The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
What evidence that they don't? This graph says otherwise.
BR was run with a deliberate policy of keeping passenger numbers down. Because the Treasury didn't want to spend more money. Plus an empty railway is much easier to run.
We don't need a Government that is constantly seeking to "do" something. The Government should be seeking to "do" as little as possible and generally get out of the way of people doing their own thing.
Boris is a proper Conservative like that.
You think it should get in the way of people happily getting on with operating within the single market.
We voted to Leave the Single Market five years ago. Get over it already.
Can you please show me where the EEA was on the ballot paper? You keep saying "we voted to leave the Single Market". But as we were not asked a question about the Single Market your repetition of it doesn't make it correct. Its still wrong.
Yes, some politicians said "we will leave the single market". Some other politicians on the same side said "we won't leave the single market". All of them said we would have a deal, easy, better, quickly. The word of a politician is not binding. Whats on the ballot IS binding. Its the same guff as "I voted for the PM" when you don't live in their constituency. No, you didn't.
The Leave Campaign and Remain Campaign explicitly said voting to leave the EU was to leave the Single Market. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and others said it explicitly.
And I can play you clips of leave campaigners saying the direct opposite. I can play you clips from ministers and ex ministers and even the PM extolling the deal we don't have. Politicians talk shit. What they say has to be put through the perception filter.
What is simple and legal and clear is that the referendum was to leave the EU and that the EU is the EU and not anything else. That some politicians told you the political decisions they would make doesn't mean that you were asked a question about the EEA nor could you cast a vote on the EEA as the EEA was not on the ballot.
Its a simple democratic principle. We vote for what is in front of us - the democratic mandate. Those elected then make political choices. Leaving the EEA is not mandated by the referendum. It is a political choice.
I bet you can't play clips saying the opposite, because in five years debating this I've never seen any.
Not unless you resort to that discredited Open Europe lying video that has been thoroughly discredited.
Please find a single video of the likes of Boris Johnson explicitly saying we would stay in the Single Market.
In your own video Andrea Leadsom does not definitely say we will leave the SM.
She says we almost certainly will. Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg were unequivocal.
Nick Clegg even says the Leave campaigners have "come clean" about the fact we would leave the Single Market. There was no doubt that both sides were saying it.
As for Boris Johnson, he wrote two columns and made his mind up on the day, hardly a Brexiteer for life. The mission for him was Boris Johnson.
I suspect his time in the country post leaving will be seen post his London mayoralty, a disaster.
The only people that seek to think he was a good Mayor are those that don't live in London, funny that
People outside of London seem to think the Mayor has an important job. The reality is none of them so far have made much difference, good or bad. I doubt any will in the next decade. Any cabinet minister who has a couple of years in charge of a big department will have a bigger on Londoners lives.
I think this is pretty much true, although Johnson wasted a lot of money on the Garden Bridge and those illegal water cannons. That was all down to him.
Khan will win again because he's basically not offended anyone. I just enjoy the racists on Twitter getting angry we keep electing a Muslim
He's a rubbish mayor though.
Still better than Boris Johnson
Not really, they are about the same level of crap, and I think Sadiq has been worse for policing and travel. He's also not been good at advertising London on the global stage. Far too negative, he seems to want the nation (and London) to fail so he can be proved right about brexit.
I don't agree I'm afraid, I think Khan has represented all of London as opposed to the rich as Johnson did and hasn't wasted money on illegal water canons and bridges we can't build.
At worst Khan has done nothing, I think you're able to argue that. I do not for one second think he is worse than Johnson.
You can feel free to put up a better candidate next time
No, Sadiq has represented precisely no one. He's useless.
We don't need a Government that is constantly seeking to "do" something. The Government should be seeking to "do" as little as possible and generally get out of the way of people doing their own thing.
Boris is a proper Conservative like that.
You think it should get in the way of people happily getting on with operating within the single market.
We voted to Leave the Single Market five years ago. Get over it already.
Can you please show me where the EEA was on the ballot paper? You keep saying "we voted to leave the Single Market". But as we were not asked a question about the Single Market your repetition of it doesn't make it correct. Its still wrong.
Yes, some politicians said "we will leave the single market". Some other politicians on the same side said "we won't leave the single market". All of them said we would have a deal, easy, better, quickly. The word of a politician is not binding. Whats on the ballot IS binding. Its the same guff as "I voted for the PM" when you don't live in their constituency. No, you didn't.
The Leave Campaign and Remain Campaign explicitly said voting to leave the EU was to leave the Single Market. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and others said it explicitly.
And I can play you clips of leave campaigners saying the direct opposite. I can play you clips from ministers and ex ministers and even the PM extolling the deal we don't have. Politicians talk shit. What they say has to be put through the perception filter.
What is simple and legal and clear is that the referendum was to leave the EU and that the EU is the EU and not anything else. That some politicians told you the political decisions they would make doesn't mean that you were asked a question about the EEA nor could you cast a vote on the EEA as the EEA was not on the ballot.
Its a simple democratic principle. We vote for what is in front of us - the democratic mandate. Those elected then make political choices. Leaving the EEA is not mandated by the referendum. It is a political choice.
I bet you can't play clips saying the opposite, because in five years debating this I've never seen any.
Not unless you resort to that discredited Open Europe lying video that has been thoroughly discredited.
Please find a single video of the likes of Boris Johnson explicitly saying we would stay in the Single Market.
In your own video Andrea Leadsom does not definitely say we will leave the SM.
She says we almost certainly will. Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg were unequivocal.
Nick Clegg even says the Leave campaigners have "come clean" about the fact we would leave the Single Market. There was no doubt that both sides were saying it.
As for Boris Johnson, he wrote two columns and made his mind up on the day, hardly a Brexiteer for life. The mission for him was Boris Johnson.
I suspect his time in the country post leaving will be seen post his London mayoralty, a disaster.
The only people that seek to think he was a good Mayor are those that don't live in London, funny that
People outside of London seem to think the Mayor has an important job. The reality is none of them so far have made much difference, good or bad. I doubt any will in the next decade. Any cabinet minister who has a couple of years in charge of a big department will have a bigger on Londoners lives.
I think this is pretty much true, although Johnson wasted a lot of money on the Garden Bridge and those illegal water cannons. That was all down to him.
Khan will win again because he's basically not offended anyone. I just enjoy the racists on Twitter getting angry we keep electing a Muslim
He's a rubbish mayor though.
Still better than Boris Johnson
Not really, they are about the same level of crap, and I think Sadiq has been worse for policing and travel. He's also not been good at advertising London on the global stage. Far too negative, he seems to want the nation (and London) to fail so he can be proved right about brexit.
