The FT has reported that:
Ministers have threatened to take direct control of Transport for London unless mayor Sadiq Khan accepts a package of measures including higher council tax, a much larger congestion charge zone and higher tube and bus fares in return for rescue funding.
The mayor is seeking a £4.9bn settlement for the next 18 months to bail out TfL whose passenger numbers and revenues have shrunk since Covid-19 restrictions were introduced in March. The government gave an initial six-month package worth £1.6bn to the transport authority in May.
So, let's summarise this.
Fares must rise.
Children will be penalised by paying more.
Moving by car will be more expensive.
Council tax must rise.
In other words, for no fault of their own, and when their incomes and livelihoods are at threat, the government is seeking to substantially increase the effective tax take from Londoners, which can only leave people much more vulnerable, and reduce the chance of any recovery for the city.
This is, of course, the imposition of austerity by stealth.
It will hurt.
It will harm the economy.
It will cause unemployment.
It will increase universal credit claims.
It will increase poverty.
But the government will blame Sadiq Khan. So that's all right then.
This is a declaration of economic warfare on the capital.
How many more people can they alienate?
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‘How many more people can they alienate?’
Not enough I can assure you.
“The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”.
Boris’s foreign friends will ensure that at election time, people will be brain washed again.
The election for Mayor is in May next year.
All people will remember by then is that under Khan prices rose and services were worse.
The startling thing is that the actions of the govt mirror the actions of the GOP/Trump.
What next?
Thinly-disguised thugs “making sure things go well at voting booths” like the USA?
Funny how people have forgotten that a certain Mr Alexander Boris De-Pfeffel Johnson, an American by birth, spaffed £50 million on a bridge that never got built.
I notice that you seem to have been installed on a troll-factory somehow… !
It seems I have been ….
Take heart!
You haven’t arrived until they attack you!
It’s been going on since June 2006
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Plus another one now
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I have just read Johnson said in the House that Sadiq Khan ‘bankrupted TfL.
Khan has tweeted that the Prime Minister has lied to the House of Commons. He should come back to the House to put the matter right.
I wonder if that will be on the news tonight.
This is the thing. The Tories can say whatever they like, outrageous lies day in day out and it gets reported, without question on the main channels without question or challenge. The trope that Labour can’t be trusted with the economy, for example, has run and run. Nobody ever questions it.
This is just one of a litany of lies we get, so much so, that we are unable to track which is the one to aim at and challenge. Of course, this must be ‘The Plan’. Flood the dialogue with so much fake news that no one knows what is the truth.
The failure of media to call this out is inexcusable and they are guilty of sins of omission.
What chills me to the bone, is how this administration has burnt their bridges with each and every sector of the economy (and trading nations) as if the future will not depend on the trust and goodwill of those people.
So what is their expectation for the future? I really wish I knew how you would pick up from here.
Whilst he is not responsible for Covid financial losses, the fares freeze for the past four years has been pure politics from Khan. TFL’s finances were coming under strain because of this before Covid. Tube passenger growth had stalled and bus passengers had actually fallen – even before Covid.
This at a time when the cross rail budget had blown out.
If khan wants support from central government then it is entirely reasonable that the absurd fare freeze is abandoned.
So that’s why TfL’s financial position improved under Khan, until coronavirus came along, is it?
Are you a paid Tory troll? or don’t you bother to find out any facts before spouting tory inspired lies? Khan inherited a TFL with a large budget deficit when the mayor had been one Boris Johnson. Never let facts get in the way of a good – or convenient story.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2019/march/tfl-s-budget-shows-operating-deficit-almost-halved-as-mayor-calls-for-government-investment-in-transport.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tflmayorsbudget.pdf
“Our 2018 Business Plan set out how we would turn an operating deficit into a surplus by 2022/23, restore a sustainable cash balance and continue to be a financially resilient and sustainable business. We provided more detail on the first year of this plan in our 2019/20 Budget. In the last year, we have more than delivered on that Business Plan and Budget. We have continued to cut costs and expect to significantly beat our financial targets at the end of this financial year. This means that we will have made solid progress in reducing the operating deficit caused by the withdrawal of our operating grant from the Government and changing economic conditions.”
Thanks
Londoners are feeling the pinch now; just wait a few months and the pinch will be even tighter. The tsunami of mass unemployment, further austerity and tax increases could quite easily lead to civil disorder if folk can’t feed their weans. The English public will not be so easily calmed down with promises of jam tomorrow. In Scotland, Tories are frightened to speak in public. Their leader, Douglas Ross (Dross), is the object of ridicule, after only a couple of months in the job. We Scots don’t believe a word the Tories say. They are about 22% in the polls just now.
Thank goodness we have the chance to escape from the failed UK state.
I worked for TfL until I retired in 2013. From our office window in North Greenwich we could see Boris Johnson’s major contribution to TfL, the white elephant Emirates ”Air Line” cable car going back and forth, often empty and rarely with more than a handful of passengers. At least his other ludicrous vanity project, the Garden Bridge, was nipped in the bud with only £53 million wasted.
As a lifelong TfL customer, thank you for your service.