Two wrongs don't make a right

This maxim was cited by Edwina Currie, a former government minister, on TV (Channel 5) recently, regarding tax evasion as compared to benefit fraud.

The maxim is worth repeating; it illuminates, but it does not take into account the scale of the wrongs. Tax evasion and benefit fraud are both wrong, but the former amounts to far more £ than the latter.

This comment was provoked by a discussion of the current strike by TfL employees. Maybe TfL employees, especially train drivers, are not the most pressing cause in the drive for equality, but if banks are too big to fail and have t be bailed out, why exactly can't TfL (staff) be) bailed out?

Sorry for getting all "political" but the double standards are a bit too much.

Ticket machines dispense fewer and more expensive [rail] tickets than a booking office

This is an argument produced by Manuel Cortes of the TSSA union, acording to today's Metro free newspaper (London). It is true as things stand, but it is entirely possible to produce a ticket machine that can dispense the full range of tickets and corresponding prices. A major step towards this would be simplifying our ridiculous fares structure. One obvious thing would be not to have a fares system where a ticket from A to B and another concurrent ticket from B to C works out cheaper than a ticket from A to C on the exact same trains.

Cortes makes the point as if it is technically impossible for machines to be as good as humans at selling tickets. It's his job to keep people in work. In a sane world, we wouldn't try to create mundane jobs for humans to do. Everyone would do socially constructive work that a machine can't (yet) do, or no work at all. Machines would be perfectd so that they are as good as or better than humans.

The idea of buying a ticket off a person standing behind a bit of glass is so antiquated with today's technology as to be ridiculous. Setting aside the obvious development of smart ticketing, itself argued against on spurious grounds but because it takes jobs, the logical thing for expert ticket sellers to do would be to guide people using the ticket machines, or buying tickets on the www.