THE biggest train fare rise in five years is a bitter pill to swallow for commuters who already pay by far the highest prices in Europe for services which are among the slowest and least reliable.

There’s something depressingly familiar about the annual litany of threadbare excuses from transport tycoons and Tory ministers for robbing the travelling public blind.

But that just goes to show how far the left still needs to go in order to change this disgraceful state of affairs.