An Email from Tony Blair

I was one of the million plus who got an email from our Tone the other day because I'd signed the online petition against road tolls.

Tone didn't actually say he'd take any notice of the petition - he said more about things like "We must do something to ease congestion"... Agreed. Public transport was one of the options. Agreed again - get it sorted out! At the moment it is far more expensive to take a train than it is for a single person to take a fleet of Rolls Royces. We have crazy situations where trains that are consistantly overcrowded cause railway managers to comment that the fares must be too cheap. I'd have thought in my naive way that it was because they either didn't use enough carriages or put on enough trains myself, but it just goes to show how wrong I can be!

Of course it's a dangerous thing to point out to politicians that it's cheaper to travel by car than by train because they rub their hands in glee and take it as an excuse to put the cost of motoring up. Whereas what's needed is the cost of rail travel - particularly at rush hour and other busy times - to come down so more will use it. Ah, but of course, we make those times more expensive and therefore less attractive to commuters...

A friend was on a train from London the other week and a young foreign girl got on. She had a ticket to travel so imagine her surprise when the train conductor demanded another £100 from her because she was on a train that left London during peak times. Actually she wasn't so much surprised as downright shocked, upset, in floods of tears. As anyone might be who thought they had paid for something legitimately only for an official to suddenly demand a huge amount of money out of the blue.

Very few people live within walking distance of work these days. We rely on being able to travel every day and many of us travel quite long distances. Putting up the cost of road travel causes the cost of almost everything to go up because goods have to be gotten from A to B.

I've found most people, even strong Conservatives, think the railways and Power services should be re-Nationalised. The current rail system where there are so many companies involved in charging fees for a train traveling through their region, on their rails, etc. etc., it's probably as much an administrative nightmare as it would be as a public body and there's umpteen lots of profit being charged as well.

</rant>