Rail fare increases of 30 to 40%

Holy honking crap!

This is obscene. Train fares are already ridiculously high - and the service is decidely shoddy - and if we're remotely serious about reducing carbon emissions we should be doing everything possible to improve the train stock, make the service more reliable, more pleasant and easier to use in order to lure a lot more people out of their cars. But here we are again - stupid money grubbing Tories - obsessed with car ownership (they sure love all the extra money they can milk out of motorists) - unable to see the future consequences of their proposals.

I.E. If fares go up that much how care people going to afford it? There's already people taking pay cuts and pay freezes - if they need to get to work they'll have to start asking for wage rises... and if employers have to meet those rises because they need their staff coming into work (although a few might make do with less staff and that'll only increase unemployment) they'll have to raise the costs of their goods/services to their customers - which will come on top of the new VAT rise... and that'll depress demand even more...

You see where I'm going with this.

And erm... when the cap on housing benefit comes into play and people on low wages have to move out of their current homes in a search of cheaper accommodation - and have to travel in to their job only to find they're having to shell out even more in fares...

We're looking at a system that's already straining to cope now going into meltdown.

Faisal Islam on Economics - Rail fare increases of 30 to 40 per cent