Milking the taxpayer

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Milking the taxpayer

(Friday 21 November 2008)


THE government cannot escape its responsibility for the outrageous fare rises being imposed on the travelling public by the train operating companies.

Instead of taking the railways back into public ownership, as it promised when in opposition, it has left this prime example of Tory government larceny untouched.

Supposed regulation of fares is a farce. Regulated fares rise by inflation plus and unregulated fares by whatever the privateers believe that they can get away with.


The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc), the collective spin doctor for this cabal of profiteers, insists that greater income helps to finance major investment to improve the railways.


It also claims that it will help the government plan to reduce handouts to the privateers by 40 per cent in the period 2006-7 to 2013-4.


But the Atoc spokesman does not acknowledge that we were fed the fiction, pre-privatisation, that fabled private-sector efficiency would bring drastically reduced and even non-existent government subsidies.


In fact, the privateers are milking the taxpayer for three times the subsidy that British Rail received when it was publicly owned.


Privatisation has failed rail travellers and the taxpayer. Far from the train companies using government subsidies for investment, much of it is shovelled straight into the pockets of their shareholders.


The railways are a natural monopoly. Passengers cannot refuse to travel on one track and choose to patronise another.


Commuters in particular are denied any real choice apart from opting for the dispiriting and anti-social alternative of sitting in private cars, stuck in traffic jams on arterial routes into our cities.


The government claims to be concerned about the environment and to wish to see people choose public transport, especially our railways, as a cleaner and more efficient alternative to private cars.


But that pious wish is contradicted by its willingness to see rail users fleeced by companies whose owners prioritise private profits over the interests of passengers and staff.


The railways could not operate without government support. The industry is a classic example of the philosophy of nationalising losses - the state subsidies - and privatising profits.


The government is adept at forcing its own employees in the Civil Service and other public services to accept annual pay rises of around 2 per cent, while inflation has been over double that.


It calls for a collective tightening of the belt to withstand the current recession, but that doesn't apply to the private rail monopolists.


The rail companies have a licence to extort profits from their passengers and from their staff, none of whom is likely to see pay rises of between 6 and 11 per cent.


Just as the government was ready to put hundreds of billions at the disposal of the banks when it wouldn't pay out minimal amounts to save jobs in the NHS or Remploy, so it offers little more than warm words to workers at the sharp end of the current crisis while allowing the rail parasites to feather their nests as a way of seeing them through the winter.


There is only one answer to the scandal of escalating rail fares and that is to take the railways back into public ownership.

Contact Us
Copyright Morning Star, all rights reserved
published by the Peoples Press Printing Society

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Unions attack rail rises as 'daylight robbery'

(Friday 21 November 2008)
by PAUL HASTE

RAIL unions condemned massive train fare rises as "daylight robbery" on Friday that will hammer working families already struggling through the effects of a looming recession.

Privateer rail companies will inflict the big rises on passengers in the new year, with some tickets being increased by twice the rate of inflation.

Fares regulated by the government and based on the rate of inflation last July will rise by an average of 6 per cent, while greedy rail bosses will impose rises of up to 11 per cent on unregulated fares.

Travellers on Southeastern, whose trains run between Brighton and London, will be hit by an 8 per cent rise and passengers on First Capital Connect, National Express East Coast and South West Trains will all have to fork out more to pay the extra 7 per cent that their tickets will cost from next January.

Association of Train Operating Companies chief executive Michael Roberts claimed that the rises were justified because "our performance is at the highest level since records began, with more than 90 per cent of trains arriving on time."

Mr Roberts also tried to justify the inflation-busting rises by insisting that "rail fares have risen by just 5 per cent in real terms since 1996 and standard-class regulated fares are actually lower than they were in the year before privatisation."

But clerical transport union TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty accused the companies of wanting a "licence to print money" at the expense of hard-pressed commuters.

"This should be stopped. If every other business is cutting prices at a time of recession, why should the rail companies be allowed to get away with daylight robbery?" he asked.

"These rises make a mockery of the government's pledge to help hard-working families through the recession and ministers should have cancelled this inflation-plus increase if they were serious in helping people just get to work, let alone keep their jobs."

Rail union RMT general secretary Bob Crow added that the government should "intervene to stop private rail operators hiking up rail fares even higher."

He said that the privateers were "forcing commuters to pay the price of the recession as the companies effectively insulate themselves against the economic downturn."

ASLEF general secretary Keith Norman said: "These rises are further indication of the priorities of the government and the private rail companies are profits first and passengers a very clear second."