On 24 Mar, 19:56, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:52:34 -0000, "Paul Scott"

wrote:
I noticed in one of last night's London freesheets that Ken is now taking a
different tack after his recent let off from a FGW penalty fare last week,
don't think I've missed a thread on it...

He appeared to be trying to turn things round into the usual TOC bashing
exercise, along the lines of 'I tried to get FGW to install barriers etc
years ago etc'. *But on the route in question FGW DO accept PAYG, but only
as far as West Drayton, and clearly Slough is outside the 'zones'.

Yes but his point (from what I have read) was that it is hypocritical of
the TOCs to cut back on ticket selling capacity or take ages to
implement genuine ticketing improvements (like PAYG) and at the same
time run a very strict enforcement regime. Whether people agree with
that view or not is a moot point given he's not Mayor. Now we don't know
if FGW exercised discretion based on who Ken is or whether they simply
did the same for him that they'd do for anyone in the same
circumstances. Hopefully the latter but who knows?

If that is his point, then I agree with it. I've lost count of how
many times I've objected to the fact that more effort is put into
catching people without tickets than is put into making tickets
conveniently available.

But I have no sympathy with him as the person who was Mayor when TfL
decided to impose £4 penalty fares to coerce people to use Oyster
PAYG, and put their fingers in ears and went "la la la" when people
pointed out that Oyster was not yet fully available, however much they
wished it to be. Has he now only just noticed that it doesn't even
cover journeys covered by travelcards, let alone to places like Slough?