Labour are trying to fix 14 years of scorched earth devastation. They're doing it with a coordinated attack from Gbeebies, Reform and the Unite the Kingdom Tommy Yaxley Lennon crew.
But they're also not helping themselves with the winter fuel and transport cap.
I agree the winter fuel one was not a good first battle to pick.
That said, the inlaws tend to use it annually to buy wine for Christmas.
They are increasing pensions by significantly more than the winter fuel payment (which was up to £300 depending on circumstances, pensions going up by £470 a year)
The bus cap is a weird one.
They say that the money saved (just shy of a billion quid a year) is going to be invested in new bus services.
The bigger picture is which services get affected. No change in London or Manchester where fares are £1.75 and £2 respectively and the buses are owned publicly.
The slightly conspiratorial view of it is they're doing this deliberately, in order to build support for nationalising bus services, the fully privatised bus services outside of a few locations (London, Manchester, Reading, Nottingham and a few others) has been an absolute disaster, fares skyrocketed, schedules cut, routes cut, a mess of incompatible ticketing, no integrated planning between transport modalities.
It has resulted in a 40% drop in bus ridership across the country while it has risen in London. In some areas, the bus network has been cut in half.
Franchise network run by Transport for London, a local government body, hailed as a way forward
www.ft.com
The private companies are earning good profits, almost none of which are reinvested (dividends have been on average 7.5% against after tax profits of 8.8%) while the public interest is completely neglected
Basically the fare cap is effectively subsidising shareholder returns of the bus companies.
If this is a way to free up money to buy out private operators, then it's not a great way of doing it but hopefully the benefits accrue eventually.