I don't agree I'm afraid, I think Khan has represented all of London as opposed to the rich as Johnson did and hasn't wasted money on illegal water canons and bridges we can't build.
At worst Khan has done nothing, I think you're able to argue that. I do not for one second think he is worse than Johnson.
You can feel free to put up a better candidate next time
No, Sadiq has represented precisely no one. He's useless.
We will have to agree to disagree, I think he's done well and I am pleased with his performance. I will be proud to vote for him again.
We don't need a Government that is constantly seeking to "do" something. The Government should be seeking to "do" as little as possible and generally get out of the way of people doing their own thing.
Boris is a proper Conservative like that.
You think it should get in the way of people happily getting on with operating within the single market.
We voted to Leave the Single Market five years ago. Get over it already.
Can you please show me where the EEA was on the ballot paper? You keep saying "we voted to leave the Single Market". But as we were not asked a question about the Single Market your repetition of it doesn't make it correct. Its still wrong.
Yes, some politicians said "we will leave the single market". Some other politicians on the same side said "we won't leave the single market". All of them said we would have a deal, easy, better, quickly. The word of a politician is not binding. Whats on the ballot IS binding. Its the same guff as "I voted for the PM" when you don't live in their constituency. No, you didn't.
The Leave Campaign and Remain Campaign explicitly said voting to leave the EU was to leave the Single Market. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and others said it explicitly.
And I can play you clips of leave campaigners saying the direct opposite. I can play you clips from ministers and ex ministers and even the PM extolling the deal we don't have. Politicians talk shit. What they say has to be put through the perception filter.
What is simple and legal and clear is that the referendum was to leave the EU and that the EU is the EU and not anything else. That some politicians told you the political decisions they would make doesn't mean that you were asked a question about the EEA nor could you cast a vote on the EEA as the EEA was not on the ballot.
Its a simple democratic principle. We vote for what is in front of us - the democratic mandate. Those elected then make political choices. Leaving the EEA is not mandated by the referendum. It is a political choice.
I bet you can't play clips saying the opposite, because in five years debating this I've never seen any.
Not unless you resort to that discredited Open Europe lying video that has been thoroughly discredited.
Please find a single video of the likes of Boris Johnson explicitly saying we would stay in the Single Market.
You won’t, he left it to others to do his lying as demonstrated by MP response to constituents.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
What evidence that they don't? This graph says otherwise.
What does that graph show? The major spike upwards starts at the point where Railtrack's board had decided they were a property company. A series of disasters based on lax infrastructure maintenance and the signing of an upgrade contract that from an engineering perspective was impossible bankrupted them. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time we had a series of franchises falling over due to their ability to understand that a train is not a bus. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time the cost to the taxpayer quintupled despite an explosion in fares. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time the technical expertise was allowed to retire and not replaced so that when investment into technology was needed we had forgotten how to do things like resignalling schemes and electrification schemes leading to massive delays and costs. That is not a success of privatisation.
And my perennial question - what was privatised? What is almost always referred to are passenger rail operations. A few private operators exist - Grand Central, Hull Trains, Heathrow Express. Otherwise every legacy operation is not and never has been privately owned. Virgin Trains et al owned a fixed term contract to run trains. They didn't buy assets the way that utilities were privatised.
@Philip_Thompson your problem is that you’re in your “outside of London” bubble. I have also always driven to work, but I live in the North East, where public transport is shite and there isn’t really any other option.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Have you got figures of amount of money the Government spends per passenger over that time period, or perhaps passenger satisfaction? Otherwise they are mseaningless.
You can’t judge success based on one metric.
Besides, the railways are not exactly “privatised” at the moment.
That's a good question, perhaps you might want to provide those figure?
The fact that under Nationalisation passenger numbers fell while post-privatisation they have nearly trebled in volume would rather indicate that privatisation has been a tremendous success.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
You mean you are not paid by the Conservative Party to post Tory propaganda on PB all day, every day? You deserve to be salaried.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Not true. Companies go bust and continue operating all the time. Get administrators in and restructure the company.
And that would result in cuts to services and track, railways are a public service as most of the world agrees.
They were privatised and they went bust. They’ve been privatised again and gone bust.
Perhaps the non-ideological viewpoint is that some businesses ought to be nationalised and others not.
No, I think we need a more dispassionate look at it, maybe train companies are overstaffed and run too many services. That means 50% job losses and redundancies at operating companies but no one wants to talk about that. Why do we still have ticket selling desks? They are completely pointless everything can and should be done online and we should have one desk for tourists and old people. The idea of a train guard is just incredibly outdated, yet we're forced to keep them on because the unions will strike if companies try and explain the reality that they are no longer necessary.
Railways should be an almost completely automated system in terms of operation with the bulk of revenue going into maintenance and capital expenditure rather than paying wages for jobs that are no longer necessary.
The contactless tickets / tourists thing is, and has been, an utter farce for years. There are boards up – everywhere – at Kings Cross, as well announcements bawling at tourists that you do not need to buy a ticket, that the prices are exactly the same by tapping in (with any contactless credit or debit card from anywhere in the bloody world, Apple Pay etc etc etc).
Yet still – still! – hundreds of tourists line up each and every day at ticket machines in Kings Cross station, causing lobby congestion for no reason whatsoever. Tourists wasting their own holiday in the worst way possible: pointless queueing. No wonder so many northerners whine about London.
Get rid of the machines. Get rid of the ticket offices. Have a few roving staff manning the gates and helping customers. Get an information desk where – if an old lady really cannot fathom tapping in – you can give her a free daily Oyster pass if she is over 75 years of age, upon request.
@Philip_Thompson your problem is that you’re in your “outside of London” bubble. I have also always driven to work, but I live in the North East, where public transport is shite and there isn’t really any other option.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
Outside of London isn't a bubble, its the overwhelming majority of the country. Inside London is the bubble.
The fact is that people found alternative ways of getting about when they didn't want to use British Rail and have found alternative ways (including not getting about) this year when they wanted to do so.
Just because Rail is convenient does not make it the only option.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Have you got figures of amount of money the Government spends per passenger over that time period, or perhaps passenger satisfaction? Otherwise they are mseaningless.
You can’t judge success based on one metric.
Besides, the railways are not exactly “privatised” at the moment.
That's a good question, perhaps you might want to provide those figure?
The fact that under Nationalisation passenger numbers fell while post-privatisation they have nearly trebled in volume would rather indicate that privatisation has been a tremendous success.
You cant judge success based on one metric, as I’ve just explained.
Ergo you have proven absolutely nothing. Try again.
On train fares, for me buying day return tickets 3 days a week is cheaper than a weekly ticket, but not much. 4 day return tickets would cost more.
