No, a large minority would simply not *obey* such a rule. People on a crowded train or waiting on a crowded platform will tend to use the door closest to them.
One way to make it work would be to have stations arranged with a platform on each side of each line. One being the entry platform, and the other the exit platform. You would then disembark from the opposite side of the train to the side you entered. If you got off on the wrong side, you would not be able to get out of the station due to one-way turnstiles or similar.
If it's simply militancy stopping the idea getting off the ground, write it into railway byelaws and enforce it with on the spot fines?
I reckon highly visible PCSOs on the platform and a few £60 fines would soon focus your average commuter's attention. If they can take their eyes off of their phones for 10 seconds, that is......
Why is it that a good idea is confronted with British militancy and yet you people pay 168% tax on a litre of fuel and you happily take it? Why isn't the same militancy shown? Why aren't you setting fire to Parliament? I reckon you need an couple of planeloads of Egyptians flown over to show you where your spines are.
No idea. I never had tax credits. Not even when I was living on a gross income of under 8k a year and paying over ten percent of that in council tax. The very low paid don't get tax credits because they are normally not working enough hours to qualify
Tax credits are a con. Steal your money then make you beg for some of it back. But in this case they are not stealing it in the first place. Or not as much.
And the middle earners don't feel the pain as much anyway.
I don't think it would work. With large numbers of passengers, it takes a certain amount of time to disembark through N doors. Cut that down to N/2 doors, and it would take longer.
Sure, others could board at the same time, but in the end no time would be saved. And that's ignoring the all the confusion caused by people not knowing which door to get in or out of unless you have flashing neon arrows or something. Plus people getting on having to wait at the tail end of the people getting off, as they try to bag the seats nearest the exit doors. (And people with push-chairs and bikes would have to wheel them through the carriage...)
One way might be to have platforms on both sides of the train, and get off one side, and get in the other (at present, one side is platform, the other is usually another track). Then get some of those trains they used to have on Southern Region with doors to each compartment. But that would mean rebuilding a few hundred stations plus new rolling stock..
This is the problem with the minimum wage; such jobs were not designed to provide a primary income (the main income in a household), but for housewives wanting to earn a bit extra, young people still living at home or in digs, a few people on a second job, and so on.
Now, the minimum wage has to be subsidised (by reducing the number of such jobs in order for some businesses to remain viable) to help those people who might not really need the money...
And some work isn't even worth £5.91 an hour for the employer, while there are people who would be willing to work for a lot less if they liked the job (like me...).
Anyway, £5.91 x 80 hours is £472pw, not bad if the job is not too demanding (ie. consists largely of reading the paper and doing the crossword). Subsidising the first few hours of that, for someone who really could do with the money, that's fine; but how about the last few hours when they've already earned £400?
Not within the constraint of working a reasonable number of hours per week. I mean, if you worked 56 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year, which is undoubtedly a very heavy graft for any normal person, you'd only just pip £17kpa gross, and that still wouldn't get you very far.
Blame the last Government for throwing money at the feckless (which I believe is the en vogue phrase to describe them these days).
Get up at 7, get dressed, drive to the local train station (fuel cost), stand around on a freezing platform in -10C temperatures waiting for your delayed train, get on (train ticket cost) and then repeat the whole ordeal 10 hours later for £825 a month.
Or do you stay in your nice warm bed until midday and get £800 a month in benefits?
I don't condone it but I can understand why it happens.
Probably because it is actually a pretty shit idea - for all the reasons you have already been given.
And £60 fines through police enforcement? For which door you use? Now you really *have* lost the plot.
The politics of whether public spending should be increased or reduced aside, because taxes are raised one way or the other.
Reduce the tax on fuel and it will go on income tax or Jaffa Cakes or whatever, but it will be collected.
It's annoying and we all grumble every time the price of petrol increases but it is hardly the stuff of revolution. In fact I think more people have an issue with how much the energy companies charge for household fuel than the tax element of petrol.
If we want to pay less tax we have to vote for a government that pledges lower public spending - that's how it works here.
Yeh! 'Cause having a dictatorship government, leaving the people living in true, complete and utter poverty, is exactly the same thing as paying tax on fuel so we can run around in our cars while at the same time funding schools and the NHS.
I wouldn't. The true income from benefits is not really £65 per week. It also includes rent and council tax being paid, plus what you can earn on the side, by hook or by crook. Most people could wring out £800 a month in that way, and that's if you're single. The benefits alone come to £600+, and working 4 days on the side per *month* would bring you above £800. That is, claiming benefits and working 4 days per month on the side, would leave you pretty much as well-off as working 5 days per week, every week.
Of course, you only get £825pcm take-home if you work a solid 40 hours every week of the year. In reality, low paid work is typically the most insecure. Plus you've got to meet the "cost of working", in terms of food, transportation, etc.
And this is not to make the point of how generous benefits are, but to make the point of how far earnings at the bottom have gone out of kilter with the fixed essential costs that virtually everyone has to meet.
In the long term that simply amounts to a state subsidy to small businessmen. I've never quite understood why people think small businessmen in particular should be entitled to a ready supply of slave labour.
Minimum wage jobs for people who are have them to supplement the household income will probably not need car and train journeys - they will be at the local school or high street or industrial estate, or at the superstore.
Jobs that make the inconvenience and cost of travel worthwhile will be starter jobs and the people who take them will hopefully see progression and higher wages.
It is fair enough working convenient hours for NMW as a second income. The problem is the situation where people are being expected to work for NMW as a first (and often, only) income.
You could actually keep the bottom line to employers very similar by first raising the NMW, folding in employers' NI into the employees' tax, and finally introducing higher taxes on overall household income, but that is unacceptable for political, rather than economic, reasons. Specifically, because it represents a transfer of wealth to the apparently undeserving poor, despite the fact that every sensible poster here would probably accept that NMW is not a sufficient sole income on which to live.
I could imagine the Germans pulling off such a challenge.
Besides, selfishness can be easily overcome by enforcement - specifically, that those at the entrance door waiting to get on, do not allow anyone to exit. Indeed, selfishness dictates that such enforcement would indeed occur, since those trying to enter the train would be delayed by the person trying to exit in the wrong direction.
Not exactly. You will actually be taxed more heavily on your earnings from day one.
It remains the case that benefits are worth more than £65 per week, unless you are indeed homeless. If you can nevertheless find and maintain work in those circumstances, then I can easily see why working is better for as long as you are happy to maintain your transient lifestyle.
I personally wouldn't be satisfied with that lifestyle, and if I were to go near a workplace at all under such enforced circumstances, it would be with the intention of causing maximum economic loss, rather than with the intention of rendering valuable services for the benefit of the employer.
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