17 July 2023 , 23:04
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The closures of railway station ticket offices, which are being rushed through at a speed lacking in many of our train services, deserve to hit the buffers.
The private train companies and Tory Government will have to go back to the drawing board if the Labour mayors, marshalled by Greater Manchester’s Andy Burnham, win their legal attempt to derail a consultation process dismissed as “shambolic”.
Saving offices used by passengers – particularly the vulnerable and elderly, who rely on them to pay the lowest fares available – is at the heart of a wider battle to run the railway as a public service, rather than a profit network for commercial interests.
The consultation feels a sham, a con, when it appears the decision to shut the offices has already been taken, with a green light from Tory transport minister Huw Merriman.
He justified the move in Parliament, despite objections from a number of Conservative as well as Labour MPs.
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Hunger game
Putin, whose forces rape, pillage, murder, abduct children, blow up dams and now risk creating famine, is the world’s No1 enemy (AP)Vladimir Putin is punishing the hungry and poor of Africa and Asia to try and win the war in Ukraine – another crime by a tsar fighting for his own position.
By pulling out of a deal brokered by Turkey and halting grain shipments through the Black Sea from Ukraine, the Russian President shows he is ready to sacrifice people across the globe to sustain his illegal occupation.
The strategic Kerch bridge, linking the unlawfully annexed Crimea, is a hated symbol of Putin’s military aggression and was almost certainly damaged by a Ukrainian drone strike.
But Putin, whose forces rape, pillage, murder, abduct children, blow up dams and now risk creating famine, is the world’s No1 enemy.
World c-lass
Stick your glossy Daily Mirror Lionesses poster on the wall and make a date to watch the games with family and friends.
Because England’s women have one goal – to repeat the men’s World Cup victory of ’66.