"Robin" wrote in message
...

And as a London resident I'd find it hard to explain to people outside London why
central government should give TfL more of their taxes to subsidise travel in London
while Londoners' enjoy a fares freeze.

Well you could start by pointing out that London, followed by the South
East, and to a very small degree the East of England are the only
areas of the UK which actually make a positive contribution to the
UK economy

As the graph, half down this abstract from the ONS shows

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/gover...2015to2016#toc
Country and regional public sector finances: Financial year ending March 2016


In short London contributes around 28 billion, The South East around 15
billion and the East of England around 2 billion. The North West of
England on the other hand produced a 22 billion deficit,
Yorkshire around a 14 million deficit, and Scotland around a
15 billion deficit.

Now I personally don't begrudge these regions this money as the wealth
of the UK was built on their labour in the past; their mines, their mills
and their shipyards. Just as London's wealth has always derived from
her geographical position in the SE and her relative proximity to
continental Europe. Unfair maybe, but that's geography for you.

So that before anyone starts bandying around loaded phrases such as
"subsidies" or "subsidising", I think it best to be determine who is
actually subsidising whom, and by exactly how much.

As to your other point about Londoners enjoying a fares freeze,
I'm rather astonished to learn that you weren't aware that this
freeze only applies to single journeys. There is no such freeze
on the cost of travel cards or on Oyster card daily and monthly
caps.

I assume the reason the freeze has been prioritised on single fares
is simply because this is the easiest way of helping poorer
people who might otherwise find such fares a burden. Unemployed
people travelling to job interviews or to visit a sick child
in a hospital on the other side of London.

The assumption being I suppose that people who travel most
regularly on public transport, by doing so have already
demonstrated their ability to pay, unlike those who may already
regard use of public transport, the tube certainly as a luxury
of sorts.

Now whether there's any evidential basis for such an assumption
I'm not sure, and short of means testing passengers in some way
I can't see how there ever could be. Nevertheless it seems
reasonable enough to me.



michael adams

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