I am condemning this month’s ticket office closure at Shepherd Bush which marks the start of a project to close several ticket offices across Hammersmith and Fulham. The move will leave passengers in Hammersmith and Fulham paying more money for less staff support.

The closure comes after it was revealed that the Mayor of London’s plan to close all the capital’s tube ticket offices will cost taxpayers almost £134m.  The cost is staggering and £134m of building works and ticket machines won’t make up for the loss of 897 station staff.

This month’s closure marks the start of a process to close ticket offices in 13 stations in Hammersmith and Fulham. The closures will also see almost 900 staff cut from London’s tube stations. I am particularly concerned about the impact the staff cuts will have on disabled and elderly passengers.

Amongst other things the £134m will fund additional ticket machines in 27 stations, four new customer receptions and the conversion of 181 ticket offices for other uses.

I am very concerned about the ramifications of this month’s ticket office closures. This argument isn’t about whether staff are based in ticket offices or not. It is about whether there are enough staff in stations to provide the good service people in Hammersmith and Fulham have come to expect, particularly the elderly and disabled who often rely more on station staff for assistance.

The truth is a staggering £134m of building works and ticket machines won’t make up for the loss of 897 station staff. No matter how user friendly a ticket machine is they cannot provide the same level of advice and customer service that staff could. Coming after tube fares were hiked for the seventh year running many passengers will wonder why they are being asked to pay more money for less staff support on their journey.

If you like me have been wondering how much Heathrow Holdings Ltd  must be spending on the tube to market their expansion plans with adverts on bill boards and ticket barriers at Westminster tube station etc, please see the response l got from TfL on that very question.

The response reveals in the month of March 2013 alone, Heathrow Holdings spent £233,700. More recently in May £66,016 was spent and it had been kept at that level monthly up and till November. I will now have to find out what was spent in December 2014 and January/February 2015!

Lets hope its money going down the tubes for them!

A good friend in the US told me to read and weep when reading the story the link to this Bloomberg story. He commented further by saying;

“Nothing new to observe that Wall Street, and finance capitalism in general, benefit from crisis.  That is why we will have more and deeper swings with less time to recover before each government bailout.  Savings and Loan crisis to Sub Prime was, what, 20 years?  Sub prime to this?  Seven?”

He adds

“There is a bit in it about how “this time it won’t end in disaster” as the issuers “will have skin in the game” as they will hold the riskiest tranches.  Yeah, that’s how they are going to get it past the regulators. I guarantee you, within 30 minutes of getting the green light, the issuers will figure out a way to shovel this shit out the door.  They won’t be stupid enough to call it a “credit default swap” this time.  “Inverse credit yield distribution,” might work and I can already see the AAA rating.  Whenever your read the word “credit” substitute “debt,” and suddenly everything is crystal clear.”

And finally

“Proprietary Trading” is another term cooked up to mean exactly the opposite of what it is and allow the regulators sleep in peace.  “Proprietary” implies that it is the “bank’s” own money.  And while technically it is “theirs” and they are the “proprietor” (can’t you just see the wise, cautious business owner?) it is also highly leveraged and essentially backed up with government insured deposits as these banks are too big to fail.  And then there is “trading.”  Isn’t “trading” that quaint thing that goes on down at the farmer’s market where the crusty local fishmonger haggles with you to unload his catch of the day?  Trade is a good, healthy thing, part of the multiplier effect that grows our economy, right?  When you read “proprietary trading” substitute, “Reckless market manipulation, creating unnecessary instability, often with varying degrees of insider knowledge, using taxpayer insured third party deposits.”

This is the same fellow who told me about sub prime mortgages in California many years ago on a trip to San Francisco and the dangers it posed to global financial markets. He was right than and l don’t doubt that he’s right again this time.

“Queensway tube station” by Billy Hicks – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Labour London Assembly Member Murad Qureshi has spoken out to condemn today’s ticket office closure at Queensway Station saying that passengers in Westminster will be paying more money for less staff support. The closure comes after it was revealed last week that the Mayor of London’s plan to close all of London’s tube ticket offices will cost taxpayers almost £134m. Murad Qureshi AM described the cost as “staggering” and said that “£134m of building works and ticket machines won’t make up for the loss of 897 station staff.”

The £133,925k funding to close 301 London underground ticket offices and install new equipment in ticket halls was detailed in papers for January’s TfL Finance and Policy Committee meeting. Alongside the ticket office closures, 897 staff are also set to be axed with many stations seeing significant cuts in their staffing levels. The plan to close of all the capital’s tube ticket offices comes despite the Mayor previously pledging to protect all ticket offices from closure.

Today’s closure marks the start of a process to close ticket offices in 31 stations in Westminster. The closures will also see almost 900 staff cut from London’s tube stations. Murad Qureshi AM has expressed particular concern about the impact the staff cuts will have on disabled and elderly passengers.

Amongst other things the £134m will fund additional ticket machines in 27 stations, four new customer receptions and the conversion of 181 ticket offices for other uses.

