Tooting Wetherspoon's was the locale for an inconclusive discussion on penalty fares. Was it legal to charge a penalty fare where there was no intent to avoid payment? One view was that it was, one was that it was not and one view was that the penalty should be proportionate to the offence, this coupled with the allegation that one of our train operators was currently under fire for officious & vexation prosecution of non-contumacious offenders.
On the way to Epsom, did badly at aeroplanes at Earlsfield, with significant periods with none in sight and at no time more than one. On the other hand, I did tweet three swifts swooping around, high over the cemetery. Not something I recall seeing in London before.
Appropriate to the discussion concerning penalty fares, I was greeted at Epsom by a large force of police men and women and at least one dog. Some of them were wearing the baseball caps sported by the more exotic elements of police forces. Were there guns present? My taxi driver assured me that the presence was much more to do with drugs than fares, but that it was the wrong day of the week and the wrong time of day to do much drug business, with late Thursday evening being a much better bet. I wondered how she knew, as she claimed to restrict her substance consumption to alcohol and nicotine and complained of the smell left behind by users of the illegal weed. Maybe it was not drug business at all, being more to do with a bit of soft overtime before going home to the family. She also took the time to tell me about the rather poor support for driver comfort offered in the rather cramped cab she had to sit in. I think I would have found it very uncomfortable.
This morning I was moved to try to check out the whole penalty fare business and poking around the South West Trains site I fairly rapidly turned up a penalty fares leaflet which suggested that not being able to present a valid ticket (or a permit to travel) when on a train incurred a penalty. There was no talking of being let off because one had simply forgotten to buy a ticket, forgotten to have one's discount card about one's person or failed to notice that the discount card had expired. And not having time to buy a ticket was specifically excluded as an excuse. But the leaflet was not a proper statement of the penalty fare regulations, for which one had to apply to Overline House in Southampton, presumably an office block with a good view of the line. From there to the penalty fare rules issued by no less a body than the Strategic Rail Authority, rules which appeared to supply a framework within which a train operator could set up penalty fare scheme. Here there was talk of letting off, for example when there was no ticket buying capability at the place of boarding or when the passenger had been given reasonable grounds for thinking that a ticket was not necessary. But there was no talk of intent, at least not a quick skim. Perhaps the difference is that one can charge a penalty when there is no ticket, irrespective of whether there was intent to avoid paying the fare, but that one needs to be able to prove intent to secure a criminal conviction in a court of justice. Which strikes me as fair enough: but how much time, effort and money would it take me to be sure?
Reflecting further, I do not think that there has to be intent for there to be crime. If one kills someone without meaning to, one might not be guilty of murder but one is apt to be guilty of criminal negligence. Or, in lesser cases, of driving without due care and intention. But maybe these are the exceptions which prove the rule. All in all, much meat here for my next discussion with a lawyer in a saloon bar, Wetherspoon's or otherwise.
PS: I can now confirm that Overline House is indeed over the line, being the block immediately above the railway symbol in the illustration above, courtesy google maps.
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