So moneywise I only save the price of a coffee. But get two lie-ins.
This is West Yorkshire so the situation may be different in other areas.
I save more if one of my days involves a trip to the Manchester office, as that is on expenses.
Whether I will return to this arrangement, who knows?
Yes, that was my point. 3 or 4 days per week in office works out to about the same as getting a season ticket. I think the government needs to force railway companies to get on board with new flexible working and offer weekly tickets that give 6 peak time return journeys plus unlimited off peak travel for 75% of the cost of a proper season ticket for people doing 3 days in office. With smart ticketing it would be easy to implement as well. I'm sure train companies would have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming.
On most medium-distance commutes (1-2 hours) to London, an annual season is very roughly 100x the daily fare, so someone going in two days a week every week is no better off for doing so.
Going in one day and back the next, with a cheap hotel in town, might be a wash except on your time, you might even get away with the first off-peak train in the morning.
The one-week-a-month model is far preferable for the employees, they could live pretty much anywhere and travel in, the Caledonian Sleeper service would need to buy a few more trains.
As you say, much more flexibility is required from the train companies, but in almost every case that flexibility means a reduction in revenue and a required investment in technology. Nonetheless, it should be part of all new franchise agreements.
I will be genuinely interested to see how the new railway model works, which is basically public ownership with payments to private companies.
I think we should let the state bid for these if it so wants to.
That is the *existing* model. None of the passenger rail franchises were ever privatised. Nor is direct DfT dictat of literally everything on a management contract anything new. Nor is the state bidding. Most franchises are run by the state. The French State. The German State. Italian. Dutch. Indeed the "eugh nationalisation doesn't work" proponents argue in reality for nationalisation. Because your "privatised" train is in the majority of cases operated by a state owned operator. Just not the British state. Letting a company 100% owned by government operate our trains absolutely proves that having government operate our trains is a Bad Idea...
@Philip_Thompson your problem is that you’re in your “outside of London” bubble. I have also always driven to work, but I live in the North East, where public transport is shite and there isn’t really any other option.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
Outside of London isn't a bubble, its the overwhelming majority of the country. Inside London is the bubble.
The fact is that people found alternative ways of getting about when they didn't want to use British Rail and have found alternative ways (including not getting about) this year when they wanted to do so.
Just because Rail is convenient does not make it the only option.
London is a bubble to you because it doesn't agree with your political points.
Of course your usual anti-London attitude is plain, without London the country would be screwed.
Sky News and the BBC News channel may not carry Downing Street’s new televised press conference in full every day, it has emerged.
Britain’s two leading rolling news channels plan to screen the White House-style briefings “on merit” and may cut away if they are insufficiently newsworthy.
And yet they carry Nipoleon's daily "nothing to report" pressers......
Nothing to report? There have been a lot of important questions of late with the schools going back [edit: in Scotland, of course].
And then there's the whack-a-mole game with Scottish businesses to consider. Who's Sturgeon going to shut down today to show how much she "cares"? There really has to be a bingo type opportunity here.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Have you got figures of amount of money the Government spends per passenger over that time period, or perhaps passenger satisfaction? Otherwise they are mseaningless.
You can’t judge success based on one metric.
Besides, the railways are not exactly “privatised” at the moment.
That's a good question, perhaps you might want to provide those figure?
The fact that under Nationalisation passenger numbers fell while post-privatisation they have nearly trebled in volume would rather indicate that privatisation has been a tremendous success.
A few more graphs are needed
Passenger & taxpayer spend (Adjusted for inflation) per passenger from 1840 through to 2020.
I will be genuinely interested to see how the new railway model works, which is basically public ownership with payments to private companies.
I think we should let the state bid for these if it so wants to.
That is the *existing* model. None of the passenger rail franchises were ever privatised. Nor is direct DfT dictat of literally everything on a management contract anything new. Nor is the state bidding. Most franchises are run by the state. The French State. The German State. Italian. Dutch. Indeed the "eugh nationalisation doesn't work" proponents argue in reality for nationalisation. Because your "privatised" train is in the majority of cases operated by a state owned operator. Just not the British state. Letting a company 100% owned by government operate our trains absolutely proves that having government operate our trains is a Bad Idea...
The new model is concession-based right?
In effect SWR is paid by the Government a fixed fee to operate the service, whereas now they are given a franchise for a set length of time, they make money, lease the trains, etc?
I am not an expert, you know far more than I do so I refer to your knowledge to tell me how I don't understand
We don't need a Government that is constantly seeking to "do" something. The Government should be seeking to "do" as little as possible and generally get out of the way of people doing their own thing.
Boris is a proper Conservative like that.
You think it should get in the way of people happily getting on with operating within the single market.
We voted to Leave the Single Market five years ago. Get over it already.
Can you please show me where the EEA was on the ballot paper? You keep saying "we voted to leave the Single Market". But as we were not asked a question about the Single Market your repetition of it doesn't make it correct. Its still wrong.
Yes, some politicians said "we will leave the single market". Some other politicians on the same side said "we won't leave the single market". All of them said we would have a deal, easy, better, quickly. The word of a politician is not binding. Whats on the ballot IS binding. Its the same guff as "I voted for the PM" when you don't live in their constituency. No, you didn't.
The Leave Campaign and Remain Campaign explicitly said voting to leave the EU was to leave the Single Market. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and others said it explicitly.
And I can play you clips of leave campaigners saying the direct opposite. I can play you clips from ministers and ex ministers and even the PM extolling the deal we don't have. Politicians talk shit. What they say has to be put through the perception filter.
What is simple and legal and clear is that the referendum was to leave the EU and that the EU is the EU and not anything else. That some politicians told you the political decisions they would make doesn't mean that you were asked a question about the EEA nor could you cast a vote on the EEA as the EEA was not on the ballot.
Its a simple democratic principle. We vote for what is in front of us - the democratic mandate. Those elected then make political choices. Leaving the EEA is not mandated by the referendum. It is a political choice.
I bet you can't play clips saying the opposite, because in five years debating this I've never seen any.
Not unless you resort to that discredited Open Europe lying video that has been thoroughly discredited.
Please find a single video of the likes of Boris Johnson explicitly saying we would stay in the Single Market.
You won’t, he left it to others to do his lying as demonstrated by MP response to constituents.
What lying? Please cite anything. There's plenty in the public domain you should be able to provide a link to something if this lying was endemic.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
The performance under public ownership or otherwise of a sector 50 years ago - an era so distant that its TV representation would classify as costume drama - is in no way a reliable guide to how it would perform today.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
You mean you are not paid by the Conservative Party to post Tory propaganda on PB all day, every day? You deserve to be salaried.