Murad Qureshi AM, London Wide Assembly Member, said:

“I am very concerned about the ramifications of today’s ticket office closure. This argument isn’t about whether staff are based in ticket offices or not. It is about whether there are enough staff in stations to provide the good service people in Westminster have come to expect, particularly the elderly and disabled who often rely more on station staff for assistance.

“The truth is a staggering £134m of building works and ticket machines won’t make up for the loss of 897 station staff. No matter how user friendly a ticket machine is they cannot provide the same level of advice and customer service that staff could. Coming only weeks after tube fares were hiked for the seventh year running many passengers will wonder why they are being asked to pay more money for less staff support on their journey.”

The next AGM at Lords for members of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) should certainly be an interesting affair, as we hear about dismay over the star rating of candidates in the Committee elections. Some are suggest that its synonymous to the ballot form being marked with stars to tell you how to vote in the elections and certainly not in keeping with the “spirit of cricket”.

Now starring of candidates in Committee elections is permitted by the Rules of the Club, but it has moved on from the practice of the 60s and 70s when the Committee used to star (i.e. recommend Members to vote for) all the vacancies when there were more candidates than vacancies.

The impact of giving a star to a candidate has been that he (or she) is virtually certain to be elected – of 53 candidates who have been starred in the history of Committee Elections 51 have been elected!

In recent years starring has been used rarely, if at all. In the past twenty years only three candidates have been starred for the specific skills that they would bring to the Committee table – Robert Griffiths QC in 2002 and Nigel Peters QC in 2004 (legal skills) and Tony Alt last year (finance). And in 2009 a Working Party on the Committee Election reinforced this practice by recommending that starring only be used ‘sparingly’ and in any event for no more than two candidates in an election.

What happens now is that Members are provided with more information about the candidates, together with 100 word statements by the candidate and by one of his or her supporters. This ought to provide for a fair election with a level playing field. Suddenly this year the Committee decided to star four candidates for four vacancies leaving three candidates on past form with little or no chance of being elected. In effect the Committee decided to fix the election.

There is a view that the unstated reason for doing this was to ensure that one or perhaps two of the un-starred candidates did not get elected on the grounds that they had opinions on the matter of ground development that run counter to the present Committee’s view. If so, this is doubly shocking, since to be healthy a Committee needs on it a wide range of opinions to enable it to debate and make good decisions.

It will not have escaped your notice too that this attitude towards what should be a democratic election has been taken by an organisation that owns and promotes the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ brand worldwide and ought to be an exemplar on such matters throughout the game and beyond.

The only remedy to this, in the view of many others, is to run a Resolution at the AGM that will force the Committee to re-run the election without the use of any stars. Thats is get rid of the star rating system altogether. This will surely make this year’s AGM of the MCC an eventual one as much as when it discussed accepting women as members for the first time.

London Assembly Member Murad Qureshi AM called on Boris Johnson to accept amendments to his 2015/16 Budget that would put an extra 1,000 police officers on London’s streets and cut transport fares by 2.5%.  The fully-funded plans were set out during a debate at City Hall on Wednesday when Assembly Members had the opportunity to propose amendments to the Mayor’s £17bn Budget for 2015/16.

The proposal to fund an extra 1,025 police officers would mean the equivalent of an additional 33 officers back on the streets of Westminster and in every other London Borough. The proposals came amid concerns that violent crime in Westminster has risen by 21% in the last year and reports that only 61% of local people now believe police have a visible presence on the street. There has been growing public unease with the Mayor’s cuts to local neighbourhood policing, which have contributed to the loss of 4,333 uniformed officers across London since 2010, 729 of these in Westminster.

Amongst other policy proposals Murad Qureshi AM supported plans to change Boris Johnson’s Budget and freeze fares at 2014 levels, reversing the 2.5% hike imposed on London’s commuters earlier this year. The cut to travel costs would give Londoners a year of much needed respite from fare rises, saving the average commuter £56 a year on a 1-6 Annual Travelcard. A recent study found that 76% of Londoners say fares are now ‘too high’ following the 40% rise in ticket costs since Boris Johnson came to power.

The fully-funded package of amendments to the Mayor’s Budget included freezing GLA’s share of council tax and putting the money saved by cancelling the Mayor’s proposed cut (which would save just 1p per day for each London household) into funding for the 1,000 new police officers. This would be boosted by additional funding drawn from a combination of savings within the Met’s existing budget, and from business rates. The 2.5% cut to fares would be funded by using TfL underspends of £81m, and increasing the target for savings, putting £98m back in to the pockets of Londoners.

Though blocked at last week’s meeting, the Mayor has the opportunity to revisit the proposals on 23^rd February when the London Assembly comes together for a final vote on the Mayor’s £17bn budget.

Murad Qureshi AM, Labour Londonwide Assembly Member, said: 

“The Mayor’s Budget as it stands does nothing to address the serious concerns people in Westminster have about rising transport costs and a grossly diminished police force – two of the most serious issues facing London today. What Londoners want is a Budget which tackles these concerns head on, that is what our proposals seek to do.

