THE recent announcement on rail fare increases has been accompanied by the usual guff about the need to fund continued investment in the rail infrastructure.
What is never mentioned is that government subsidies, currently applied to fares, are being gradually reduced and will eventually cease altogether.
It isn’t an austerity measure, it is rather the result of a policy decision by Neil Kinnock, when EU Transport Commissioner back in 1998, to apply a ‘user pays’ principle to an integrated transport network throughout the European Union.
Therefore, whether we think it’s a good idea or not, we cannot encourage people to use trains rather than cars through the use of subsidised fares as it would be against EU policy and would be forbidden by the EU Commission.
So it is that when all three main parties agree on unpopular decisions such as Royal Mail privatisation, fortnightly bin collections, wind farms or even HS2, it is invariably because they know that the EU is behind it and they have no choice.
Such is the state of our democracy and independence in 2015.
Ken Whittaker Birchwood
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