Considering I attack the Tory line quite often and I am eg openly in favour of Scottish Independence and think there should be a second Scottish referendum with a Yes vote this time . . . why would I be salaried by the Tory Party?
Getting an Oyster-style system on every line would be a nice improvement, honestly one of the best innovations of the London transport network is Oyster
Actually Philip's graph if you look closely actually shows numbers increasing prior to privatisation.
I am going to make a guess and say if BR was still around we would have seen similar increases. Population growth is the cause.
You'd need a per capita graph to check that, although I suspect the increase at the end is much faster than population growth (the population of the UK hasn't doubled since 1995). There's quite a few plots on this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of_British_Rail. There's one showing rail's share of total travel, with the inflection point right around the time of privatisation.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
The performance under public ownership or otherwise of a sector 50 years ago - an era so distant that its TV representation would classify as costume drama - is in no way a reliable guide to how it would perform today.
Sky News and the BBC News channel may not carry Downing Street’s new televised press conference in full every day, it has emerged.
Britain’s two leading rolling news channels plan to screen the White House-style briefings “on merit” and may cut away if they are insufficiently newsworthy.
And yet they carry Nipoleon's daily "nothing to report" pressers......
Nothing to report? There have been a lot of important questions of late with the schools going back [edit: in Scotland, of course].
And then there's the whack-a-mole game with Scottish businesses to consider. Who's Sturgeon going to shut down today to show how much she "cares"? There really has to be a bingo type opportunity here.
Well, it's unfortunate when this sort of thijng happens. (I wasn't going to post it, but in view of your comments ...).
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Not true. Companies go bust and continue operating all the time. Get administrators in and restructure the company.
And that would result in cuts to services and track, railways are a public service as most of the world agrees.
They were privatised and they went bust. They’ve been privatised again and gone bust.
Perhaps the non-ideological viewpoint is that some businesses ought to be nationalised and others not.
No, I think we need a more dispassionate look at it, maybe train companies are overstaffed and run too many services. That means 50% job losses and redundancies at operating companies but no one wants to talk about that. Why do we still have ticket selling desks? They are completely pointless everything can and should be done online and we should have one desk for tourists and old people. The idea of a train guard is just incredibly outdated, yet we're forced to keep them on because the unions will strike if companies try and explain the reality that they are no longer necessary.
Railways should be an almost completely automated system in terms of operation with the bulk of revenue going into maintenance and capital expenditure rather than paying wages for jobs that are no longer necessary.
The contactless tickets / tourists thing is, and has been, an utter farce for years. There are boards up – everywhere – at Kings Cross, as well announcements bawling at tourists that you do not need to buy a ticket, that the prices are exactly the same by tapping in (with any contactless credit or debit card from anywhere in the bloody world, Apple Pay etc etc etc).
Yet still – still! – hundreds of tourists line up each and every day at ticket machines in Kings Cross station, causing lobby congestion for no reason whatsoever. Tourists wasting their own holiday in the worst way possible: pointless queueing. No wonder so many northerners whine about London.
Get rid of the machines. Get rid of the ticket offices. Have a few roving staff manning the gates and helping customers. Get an information desk where – if an old lady really cannot fathom tapping in – you can give her a free daily Oyster pass if she is over 75 years of age, upon request.
Just get rid of the machines.
An issue is that many tourists do not possess a credit/debit card that will work with the contactless system.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
What evidence that they don't? This graph says otherwise.
What does that graph show? The major spike upwards starts at the point where Railtrack's board had decided they were a property company. A series of disasters based on lax infrastructure maintenance and the signing of an upgrade contract that from an engineering perspective was impossible bankrupted them. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time we had a series of franchises falling over due to their ability to understand that a train is not a bus. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time the cost to the taxpayer quintupled despite an explosion in fares. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time the technical expertise was allowed to retire and not replaced so that when investment into technology was needed we had forgotten how to do things like resignalling schemes and electrification schemes leading to massive delays and costs. That is not a success of privatisation.
And my perennial question - what was privatised? What is almost always referred to are passenger rail operations. A few private operators exist - Grand Central, Hull Trains, Heathrow Express. Otherwise every legacy operation is not and never has been privately owned. Virgin Trains et al owned a fixed term contract to run trains. They didn't buy assets the way that utilities were privatised.
Yes it's nonsense, sadly, from Philip.
Network Rail, the nationalised track operator, came into force in 2002.
His own graph shows strong growth under nationalisation.
@Philip_Thompson your problem is that you’re in your “outside of London” bubble. I have also always driven to work, but I live in the North East, where public transport is shite and there isn’t really any other option.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
Outside of London isn't a bubble, its the overwhelming majority of the country. Inside London is the bubble.
The fact is that people found alternative ways of getting about when they didn't want to use British Rail and have found alternative ways (including not getting about) this year when they wanted to do so.
Just because Rail is convenient does not make it the only option.
Course it is. You are unable to recognise that circumstances are different in different parts of the country. You are by definition guilty of “bubble thinking”, just the same as those who live in London or other big cities who can’t grasp why some people would need a car in 2020.
If you live in rural Northumberland, you cannot get by without a car. It’s just impossible to live a normal life without one.
If you live in central London, or perhaps central Manchester, having a car is a luxury at best, a huge inconvenience at worst.
The problem on both sides of the “bubble” is not being able to recognise that circumstances differ.
We don't need a Government that is constantly seeking to "do" something. The Government should be seeking to "do" as little as possible and generally get out of the way of people doing their own thing.
Boris is a proper Conservative like that.
You think it should get in the way of people happily getting on with operating within the single market.
We voted to Leave the Single Market five years ago. Get over it already.
Can you please show me where the EEA was on the ballot paper? You keep saying "we voted to leave the Single Market". But as we were not asked a question about the Single Market your repetition of it doesn't make it correct. Its still wrong.
Yes, some politicians said "we will leave the single market". Some other politicians on the same side said "we won't leave the single market". All of them said we would have a deal, easy, better, quickly. The word of a politician is not binding. Whats on the ballot IS binding. Its the same guff as "I voted for the PM" when you don't live in their constituency. No, you didn't.
The Leave Campaign and Remain Campaign explicitly said voting to leave the EU was to leave the Single Market. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and others said it explicitly.
And I can play you clips of leave campaigners saying the direct opposite. I can play you clips from ministers and ex ministers and even the PM extolling the deal we don't have. Politicians talk shit. What they say has to be put through the perception filter.
What is simple and legal and clear is that the referendum was to leave the EU and that the EU is the EU and not anything else. That some politicians told you the political decisions they would make doesn't mean that you were asked a question about the EEA nor could you cast a vote on the EEA as the EEA was not on the ballot.
