SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

If you spend three minutes at a tube station in London I guarantee you'll spot somebody trying to skip their fare. Not to say that there's anything admirable about fare evasion, but you can kind of understand it from 13 year olds - this is their act of tiny rebellion, and the threat of being caught is half the point, I guess. But when I see these guys who are in their twenties, thirties or even forties and they're still trying to get away with it, I mean - come on!

You're a grown man and you're ducking your head back and forth at the wrong gate like a crazed chicken, hoping it's not manned by a member of staff and everyone is watching you on the CCTV feed anyway - yeah, you're sticking it to "the man"!

When there's a train crash do they check people's tickets before they rescue them? Because, you know, it's people like me who paid for the fire extinguishers and the safety glass in the windows and that one-way radio thing. And why do train operators always go on about the one-way radio like it's something special? I have a one-way radio in my house - I call it: a radio.

Perhaps that's the way to stamp out fare evaders. Have a promotional campaign explaining that if you're in a train crash and you don't have a valid ticket they're not going to save you. You'd see more people paying their fares if they could guarantee a railway disaster before you board.