Tories trying to claim rail high ground with a few rail-cards. Here’s the truth

In one of what will no doubt be a number of meaningless sops the ‘MSM’ will focus on for some positive PR, the Tories are planning to give rail-cards to 26-30yos, to ‘help them get on in life’.

As if a few free rail journeys will undo the massive impact of house prices, rents, student fees and debt, the insecure work of the ‘gig economy’, the proliferation of poorly-paid work, depressed wages and the many other privations imposed on our young people.

But even on rail travel, the Tories are swimming in a pit or manure – not standing on the high ground.

Below is the Tories’ record on rail fares since they entered Downing Street – a period during which they oversaw stagnant wages and the slowest economic recovery in living memory:

A compounded increase over 7 years of around 32% while incomes for all but the wealthy stagnated – and with the most brutal rises often during times when the economy was worst.

Not only that, but the cards come with so many conditions and limitations that they’re useless to anyone working hard and especially those who commute – as Labour’s Angela Rayner pointed out:

The budget tomorrow will be smoke and mirrors, a few cheap beads to distract – and huge bonuses for the wealthy and corporations, all ladled over with masses of hypocrisy and spooned out by the ‘MSM’ to fool the gullible.

Business as usual, in other words.

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