Merseyside yesterday saw yet another experiment bought in with on the spot fines being
introduced for people travelling on Merseyrail trains and not being in possession of a
valid ticket or travel pass.
Treated like Cheats?
The first fine has been handed on the day the scheme was introduced and BBC Radio Merseyside
interviewed the local working class women, who said she felt like she was being
'treated like
a cheat'. Later on in the article we look at Cherie Blairs experiences with boarding
trains with no ticket, plus some surprising responses from Downing Street on the matter
when
'one of there own' is caught with no ticket.
Bus Conductors
Years ago, travelling on public transport was almost impossible without a valid
ticket. Train guards and ticket collectors or bus conductors made sure of that. However,
the owners of the trains and buses had the 'great' idea of cutting costs by cutting the
workers so that the greedy so and so's who own and run them can have even more money to
add to there already overflowing bank accounts. The trains and buses, in some areas,
are now like travelling community centres. No-one fined Merseyrail, Merseytravel or
other bus companies for supplying such an appalling disgraceful third rate service,
but now they'll fine you £10 if you don't have your ticket to ride.
Kirkby Station: The Train is Waiting
At Kirkby Station, and most other stations, up until recent times, if the train was
in the station and someone was visibly walking down the steps to get to the train, you'd
see the train driver hold the doors open for a few seconds if they were closed. Nowadays,
this does not happen; the old fashioned bit of courtesy stopped by management, not the
poor train drivers. Therefore, if you're heading to get a train into work, the odds
are that if the train is waiting, you'll be tempted to simply run down the steps or
slope and jump on and pay at the other end. For some people, turning up to work late
can land them in bad trouble. You could get the sack. For most people travelling
from Kirkby, the most popular destinations are Moorfields and Central Station.
These stations are manned at the barriers, Central especially so. Now, if you are
running a few seconds late, you'll have to purchase a ticket and wait for the next
train. Merseyrails advice leaflet on the matter, downloaded off there website,
tells us to 'allow sufficient time to purchase a ticket', but many commuters
will be taking buses to the train station, and as we all know, the buses do
not link with the trains and the arrival times and departure times are a mess.
For all the great computerised technology that they use these days, the fact
remains that buses and trains were ran better in times past. This is not
nostalgic nonsense. Trains now can be held up for reasons which range from
'leafs on the line', to the first few little bits of ice and snow of the
winter which England tends to always have. Privatisation always means that the
private companies work for a profit, not to help the commuter.
On the Buses
As for the buses, we have reports of gangs of kids drinking and even smoking weed. On
a single decker! I can confirm these reports and doubtless most drivers will. Generally on the
buses there is still smoking upstairs, in fact, people specifically sit upstairs to smoke. But
smoking carries a bigger fine than £10, I think the penalty is £50, maybe more but the
'no smoking' stickers are generally peeled off or altered. Could we ask
Merseytravel in particular how many people have been fined for smoking on buses?
The reason it is not tackled is because basically it will need a lot of workers to
do so and Merseytravel are likely scared that tackling the problem will lead to
more smashed buses, and more attacks on drivers. Anti social behaviour on buses
is rarely tackled, and a reader of Kirkby Times, only last week, listened to
passengers on a bus arguing over whether lads who had been smoking/spitting/jumping all
over a particular single decker bus, were idiots. One passenger stood up for the
'back of the bus brigade', a mother who thought such behaviour reasonable.
Most passengers stay quiet and keep themselves to themselves, we all know the
damage a gang of young lads can do, and even if you did defend yourself against
them, and came off better, you may well be in trouble yourself. In the UK,
self defence may well be construed as a crime.
The poor bus drivers have to go through Kirkbys
'no go zones', were kids as
young as 5 or so will be joining in smashing bus windows from time to time, with older kids
even assaulting drivers. Merseyside bus companies give free travel to the police here,
perhaps the old warrant card doubles up as some sort of 'All Zone Saveaway', but what
copper in his or her spare time, or right mind is going to be abandoning the car to sit
on the top deck of a bus to experience the delights of what can, at times, seem like a
mobile zoo?
Maybe the Trams will be better?
Worse still, instead of tackling the trains and buses problems by simply employing
the old style ticket collectors, we will now get a Tram system they tell us! (type trams
into the Kirkby Times Search engine for the real inside truth on this
'deal') - Trams
give us an estimated 40 minute journey from Kirkby to Liverpool City Centre, which
will soon lose the glamour aspect for the day to day commuters. Many elderly seem to back
the trams, almost because they see it as a nostalgic return to better days. Given local
pensioners have free travel passes here on Merseyside, they may well applaud the Trams
or any public transport, but whether they would get free travel off peak is another
matter! However, unless the Trams had guards, they too would end up tuning into mobile
youth centres, a fact for which the youth, devoid of architectural skills or political
power, can hardly be blamed, can they? Commuters, who are the lifeblood of the public
transport system, are looking for a reliable fast route from A to B. They would also
like to feel safe on public transport, and for it to be clean and as cheaply priced
as possible. It takes 15 mins or so for the train to travel from Kirkby to Liverpool
City Centre. It would be 40 mins for a Tram. We need only look at the amount of
people using cars to travel to work and school to see that public transport here
in Merseyside is getting worse, not better.