Its a simple democratic principle. We vote for what is in front of us - the democratic mandate. Those elected then make political choices. Leaving the EEA is not mandated by the referendum. It is a political choice.
I bet you can't play clips saying the opposite, because in five years debating this I've never seen any.
Not unless you resort to that discredited Open Europe lying video that has been thoroughly discredited.
Please find a single video of the likes of Boris Johnson explicitly saying we would stay in the Single Market.
You won’t, he left it to others to do his lying as demonstrated by MP response to constituents.
What lying? Please cite anything. There's plenty in the public domain you should be able to provide a link to something if this lying was endemic.
We discussed this the other day with reference to Fysh, the most useless MP in the commons. So you either accept that he told me we would stay EFTA/EEA or you are calling me a liar.
Getting an Oyster-style system on every line would be a nice improvement, honestly one of the best innovations of the London transport network is Oyster
Yes, and an interoperable one would be even better. Contactless payments are a good step towards this, hopefully other cities will adopt it too.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
We don't need a Government that is constantly seeking to "do" something. The Government should be seeking to "do" as little as possible and generally get out of the way of people doing their own thing.
Boris is a proper Conservative like that.
You think it should get in the way of people happily getting on with operating within the single market.
We voted to Leave the Single Market five years ago. Get over it already.
Can you please show me where the EEA was on the ballot paper? You keep saying "we voted to leave the Single Market". But as we were not asked a question about the Single Market your repetition of it doesn't make it correct. Its still wrong.
Yes, some politicians said "we will leave the single market". Some other politicians on the same side said "we won't leave the single market". All of them said we would have a deal, easy, better, quickly. The word of a politician is not binding. Whats on the ballot IS binding. Its the same guff as "I voted for the PM" when you don't live in their constituency. No, you didn't.
The Leave Campaign and Remain Campaign explicitly said voting to leave the EU was to leave the Single Market. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and others said it explicitly.
And I can play you clips of leave campaigners saying the direct opposite. I can play you clips from ministers and ex ministers and even the PM extolling the deal we don't have. Politicians talk shit. What they say has to be put through the perception filter.
What is simple and legal and clear is that the referendum was to leave the EU and that the EU is the EU and not anything else. That some politicians told you the political decisions they would make doesn't mean that you were asked a question about the EEA nor could you cast a vote on the EEA as the EEA was not on the ballot.
Its a simple democratic principle. We vote for what is in front of us - the democratic mandate. Those elected then make political choices. Leaving the EEA is not mandated by the referendum. It is a political choice.
I bet you can't play clips saying the opposite, because in five years debating this I've never seen any.
Not unless you resort to that discredited Open Europe lying video that has been thoroughly discredited.
Please find a single video of the likes of Boris Johnson explicitly saying we would stay in the Single Market.
You won’t, he left it to others to do his lying as demonstrated by MP response to constituents.
What lying? Please cite anything. There's plenty in the public domain you should be able to provide a link to something if this lying was endemic.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Tell the government that. They’re the ones desperate for people to get back into central London.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
I think there is lots of truth in that idea. Although, again, it won't be all or nothing.
You are a crank, but sometimes cranks come up with cranky ideas that are rather clever.
Sky News and the BBC News channel may not carry Downing Street’s new televised press conference in full every day, it has emerged.
Britain’s two leading rolling news channels plan to screen the White House-style briefings “on merit” and may cut away if they are insufficiently newsworthy.
James Forsyth reports there is a big rebellion on the way to the planning law changes in the tory ranks.
If the lib dems play it right that could be a way back into the leafier English constituencies where they used to be strong.
The planning reform is the most important thing the government needs to do, bar virus and brexit.
Yes, it will cost a few councillors to the nimby party, but it will also generate huge growth in construction and create a lot of jobs during a recession, bringing in much-needed government revenues.
The political point, that people aged 35-45 who don’t own property are disproportionally non-Tory voters, needs to be made clear to the rebel MPs. Getting more homeowners needs to be a high priority for a government seeking re-election.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Not true. Companies go bust and continue operating all the time. Get administrators in and restructure the company.
And that would result in cuts to services and track, railways are a public service as most of the world agrees.
They were privatised and they went bust. They’ve been privatised again and gone bust.
Perhaps the non-ideological viewpoint is that some businesses ought to be nationalised and others not.
No, I think we need a more dispassionate look at it, maybe train companies are overstaffed and run too many services. That means 50% job losses and redundancies at operating companies but no one wants to talk about that. Why do we still have ticket selling desks? They are completely pointless everything can and should be done online and we should have one desk for tourists and old people. The idea of a train guard is just incredibly outdated, yet we're forced to keep them on because the unions will strike if companies try and explain the reality that they are no longer necessary.
Railways should be an almost completely automated system in terms of operation with the bulk of revenue going into maintenance and capital expenditure rather than paying wages for jobs that are no longer necessary.
The contactless tickets / tourists thing is, and has been, an utter farce for years. There are boards up – everywhere – at Kings Cross, as well announcements bawling at tourists that you do not need to buy a ticket, that the prices are exactly the same by tapping in (with any contactless credit or debit card from anywhere in the bloody world, Apple Pay etc etc etc).
Yet still – still! – hundreds of tourists line up each and every day at ticket machines in Kings Cross station, causing lobby congestion for no reason whatsoever. Tourists wasting their own holiday in the worst way possible: pointless queueing. No wonder so many northerners whine about London.
Get rid of the machines. Get rid of the ticket offices. Have a few roving staff manning the gates and helping customers. Get an information desk where – if an old lady really cannot fathom tapping in – you can give her a free daily Oyster pass if she is over 75 years of age, upon request.
Just get rid of the machines.
An issue is that many tourists do not possess a credit/debit card that will work with the contactless system.
What percentage of these do you think that accounts for? Remember that Apple Pay also works, as (I assume) does the Android equivalent...
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Have you got figures of amount of money the Government spends per passenger over that time period, or perhaps passenger satisfaction? Otherwise they are mseaningless.
You can’t judge success based on one metric.
Besides, the railways are not exactly “privatised” at the moment.
That's a good question, perhaps you might want to provide those figure?
The fact that under Nationalisation passenger numbers fell while post-privatisation they have nearly trebled in volume would rather indicate that privatisation has been a tremendous success.
You cant judge success based on one metric, as I’ve just explained.
Ergo you have proven absolutely nothing. Try again.
If it is not to move people from A to B what do you think the point of a railway is ? If you have moved 3x the number of people have you not achieved more of that purpose?
