We're All In This Together .....

[eighthobstruction]

We should all go to the Temple and meditate once a day....give darshan to that which does not exist but is a handy spiritual focus <said to be somewhere about the navel>....gruel for breakfast, veg for dinner, shepherds pie for supper....deep breathing before bedtime....

[amateur51]

Working class people in this country were persuaded capitalism could only produce higher and higher living standards if they knuckled under and stopped listening to "agitators", and thus in a faustian pact with the rich and powerful owners of industry and business came to have sold their common birthright for a mess of pottage.

See current production of From Morning To Midnight by Georg Kaiser at RNT - a great and changing spectacle

[teamsaint]

I love this little film.
Very apposite.

http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/

[amateur51]

A city executive is believed to have dodged paying £42,550 in train fares by exploiting a loophole which meant he only paid a third of the journey cost.

He paid back the £42,550 in dodged fares, plus £450 in legal costs, within three days as part of an out-of-court settlement.

Southeastern said it believed he had been dodging the fare for five years as his last annual season ticket from Stonegate expired in 2008 and within five days of being challenged he renewed his lapsed ticket.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27011497

This deception took considerable cunning to arrange - he is clearly neither a poor nor a stupid person.

So why wasn't he he given a custodial sentence? What if he'd been a single parent on a housing estate caught stealing food for his family in a supermarket?

[french frank]

A city executive is believed to have dodged paying £42,550 in train fares by exploiting a loophole which meant he only paid a third of the journey cost....

He paid back the £42,550 in dodged fares, plus £450 in legal costs, within three days as part of an out-of-court settlement.
So why wasn't he he given a custodial sentence? ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27019782

Let's hope someone guesses his identity and puts it on Twitter. That way he'll only have been paying back what he stole - not the right to remain unidentified.

[mercia]

I still don't understand what "loophole" he "exploited" other than it being an unmanned or non-barriered rural station so his ticket was never checked - and is £7.50 [what he did pay] really a third of the fare from Stonegate to London? - and does an Oyster card take you out into the countryside anyway ?

[jean]

Surely a loophole means you have found a legal way of not paying?

[french frank]

I still don't understand what "loophole" he "exploited" other than it being an unmanned or non-barried rural station so his ticket was never checked - and is £7.50 [what he did pay] really a third of the fare from Stonegate to London? - and does an Oyster card take you out into the countryside anyway ?

I think this explains http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014...p_ref=uk&ir=UK

You have to pay a 'maximum fare' (£7.20) for tapping out without tapping in (which presumably registers the station where you got on). He managed to get to London Bridge without paying anything, change on to a train for Cannon Street without going through any barriers, and then tapped out at Cannon Street without having tapped in. Doesn't sound like a loophole to me - it sounds like an inefficient service.

The thing is that for the train company it was more important to claim back their £42,000 than to make an example of the man. But £42,000 must be peanuts compared with their total revenue.

[amateur51]

The thing is that for the train company it was more important to claim back their £42,000 than to make an example of the man. But £42,000 must be peanuts compared with their total revenue.

And presumably peanuts to this deceitful, greedy, selfish, uncharged criminal man's bank account, given that he repaid the sum stolen so promptly.

[mercia]

and is £7.50 [what he did pay] really a third of the fare from Stonegate to London?

apparently yes - the single fare Stonegate to London is apparently £21.50 and an annual season ticket £4,548 according to The Telegraph

so now I don't understand where the figure of £42,550 comes from

[french frank]

so now I don't understand where the figure of £42,550 comes from

Not sure where the exact figure came from, but his season ticket lapsed in - was it 2008? So he should have been paying that £21.50 every day that he travelled. When he was challenged he took out a season ticket, but the assessment was that he hadn't had one since 2008. So although it would have been cheaper with an annual season ticket, he didn't have one. P'raps :-)

Oh, and he would have needed a return.

[mercia]

I see. £43 x 5 (days) x 40 (weeks) x 5 (years) = £43,000. And if the fare is £21.50 now, it would have been less in 2009.

I wonder if he put the correct amount by each day in anticipation of being caught ("The Train Fare Fund") or do all hedge fund managers have a spare £42K lying around for these eventualities? Comments under the BBC article from commuters on the same line say they have their ticket inspected at least three times a week.

[amateur51]

Anyone else noticed how topics involving trains frequently go off-track? :whistle:

Now we have the splendid sight of a senior Tory bewailing his rotten luck at having to pay his own legal expensdes as the result of the Coalition's pernicious attack on the Legal Aid budget- step forward Chris Grayling.

http://theconversation.com/evans-and-allies-complain-about-cps-as-coalition-wrecks-justice-25619?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+15+April+2014&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+15+April+2014+CID_51d1097042c17c58ac7d43b48e5b916b&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=Evans%20and%20allies%20complain%20about%20CPS%20as%20coalition%20wrecks%20justice

It's all too easy to wallow in political schadenfreude but this is really serious

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

The income generated by fees and interest is less than would be expected from a normal market investment and has not compensated the taxpayer for the degree of risk accepted by taxpayers in providing the support. Once the opportunity cost and risks are factored in, the schemes have represented a transfer of at least £5 billion from taxpayers to the financial sector. This does not include the cost of holding the shares which have not paid a dividend or seen a capital gain. Further details are set out in Figure 8 of the C&AG’s Report on HM Treasury’s 2012-13 Resource Accounts.

The fees and interest were generally set with a view of what the recipient banks could afford at the time, in keeping with the schemes’ aims for financial stability. The £5 billion can be regarded as part of the cost of preserving financial stability in the crisis, and as I reported in 2009, had the support not been provided, the potential costs would have been difficult to envision.

from

[french frank]

I wonder if he put the correct amount by each day in anticipation of being caught ("The Train Fare Fund") or do all hedge fund managers have a spare £42K lying around for these eventualities?

:-)