Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 09:37:55 on
Mon, 26 May 2008, Paul Corfield remarked:
What - for sneaking out a controversial announcement, that will double
fares for the poorest people, in the middle of a bank holiday weekend
hoping people wouldn't notice?

Whose fares are going to double? Not these ones obviously:

"The mayor of London said half-price bus and tram fares for
250,000 Londoners on income support, which were also funded by
the deal, would still be honoured."

Bad BBC reporting, I'm afraid. They missed out 'until the deal
expires'. If you read the rest of the article you find this bit from
the horse's mouth:

"He [MBJ] added: "We will continue to offer the half-priced travel
concession to Londoners on income support for the duration for which the
deal was originally planned".

Because of the way the BBC wrote the story it's unclear that fares are
going to double for those on income support, but that does appear to be
the case from what Johnson is reported as saying. Not immediately, but
at some point after August 20th. We'll have to wait for the official
TfL announcement, I suspect. It's noticeable that I haven't seen any
Tories jumping on Livingstone's instant press release which starts:

‘Boris Johnson’s announcement today that he is doubling bus and tram
fares for people on Income Support is a direct attack on the poorest
Londoners.'

If Livingstone, in his haste, had got the first line 180 degrees wrong
we'd have heard about it, surely? They wouldn't miss an opportunity to
make him look a mug, such as by saying 'because of identified cost
savings against the previous wasteful regime we can keep the low fares
adn tell Chavez to stuff it' or similar.

It is, of course, entirely possible that the deal wouldn't have been
renewed by the Venezuelans, and this is a spoiler, but there are good
reasons to suspect otherwise, such as the likelihood that blaming Chavez
for increasing bus fares for the poor would be too good a line to miss.

Tom