New Year, new news

As well as the delays updates, it wouldn't be Signal Failure without the occasional news round-up, so here we go:

• Leave your car at a station before travelling TfL's network?  I bet you thought the fare price hikes were extortionate, but compare them to some of the car parking charges: 18% rise?  Squeal, piggies!
• That TfL employees are the victims of verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse won't surprise any of us.  Even if we don't approve of this (and we shouldn't), we can readily understand tensions run high when faced with the appalling rudeness of both the system and its staff.  Here's where it's been worst for TfL employees.  Particularly of interest is the staff all reporting this was mostly a result of people pushing through barriers without paying and then being confronted by hard-working staff.  I find this hard to believe, having had a staff member at Waterloo verbally abuse and lay hands on my pregnant wife when she went to him to say her Oyster card wasn't working (it turned out a technical error had caused the auto top-up to cease functioning).  She didn't try to push through the gates but went voluntarily to him to try and sort out the station.  With attitudes like that, I wonder at the causes behind this violence.  Certainly, if I had been there to see someone offer physical intimidation/violence to my wife, Waterloo would have enjoyed another attack on a TfL staff member.  Incidentally, the TfL employee was acting illegally in this instance (they are allowed to detain travellers who have attempted not to pay and refused to provide on request their name and address - neither true in this case).
• More news on TfL's project to take over the world and run it like as an evil corporation: they've successfully caused Foyle's book shop's (the largest in the world) profits to drop by 25% in an effort to make us all illiterate.  The way they accomplish this is simple: keep the building works up around Tottenham Court Road Station for at least 47 years (and counting), thus making a trip to the flagship store such a pain in the arse, people just don't buy books anymore.

That's it for now, but there'll be more to come, of that you can be sure!