I draw your attention to this very interesting post on the www.Hayesmiddlesex.com news group about the difficulty obtaining a ticket to ride at Hayes station in the evenings.....

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hayesnews/message/1527

Not being pedantic but the shop next to the Station is open very early to very late.. Why can they not top up their oyster cards there?

First Great Western do need to get their fingers out though having a ticket machine out of order for 6 Months is outrageous.

Would the imposition of a penalty in circumstances where persons are unable to buy a ticket 'reasonable'? I would say not. I personally would offer to pay there and then. If refused and issued a penalty I would have my day in court..

Agree totally, a day in court would surely have FGW paying court costs and reasonable expenses ?

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Lets be careful out there !

But not everyone uses an Oyster card !! I for one don't !! I had a terrible time recently - I had to get to Watford, got to Hayes station (this was daytime) - there were no ticket offices open, no staff available and I dont have a credit card .....
A very kind guy helped me plan the route via his iphone and I got on without a ticket ....
At Paddington I explained and they kindly just let me through the barrier

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I do not suffer fools !!!!!

I wonder what the bye-laws are if the ticket machine is unuseable ?

I can think of a few more reasons like having poor eyesight to use these machines

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Lets be careful out there !

Just another example of how so called progress has harmed society.....

A few years ago and before the technology permitted it they would have to have kept a couple of members of staff on to man the ticket office and check the tickets for people joining and leaving trains.
Everyone happy passengers can buy tickets and those who these feel a little threatened travelling on public transport late at night know there are members of staff only a few feet from the platform.

Instead the number crunchers did away with all this so they could increase the profits on the bottom line, partake in some back slappy sessions inflate their sense of entitlement and from middle to top management pay themselves large bonuses and increase salaries year on year.

Meanwhile the young people who would have been employed in these traditional (low skilled) roles get to languish on the dole (funded by taxpayers) and consigned to a life of misery on benefits.

At this point I will touch briefly on to how tax credits are being used by large blue chip companies (in a conspiracy with government) to keep wages low and shareholder benefits and boardroom excess (increased profits back slappy time huge bonuses and all the rest of that) with the cost being directly passed to taxpayers through the welfare state.

Of course most people will see tax credits as a good thing as it is free money from Government to those who qualify but they are extremely damaging. If they were not there then wages WOULD have had to rise in line with whatever the token inflation rate was and the increased cost of living in places like the suburbs of London... All they have done is suppressed wages and transferred a significant portion of blue chip companies who make Millions in profit each years wage bill direct to the taxpayer....

Just another couple of examples of how all governments screw over the little people whilst cosying up to big business who will be more than happy to offer ministers a very, very well paid role as an executive director when they leave politics... Something we see time and time again....