“Funding an extra 1,000 police officers on London’s streets could mean the equivalent of 33 additional officers for our area. This could hugely influence our ability to tackle rising violent crime in Westminster and would provide much needed reassurance to people concerned about the impact of Boris Johnson’s cuts to the police force.

“This January Londoners faced the seventh year of fare increases under Boris Johnson. There is ample funding as a result of TfL underspends, so it is bewildering that Boris has allowed fares to rise faster than wages. With 76% of Londoners believing that fares are now ‘too high’, it is essential that we offer some respite to those struggling to cope with the costs of commuting. Cutting fares back to 2014 levels would help reduce pressure on those anxious that their pay-cheques will not stretch to cover Boris’ year on year fare hikes.

“Whilst Boris’ tokenistic council tax cut would save Londoners seven pence a week, cutting fares to last year’s levels would save the average commuter far more each year. It’s clear which would leave most people in Westminster better off. ”
ENDS

Notes

• The summary of the Budget Amendment to be proposed at Wednesday’s meeting by John Biggs AM reads:

– Transport – We would reverse the Mayor’s 2.5% increase in transport fares that Boris Johnson has already announced for 2015-16. Instead, we would freeze fares at their current level putting £98m back in to pockets of hard-pressed Londoners, and restore the off-peak PAYG caps for zones 4-6. In order to benefit all Londoners, we would create a fund for more step free stations and put a further £20m into the cycling budget. To increase bus services for London’s poorest communities we propose to add 30 more hybrid buses to the fleet this year. We are keenly aware of the high levels of pollution in London and would therefore accelerate the process of cleaning up our aging bus fleet. We are clear that this re-balancing of costs between travellers and the corporate vaults of City Hall is affordable and right.

– Policing – We would freeze the GLA’s share of the council tax at the 2014-15 level and use the £10.54m it generates to help free-up resources across the GLA family. These resources would enable us to provide London with over 1000 much-needed additional police officers. An average over 30 new police officers per borough.

– Housing – We would tackle London’s chronic housing shortage by establishing a GLA-backed Housing Investment Company to directly commission the construction of new homes in addition to those currently built by Housing Associations using GLA affordable housing grants. We would also drive up standards for private tenants by investing in new programmes to tackle sub-standard properties. Furthermore, because no tenant should fear the consequences of a rogue landlord, we would empower tenants – the consumer – by giving them more information on rogue landlords and better access to legal representation, and by driving London’s worst landlords out of the market.

– Economy – We would take genuine action to increase job opportunities in London through introducing a young person’s jobs guarantee, providing help for older Londoners to retrain and by reducing the excessive cost of childcare, which prevents many parents from returning to work. We would also introduce universal free school meals for all primary school age pupils in London, which would increase educational attainment, address food poverty and help parents who are struggling with the cost of living.

– Environment – Recognising the imminent threat of climate change, London’s air quality crisis, and the increasing difficulty that many Londoners – particularly those on fixed incomes, such as pensioners – face heating their homes, we propose a research project in to the creation of community energy cooperatives in London; a London air quality study aimed at creating a bigger, stronger, ULEZ; the Clean Air Routes to School programme, which recognises and seeks to mitigate the effects of poor air quality on school children; the establishment of a GLA London ‘noise team’ to focus on aviation that blights the lives of many in the capital; and funding the H.E.A.T (Home Energy Advice Team) to help those in fuel poverty improve insulation in their homes and obtain the best energy tariffs.

– Education – We would provide grants to schools whose students face socio-economic barriers to academic attainment through the Supplementary Programmes for Schools (Leadership clubs) and out of hours tuition fund; replace the Mayor’s elitist ‘Gold Club of Schools’ programme with the GLA Education Kitemark scheme for schools that require and demonstrate improvement in a short space of time as part of the family of local authority schools; and introduce a schools matching unit to assist in matching new schools with the closest existing outstanding academy, rather than allow private companies to take over new schools in Mayoral approved developments.

– Health – We would invest further in reducing health inequalities and bridging the divide between physical and mental health services. We would form a London Health Inequalities Unit to monitor and address unfair health inequalities across London. We would commission a Mental Health Strategy for London to determine what is and what is not working for Londoners. The results of which would be used to establish a pan-London approach to mental health issues and connect the currently fragmented and dysfunctional system.

While at the centenary birthday of Warwick Avenue tube station this past Saturday, l noticed the soiled seating of Bakerloo trains again.

l had asked TfL via the Mayor before the Christmas break, that as l regular user of the Bakerloo line l had notice there are an increasing number of soiled seats on the trains and is there a planned program for refurbishing train seats on this line and if so when?

I was told the seats on Bakerloo line trains are due to be replaced starting from January 2015 and the seats are cleaned regularly as part of ongoing maintenance. Well l have not seen site of either and we are already in February.

Increasingly l notice people not seating down as the seats are so soiled. So maybe someone at TfL can get up and sort this out asap for the users of the Bakerloo line. As its right and proper that we celebrate the 100th birthday of the Bakerloo line extension in North West London but shouldn’t forget the service level presently suffered by its users.