The ex-mayor, who once ranted against fare-dodgers was travelling to Slough on First Great Western and blamed his lack of a ticket on late running Tube services. A sly swipe at his successor perhaps? If only Ken had managed to get them on board with Oyster this wouldn’t have happened.
Ken also claimed that First Great Western had made its ticket service deliberately difficult to use in an attempt to maximise revenue from penalty fares.
"We don't know where Mr Livingstone is coming from. We are sure that Mr Livingstone will agree with us that it's in the interests of the travelling public, and the taxpayers who help fund our railways, that passengers buy a ticket before they travel and that rail operators have systems in place to prevent and penalise fare evasion," a spokesman for First Great Western said with a tangible air of injured innocence.
Luckily for Ken, he won’t get a criminal conviction for failing to buy a ticket.
