. Socialists can't have it both ways.

On the DLR, they earn £17k.


John Gray said...

Hi anon

I suppose the obvious response is that you don't have train drivers on the DLR and I don't think their ticket prices are any cheaper?

Thinking about it if your figure of £17k is correct for DLR train captains (I think that is their name) how on earth can they live on that money?

The average market rent for a 2 bed property in Newham is £253 per week. That is £13k per year (not including Council tax etc). If they only earn £17k (before tax and national insurance) that means they would have less than £4 to live on and they can only do this job if the tax payer subsidies their employer?

Anonymous said...

They don't drive the trains, but they can if they want to.

In fact, they can run the entire system without any staff on the trains.

The DLR is a new railway. It has one staff member for every ever 2 or 3 carriages. No staff at stations. I don't think a new railway can charge the same price, as the Tube network, which was built over a century ago. They would have had to acquire new land and they now go to Woolwich Arsenal under the river (which can't have been cheap to dig a tunnel).




John Gray said...

I thought according to your theory the fares should be as cheap as chips since wages are so low?

Most of the DLR is on existing surface tracks much cheaper to run than deep and expensive to maintain underground tunnels.