Mesrseyrail claim on there penalty fines information leaflet that 10% of train passengers
do not have a valid ticket. The reasoning then seems to be that people involved
in vandalism, assaults and who create disorder are
'virtually without fail, fare evaders'.
In reality, it's a nice chance for new labour to do what they do best, go after the easy mark,
pick on the general public, catch the honest out by casting the net over every
imaginable crime or
misdemeanour. New labour have already made great fortunes fining the commuters
in cars - now they are going for the commuters on public transport. Mersey travel
have allowed the buses and trains to become menacing at times, because they under
staff and under fund the network which is more run for private profit than the
people of Merseyside. At Kirkby Station, we used to have the ticket collector
taking tickets off commuters as we walked out of the station.
No-one is saying that people should be getting a free ride, but a good ticket
inspector will be able to simply charge for the fare on the train. If in the event of
someone not having the ticket or there money and obviously just taking the pi**, the
standard procedure is usually to kick the person off, not literally, at the next stop, if
they do not have any good reason for making the journey.
Sadly, the inequality of the distribution of wealth in Liverpool can often mean
working class people have not got the money for a ticket to ride. Local travel is still
affordable for most, but many working class still feel we are being ripped off by the
managers and suchlike of the bus and train companies. Years ago - the price of your
ticket would in turn pay the staff and run the network and associated works. Nowadays
the profits go to pay for the likes of Richard Branson to fly his balloon. Is this
really an improvement? No-one even fined him when he crashed the damn thing. With
the luck of Devil himself, he escaped that one fairly ok, still grinning.
On a serious note, the train networks should be taken out of private ownership
as should all public transport. You may say this is 'left wing nonsense', Richard
Branson may say we're depriving him of his freedom to float above the landscape
in his balloon, but I would ask him to spend a few consecutive weeks of evening
and days on public transport around Liverpool and tell me privately owned transport
is a good idea for us all.
Cherie Oh Cherie oh Baby!
Thankfully the internet offers much evidence of the past activities of our politicians
and assorted business players in the games which affect our lives. Cherie Blair has had
a few slip ups in her time, and one such slip up was the fateful day of Monday the 11th
of January in the year 2000 when, on her first day as a recorder in the Courts, she ended
up on a train, with no ticket! Cherie had boarded a train at Blackfriars station, London,
without a ticket for her journey to Luton. Oh dear! When she reached the underground style
barriers at Luton she told the ticket collector she did not have a ticket and had to pay
a £10 penalty and £9.70 return fare.
Do you take Escudos?
You'd think Cherie Blair would always have a few quid in her pocket, she has
enough of it. Or is it possible that Cherie did indeed make a series of genuine mistakes?
Kirkby Times is not trying to put the boot in, or accuse Cherie of trying to bunk on. But
she acknowledged that people can and do board trains with no ticket and no money. To be
fair, it was her first day in a new job, she done what anyone would have done. But if an
extremely well educated women like her, knowledgeable of the complexities of English
law can make not just one mistake (no ticket) but also give us a classic "I've only got
foreign money". What are we to think?
It can happen though. Cherie had been away for a bit of sun and cheer before her
new job. Most of us would have a bevvy with your mates to celebrate a new job, the
Middle Class champagne socialists like to fly off somewhere exotic. She had returned
from holiday in Lisbon on Sunday and apparently had only Portuguese escudos
in her purse. You can't help but laugh at the potential comic sight of Cherie
telling some Merseyrail guards about the old
'escudos' in the purse. A better
excuse than pulling out some old 'saveaway ticket' you found and saying
'I've rubbed the date out wrong mate'
Credit Card Ticket Machines?
A Downing Street spokesman at the time said that
"Mrs Blair could not buy
a ticket because the Blackfriars ticket office was closed and she did not have
enough cash to use a machine, which did not take credit cards" Any Scouse ticket
collector would raise his or her eyebrows at the
'credit card' excuse. No doubt
a few posh stations in London may have piloted credit card payment machines 4
years ago, but how many people caught in Merseyside today and yesterday will
say
"there was no ticket machine with credit card facilities at Kirkby Station".
There's not even a self service ticket machine at Kirkby, but the station is
tiny and there is barely room to swing a politician on the end of a noose.
Downing St admit that if you have a train to catch - you should just get on it'
Downing Street sought to make light of the incident, arguing that Mrs Blair's
experience was
'a common occurrence for people who had to catch trains
when ticket offices were closed' Asked why she had not gone to a cash machine to get
money for a ticket, Blair's spokesperson said:
"She had a train to catch." So there we
have it, Cheries excuse for not paying was perfectly acceptable. But if you
get caught now in the year 2004, there is NO excuse, as the travel companies tell us.
Upstanding Citizens with no ticket
Cheries spokesperson stressed that
"It would be quite difficult for a 45-year-old
pregnant woman to leap over the barrier." The spokesman also said:
"She is an upstanding citizen. These things happen." So if Cherie not buying a ticket
was all just a big mistake and she is an
'upstanding citizen', why fine her £10?
And if Downing Street can admit
"These things happen", then why now criminalise
ordinary commuters, who, like Cherie Blair, end up on a train with no ticket?
As ever in England and the UK, it's a case of one law for us and another for
them. Cherie may have had to pay her fine, but, she had the Government defending
her and backing her up! No such luck for the women from Liverpool who got
slammed with a £10 fine yesterday.
