More rip off fare rises

[Mickey]

Deleted

[neilgow]

Ye gods, £10.00 a week in 1964. As an apprentice I got the lordly sum of 30 shillings and I had to give half to mother. Mind you I did brew my own beer.

NG.

[strang steel]

Yes £10 a week sounds a lot for 1964.

When I started work in 1971 my Dad gave me a £10 note to tide me over because I would not get paid until the end of the month. That ten quid lasted me four weeks, although I had paid my bedsit rent in advance (that was £14 per month).

[auldreekie]

You make my point for me, although I confess to being a bit skeptical about those who regard £10 per week in 1964 as an elevated income. I most certainly could NOT have lived for a month on that amount, unless subsidised in some way (eg by parent-provided accomodation), and in those days beer was a luxury in which I could not afford to indulge - nor for several years afterwards. Nor in my recollection did even postgraduate student grants extend to dizzy heights such as £800 per year until some time in the 1970's when inflation was rapid, and successors to the Wilson government were continuing to agree to 30% pay-rises for those whom they were keen to placate.

Perhaps 1934 for the £10 per week deprecation? We do tend to mis-remember things as the years advance...


auldreekie

[earlswood nob]

Afternoon all
You can imagine that I was quite well off earning £800pa in 1967/8 compared to those on a grant of approx half that. I did however have to work the vacs at my employers, and not go earning vast sums as a labourer etc. I also got a book allowance, free stationery, railfares home (not much in my case), and cheap meals and drink at the firm's social clubs. However, I was always skint at the end of the month and waiting for my salary to go into my bank account.
I seem to remember the fare home was 6s0d or 6s3d if I went via Guildford, which is the way I usually went as there was steam haulage between Guildford and Reigate in the early days.
It is now £12 so it has risen 40 times (4000%) in 45 years.
Earlswood Nob

[auldreekie]

I cannot say that this seems to me a matter of real importance personally at this date. My prime concern was to point out that the rail fare rises which so many seem keen to dub unreasonable are far from it, and that indeed a degree of improved social justice is involved.

However, if it is to be a competition in terms of hardship endured:

- my student grant 1964 to 1967 was £340 per year. In addition I had a scholarship value £40 per year for which I had worked damned hard under difficult circumstances. If one adds to this perhaps 10 weeks in the vacs at up to £10 per week (and a 45 hour - if I remember correctly - week of physical toil) that adds up to an annual income of £480 per year. Scarcely luxury and CERTAINLY not as remembered.... I had no allowance for books, beer, nor trips to the Seychelles. My father, who was very far indeed from well off or well, died in the middle of my undergraduate course and the family consequently lost the roof over its head; thereafter my mother was subsisting on the salary of a school meals supervisor, which was not a lot more than my grant. And I think, without undue modesty, that I did pretty well to come out of this without a chip on my shoulder about the relatively comfortable and untroubled offspring of the middle and upper classes with whom I shared an educational institution.

So I'm not awfully sympathetic to the claims of the "Ah remember when beer was tuppence a pint, and us fifteen kids 'ad ter live in a three-bedroomed council 'ouse" brigade. Some of 'em had it harder than me, but by no means all.


auldreekie

[PinzaC55]

I cannot say that this seems to me a matter of real importance personally at this date. My prime concern was to point out that the rail fare rises which so many seem keen to dub unreasonable are far from it, and that indeed a degree of improved social justice is involved.

Nor is it possible to say what the fares would have been if the railways had been kept as British Rail and the vast quantities of taxpayers money currently being pumped into private companies had been used by BR. I suspect the fares would have been a lot cheaper.
Also note that in BR days any taxpayers money was called "subsidy" but now it is called "investment".
I'm surprised booking offices don't say "that'll be One Five Nine sir" to mean £159 like they do in electrical goods adverts.

[Andy W]

I suspect the fares would have been, on average, much higher if BR had still been around as the Treasury would have wanted the growth choked off so they didn't have to spend money on trying to accomodate it. That was their standard tactic during the 1970s and 1980s and if you did get investment past them, they wanted savings, in track, signalling or a reduction in rolling stock. Nothing was ever for free with that mob.

The reason "subsidy" has become "investement", quite apart from it sounding better politically, is because of the Governments PSBR. Investment equals capital spend, subsidy equals revenue spend. That is one reason the DfT do not wish the direct grant to Network Rail to finish because routeing it through the TOCs brings it into the revenue calculations. The DfT class this direct payment as a grant for NR's capital requirements.

Currently every % increase in the fares goes to help the DfT cover any revenue fund shortfall so there is no incentive for them to consider lower fare increases. The money from fare increases above the norm (established at franchise letting) passes through the TOCs who just seem to be acting as tax collectors in this respect.

[auldreekie]

Were I never to travel by train (for instance because I could not afford the fares, so that I used bus and coach instead, or never left home), would it not be a "rip-off" (whatever, exactly that expression may mean) that I was obliged to subsidise through contributions to tax the rail-travel of relatively prosperous commuters and businessmen?


auldreekie