wrote:

Reading between the lines I got the impression that Ken's point was
his normal one - that FGW et al enjoy collecting penalty fares (and
excess ticketing values) from travellers far too much to reform their
ticketing practices without a serious kick up the arse.

Although why he felt that a letter to the Daily Mail (which appears to
be the original source) was a good way of getting this across is
beyond me. They're hardly his biggest fans.

The article is at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...traveller.html

Where I don't understand this is that Paddington is hardly some obscure
suburban station with a solitary ticket machine that's easily vandalised.
Livingstone was in the same situation as many others - gets there late
because of tube delays and bad personal time management and though he could
wing it. If the barrier staff and inspectors aren't singing from the same
hymn sheet then he'd have a point, but to turn it into a rant about TOCs not
taking up Oyster doesn't make for the best. It's fairly typical
Livingstone - ignore the very real technical and logistical problems, some
of which TfL didn't have, call the companies greedy for needing more time,
and completely ignore the fact that his own obsession with Oyster has caused
problems for passengers by forcing up non-Oyster fares when Oyster is not
yet usuable for everyone.