As metrics go this seems to be in the top 1 to me.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Tell the government that. They’re the ones desperate for people to get back into central London.
I'm not agreeing with the Government's position on this.
We don't need a Government that is constantly seeking to "do" something. The Government should be seeking to "do" as little as possible and generally get out of the way of people doing their own thing.
Boris is a proper Conservative like that.
You think it should get in the way of people happily getting on with operating within the single market.
We voted to Leave the Single Market five years ago. Get over it already.
Can you please show me where the EEA was on the ballot paper? You keep saying "we voted to leave the Single Market". But as we were not asked a question about the Single Market your repetition of it doesn't make it correct. Its still wrong.
Yes, some politicians said "we will leave the single market". Some other politicians on the same side said "we won't leave the single market". All of them said we would have a deal, easy, better, quickly. The word of a politician is not binding. Whats on the ballot IS binding. Its the same guff as "I voted for the PM" when you don't live in their constituency. No, you didn't.
The Leave Campaign and Remain Campaign explicitly said voting to leave the EU was to leave the Single Market. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and others said it explicitly.
And I can play you clips of leave campaigners saying the direct opposite. I can play you clips from ministers and ex ministers and even the PM extolling the deal we don't have. Politicians talk shit. What they say has to be put through the perception filter.
What is simple and legal and clear is that the referendum was to leave the EU and that the EU is the EU and not anything else. That some politicians told you the political decisions they would make doesn't mean that you were asked a question about the EEA nor could you cast a vote on the EEA as the EEA was not on the ballot.
Its a simple democratic principle. We vote for what is in front of us - the democratic mandate. Those elected then make political choices. Leaving the EEA is not mandated by the referendum. It is a political choice.
I bet you can't play clips saying the opposite, because in five years debating this I've never seen any.
Not unless you resort to that discredited Open Europe lying video that has been thoroughly discredited.
Please find a single video of the likes of Boris Johnson explicitly saying we would stay in the Single Market.
You won’t, he left it to others to do his lying as demonstrated by MP response to constituents.
What lying? Please cite anything. There's plenty in the public domain you should be able to provide a link to something if this lying was endemic.
We discussed this the other day with reference to Fysh, the most useless MP in the commons. So you either accept that he told me we would stay EFTA/EEA or you are calling me a liar.
I don't know if you're telling the truth or a liar or quite simply your memory is mistaken but I'm not taking your word for "someone minor told me that we would stay in the Single Market but I have no evidence to substantiate that" over the then and current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on camera saying we would leave it.
If Fysh was writing letters saying that we would stay in the Single Market and if this was quite common and happened to lots of people then why are none of these letters - or no videos - available in the public domain?
I have to report that the evil Natz have driven Andra Neil into another Bosnia and Herzegovina moment during his twitter barrage, though this time he's deleted the evidence. Scottish indy certainly seems to set the old warhorse sweating and a trembling.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Let’s ask Disney to take it over and turn it into the worlds largest theme park.
Getting an Oyster-style system on every line would be a nice improvement, honestly one of the best innovations of the London transport network is Oyster
Yes, and an interoperable one would be even better. Contactless payments are a good step towards this, hopefully other cities will adopt it too.
@Philip_Thompson umm, your subsidy graph shows that subsidy per mile has increased more than 100% since “privatisation”....
Since which year?
The spending fluctuated so you should presumably want to look at an average. The average pre-privatisation figure looks much higher to me than it is currently - albeit it was higher under Labour post-Hatfield it has since come back down again.
Sky News and the BBC News channel may not carry Downing Street’s new televised press conference in full every day, it has emerged.
Britain’s two leading rolling news channels plan to screen the White House-style briefings “on merit” and may cut away if they are insufficiently newsworthy.
And yet they carry Nipoleon's daily "nothing to report" pressers......
Nothing to report? There have been a lot of important questions of late with the schools going back [edit: in Scotland, of course].
And then there's the whack-a-mole game with Scottish businesses to consider. Who's Sturgeon going to shut down today to show how much she "cares"? There really has to be a bingo type opportunity here.
Well, it's unfortunate when this sort of thijng happens. (I wasn't going to post it, but in view of your comments ...).
I will be genuinely interested to see how the new railway model works, which is basically public ownership with payments to private companies.
I think we should let the state bid for these if it so wants to.
That is the *existing* model. None of the passenger rail franchises were ever privatised. Nor is direct DfT dictat of literally everything on a management contract anything new. Nor is the state bidding. Most franchises are run by the state. The French State. The German State. Italian. Dutch. Indeed the "eugh nationalisation doesn't work" proponents argue in reality for nationalisation. Because your "privatised" train is in the majority of cases operated by a state owned operator. Just not the British state. Letting a company 100% owned by government operate our trains absolutely proves that having government operate our trains is a Bad Idea...
The new model is concession-based right?
In effect SWR is paid by the Government a fixed fee to operate the service, whereas now they are given a franchise for a set length of time, they make money, lease the trains, etc?
I am not an expert, you know far more than I do so I refer to your knowledge to tell me how I don't understand
I'm an armchair "expert" enthusiast. They haven't decided upon concessions as yet. We have seen a variety of franchises. Some like Virgin and Chiltern do total route upgrades over a lengthy period. Others do absolutely nothing, and increasingly the DfT have been dictating everything. A great example of the success of Privatisation is the previous Northern franchise. Let under a zero growth basis imposed by the DfT. Not enough vehicles to operate services dictated by the DfT? Tough. Passengers crush loaded onto trains the DfT directs you to operate? Tough.
Commuters had complained about the ironing board seats on new trains like on Thameslink and gWr. These are trains specced by the DfT and imposed on the franchisee where not only is the spec shit (hugely expensive retrofit of tray tables, underpowered engines etc) but the price is £bonkers (gWr negotiated something like a 50% price drop for higher specced Class 802 units vs the DfT procured 800s).
"a fixed fee to operate the service" has been used so many times in the past. Like when Virgin Trains effectively went bust following the Railtrack fail West Coast Upgrade where VT couldn't afford to pay the contracted premiums to government for services it couldn't run on infrastructure that wasn't upgraded.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Have you got figures of amount of money the Government spends per passenger over that time period, or perhaps passenger satisfaction? Otherwise they are mseaningless.
You can’t judge success based on one metric.
Besides, the railways are not exactly “privatised” at the moment.
That's a good question, perhaps you might want to provide those figure?
The fact that under Nationalisation passenger numbers fell while post-privatisation they have nearly trebled in volume would rather indicate that privatisation has been a tremendous success.
You cant judge success based on one metric, as I’ve just explained.
Ergo you have proven absolutely nothing. Try again.
