Forced to retire at 48. On a pension of £64,000 a year.

Price and quantity demanded

Many London commuters whine that the Tube is too crowded and too expensive and most of the candidates for London Mayor are trying to tap into this sentiment*;
Boris - "We pay the highest fares in Europe and we deserve value for money",
Sian - "The cost of travel is one of the main reasons London is such an expensive place to live ... I would focus on making day-to-day travel more affordable for ordinary Londoners",
Brian- "Tubes charge first class fares for third class travel. Despite record investment, they are still overcrowded, overheated and unreliable".
Ken, who is apparently only narrowly behind in the race, has been Mayor for eight years, and has had plenty of time to put his grand plans into effect. And to be fair, he did bitterly oppose the hugely expensive PFI nonsense.

So none of them have a clue about economics, do they?

1. The Tube is running at full capacity, so in the medium term you cannot increase quantity supplied.

2. Reduced prices would mean an increase in quantity demanded, i.e. even more people would want to use the Tube, so it'd become even more crowded at peak times (if that's physically possible).

3. Somebody has to pay for the cost of running it. None of them have said which taxes they'd increase to cover the shortfall. The least-worst way of funding public transport infrastructure is via Land Value Tax, but that's a bit beyond the Mayor's remit, methinks.

4. The 'high' cost of Tube travel (actually, season tickets are very cheap) does not increase the 'cost of living'. If the Tooth Fairy paid for the Tube to be totally free, then London would be a more attractive place to live and people would have more money to spend on ... rents and housing. So rents and house prices would go up (scroll down to The Error of Public Tollways), and the total cost of living would stay much the same.

* Even Gerard is not immune to this, although he's the only one who'd scrap the Congestion Charge - more people in cars = less people on the Tube - hooray!

London's airport capacity - poll results

Thanks to everybody who voted.

The overall response to the question "Would you like to see an expansion of airport capacity in and around London?" was as follows:

Yes - 17 votes
No - 7 votes

Right! The four main candidates are going to have to share those 7 'No' votes, I wonder if any other candidate will be brave enough to try and grab the 17 'Yes' votes for him- or herself?

London airport - poll closes tomorrow morning

Thanks muchly to the people you have voted in this (see top of side bar), the results are most interesting so far!

Please make sure to cast your vote (if you haven't done so already). Would be much appreciated.

Heathrow expansion

It's time for another quiz, how many extra votes would a London Mayoral candidate get by simply saying he or she is in favour of increasing airport capacity in and around London? People like flying, don't they? I mean, they must do or else they wouldn't do it, would they?