If it is not to move people from A to B what do you think the point of a railway is ? If you have moved 3x the number of people have you not achieved more of that purpose?
As metrics go this seems to be in the top 1 to me.
Because there are other factors that could influence passenger numbers. It does not automatically follow that “privatisation” has worked because passenger numbers are up. Like I said, in some parts of the country, train commuting is the only viable form of commuting
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Let’s ask Disney to take it over and turn it into the worlds largest theme park.
@Philip_Thompson your problem is that you’re in your “outside of London” bubble. I have also always driven to work, but I live in the North East, where public transport is shite and there isn’t really any other option.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
Outside of London isn't a bubble, its the overwhelming majority of the country. Inside London is the bubble.
The fact is that people found alternative ways of getting about when they didn't want to use British Rail and have found alternative ways (including not getting about) this year when they wanted to do so.
Just because Rail is convenient does not make it the only option.
Course it is. You are unable to recognise that circumstances are different in different parts of the country. You are by definition guilty of “bubble thinking”, just the same as those who live in London or other big cities who can’t grasp why some people would need a car in 2020.
If you live in rural Northumberland, you cannot get by without a car. It’s just impossible to live a normal life without one.
If you live in central London, or perhaps central Manchester, having a car is a luxury at best, a huge inconvenience at worst.
The problem on both sides of the “bubble” is not being able to recognise that circumstances differ.
Yes. And people can choose to live in Central London or can choose to live in Northumberland and if they're not happy they're capable of moving.
The data speaks for itself. Privatisation has been a success, nationalisation was a failure.
Can you define those words please? Is an operating licence executed by a company 100% owned by the German State on a passenger operation 100% owned by the British State "privatisation" or "nationalisation"
Getting an Oyster-style system on every line would be a nice improvement, honestly one of the best innovations of the London transport network is Oyster
Yes, and an interoperable one would be even better. Contactless payments are a good step towards this, hopefully other cities will adopt it too.
I will be genuinely interested to see how the new railway model works, which is basically public ownership with payments to private companies.
I think we should let the state bid for these if it so wants to.
That is the *existing* model. None of the passenger rail franchises were ever privatised. Nor is direct DfT dictat of literally everything on a management contract anything new. Nor is the state bidding. Most franchises are run by the state. The French State. The German State. Italian. Dutch. Indeed the "eugh nationalisation doesn't work" proponents argue in reality for nationalisation. Because your "privatised" train is in the majority of cases operated by a state owned operator. Just not the British state. Letting a company 100% owned by government operate our trains absolutely proves that having government operate our trains is a Bad Idea...
The new model is concession-based right?
In effect SWR is paid by the Government a fixed fee to operate the service, whereas now they are given a franchise for a set length of time, they make money, lease the trains, etc?
I am not an expert, you know far more than I do so I refer to your knowledge to tell me how I don't understand
I'm an armchair "expert" enthusiast. They haven't decided upon concessions as yet. We have seen a variety of franchises. Some like Virgin and Chiltern do total route upgrades over a lengthy period. Others do absolutely nothing, and increasingly the DfT have been dictating everything. A great example of the success of Privatisation is the previous Northern franchise. Let under a zero growth basis imposed by the DfT. Not enough vehicles to operate services dic tated by the DfT? Tough. Passengers crush loaded onto trains the DfT directs you to operate? Tough.
Commuters had complained about the ironing board seats on new trains like on Thameslink and gWr. These are trains specced by the DfT and imposed on the franchisee where not only is the spec shit (hugely expensive retrofit of tray tables, underpowered engines etc) but the price is £bonkers (gWr negotiated something like a 50% price drop for higher specced Class 802 units vs the DfT procured 800s).
"a fixed fee to operate the service" has been used so many times in the past. Like when Virgin Trains effectively went bust following the Railtrack fail West Coast Upgrade where VT couldn't afford to pay the contracted premiums to government for services it couldn't run on infrastructure that wasn't upgraded.
Sounds like DfT is behind much of the issues.
Perhaps we should deregulate and privatise much of the bits DfT are behind?
The data speaks for itself. Privatisation has been a success, nationalisation was a failure.
Can you define those words please? Is an operating licence executed by a company 100% owned by the German State on a passenger operation 100% owned by the British State "privatisation" or "nationalisation"
I'm defining nationalisation as the period pre-1995 and privatisation as the period after it.
Perhaps it hasn't been privatised fully and perhaps we should look at privatising it more. You make some good points.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Let’s ask Disney to take it over and turn it into the worlds largest theme park.
I don't see why Disney should make all the money.
Ok we can use them as consultants to help the transformation. I wouldn’t trust the government to get it right.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Every city will become a kind of Las Vegas?
The lucky ones.
The rest will be Blackpool. The seasidisation of urban Britain.
@Philip_Thompson your problem is that you’re in your “outside of London” bubble. I have also always driven to work, but I live in the North East, where public transport is shite and there isn’t really any other option.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
Outside of London isn't a bubble, its the overwhelming majority of the country. Inside London is the bubble.
The fact is that people found alternative ways of getting about when they didn't want to use British Rail and have found alternative ways (including not getting about) this year when they wanted to do so.
Just because Rail is convenient does not make it the only option.
Course it is. You are unable to recognise that circumstances are different in different parts of the country. You are by definition guilty of “bubble thinking”, just the same as those who live in London or other big cities who can’t grasp why some people would need a car in 2020.
If you live in rural Northumberland, you cannot get by without a car. It’s just impossible to live a normal life without one.
If you live in central London, or perhaps central Manchester, having a car is a luxury at best, a huge inconvenience at worst.
The problem on both sides of the “bubble” is not being able to recognise that circumstances differ.
Yes. And people can choose to live in Central London or can choose to live in Northumberland and if they're not happy they're capable of moving.
Nothing is set in stone.
In the short to medium term its very much set in concrete though. Whilst individually we can choose where to live, collectively we have to live where the houses already are, you cant move a million people out of London into Northumberland without causing absolute chaos.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Have you got figures of amount of money the Government spends per passenger over that time period, or perhaps passenger satisfaction? Otherwise they are mseaningless.
You can’t judge success based on one metric.
Besides, the railways are not exactly “privatised” at the moment.
That's a good question, perhaps you might want to provide those figure?
The fact that under Nationalisation passenger numbers fell while post-privatisation they have nearly trebled in volume would rather indicate that privatisation has been a tremendous success.
You cant judge success based on one metric, as I’ve just explained.
Ergo you have proven absolutely nothing. Try again.
If it is not to move people from A to B what do you think the point of a railway is ? If you have moved 3x the number of people have you not achieved more of that purpose?
As metrics go this seems to be in the top 1 to me.
Because there are other factors that could influence passenger numbers. It does not automatically follow that “privatisation” has worked because passenger numbers are up. Like I said, in some parts of the country, train commuting is the only viable form of commuting
If it were 10-20% I might agree, it might just reflect economic growth. But 300%? There has clearly been a massive increase in capacity and the use of that capacity way, way ahead of economic growth suggesting that the service is creating much more demand, presumably in substitution to other modes of transport.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Every city will become a kind of Las Vegas?
The lucky ones.
The rest will be Blackpool. The seasidisation of urban Britain.
Rail numbers overall collapsed pre-privatisation and trebled after it:
Rail as a share of all transport fell pre-privatisation and increased consistently post privatisation.
Subsidies per passenger mile are below what they were pre-privatisation (and much of these "subsidies" are actually funding HS2 and Crossrail):
The data speaks for itself. Privatisation has been a success, nationalisation was a failure.
The graph of subsidy per passenger mile remaining flat indicates the spend by the state has increased (As total miles have gone north) somewhat...
So is in fact the underlying driving factor simply how much the state wants to spend on a railway and can they ever be made to actually cover their own costs ?
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
The performance under public ownership or otherwise of a sector 50 years ago - an era so distant that its TV representation would classify as costume drama - is in no way a reliable guide to how it would perform today.
"This time it will be different"
Sure . . . 🙄
2020 differs greatly from 1970 in almost every area of life, social and economic. To assume that all of this palpable progress would somehow be suspended for the specific area of publicly owned rail transport, that in this unique and special case it would be like going back to a bygone era, makes no sense at all. People just trot it out - "remember British Rail" - as a knee jerk response to any proposal of public ownership because they don't like the idea of public ownership. It's not an argument, it's a tired old cliche used in place of an argument by those too lazy or lacking the wherewithal to make one. Do not be such a person. Unless you've had 5 pints with dinner - in which case bravo (!) for making any conversation at all, cliche or not.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
The performance under public ownership or otherwise of a sector 50 years ago - an era so distant that its TV representation would classify as costume drama - is in no way a reliable guide to how it would perform today.
"This time it will be different"
Sure . . . 🙄
2020 differs greatly from 1970 in almost every area of life, social and economic. To assume that all of this palpable progress would somehow be suspended for the specific area of publicly owned rail transport, that in this unique and special case it would be like going back to a bygone era, makes no sense at all. People just trot it out - "remember British Rail" - as a knee jerk response to any proposal of public ownership because they don't like the idea of public ownership. It's not an argument, it's a tired old cliche used in place of an argument by those too lazy or lacking the wherewithal to make one. Do not be such a person. Unless you've had 5 pints with dinner - in which case bravo (!) for making any conversation at all, cliche or not.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Overlay that with a chart of how much public money was spent on the railways.
That’s going to be another Monza, there are some comments that it may even be quicker and we’ll see the fastest lap ever by an F1 car. It’s short as well, less than a minute round for a 90 lap race.
Like oil paintings ceased to be the best way to convey reality, like horse and carriage ceased to be the best way to convey people, like clockwork watches and clocks ceased to be the best way to tell the time, it looks like physical offices are becoming 'art'. That doesn't mean they will cease to exist. Those who can afford them will continue with them for ornamental value - look how many people own clockwork watches.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Every city will become a kind of Las Vegas?
The lucky ones.
The rest will be Blackpool. The seasidisation of urban Britain.
Blackpool is doing rather well at the moment.
You surprise me. Its a bit of an anachronism. The days of kiss me quick hats and sticks of rock are long gone. The piers are so last year...
The data speaks for itself. Privatisation has been a success, nationalisation was a failure.
Can you define those words please? Is an operating licence executed by a company 100% owned by the German State on a passenger operation 100% owned by the British State "privatisation" or "nationalisation"
I'm defining nationalisation as the period pre-1995 and privatisation as the period after it.
Perhaps it hasn't been privatised fully and perhaps we should look at privatising it more. You make some good points.
It hasn't been privatised *at all*. An example - Cross Country is a passenger rail operation owned entirely by the DfT. It has been let on a 13 year fixed contract where Arriva (owned entirely by the German State) operate the trains on its behalf to timetables and fares is largely dictated by the DfT operating trains specified by the DfT.
Even for the minority of franchises not operated wholly or in part by a foreign government the like of First Group does not own the service. The trains. The infrastructure. The operating name even. You keep talking up the success of privatisation being an increase in passenger numbers - this is just not true.
Lets look at the increased passenger numbers on Cross Country as my example. We've already covered that the operator is nationalised and the operation is nationalised. In 13 years the trains are the same as they were. Which means horrendous overcrowding and punative fare hikes to discourage travel. This is literally the same as BR was ordered to do in the same position with rising passenger numbers and no ability to run more services or buy new trains.
Your graph shows a drop in passenger numbers through until the mid-80s. As it would do with the network shrunk and a modal shift to roads. You then see a rise in the 80s. The sectorised BR was a huge success. Intercity was the only profitable long distance passenger operation in the world. What "privatisation" did was smash this so that profitable operations became loss-making due to the absurd legal framework used. Which is why the cost to the taxpayer has quintupled despite an explosion in fares.
What should have happened is what happened elsewhere. British Rail Ltd. A state owned arms length commercial organisation free to operate in the market. Keep all thats good about the state run rail operations most passengers benefit from today with marketisation allowing them to raise funds and expand. Instead of having foreigners run our stuff better than we do it could have been the other way round...
@Philip_Thompson your problem is that you’re in your “outside of London” bubble. I have also always driven to work, but I live in the North East, where public transport is shite and there isn’t really any other option.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
Outside of London isn't a bubble, its the overwhelming majority of the country. Inside London is the bubble. c The fact is that people found alternative ways of getting about when they didn't want to use British Rail and have found alternative ways (including not getting about) this year when they wanted to do so.
Just because Rail is convenient does not make it the only option.
Course it is. You are unable to recognise that circumstances are different in different parts of the country. You are by definition guilty of “bubble thinking”, just the same as those who live in London or other big cities who can’t grasp why some people would need a car in 2020.
If you live in rural Northumberland, you cannot get by without a car. It’s just impossible to live a normal life without one.
If you live in central London, or perhaps central Manchester, having a car is a luxury at best, a huge inconvenience at worst.
The problem on both sides of the “bubble” is not being able to recognise that circumstances differ.
Yes. And people can choose to live in Central London or can choose to live in Northumberland and if they're not happy they're capable of moving.
Nothing is set in stone.
In the short to medium term its very much set in concrete though. Whilst individually we can choose where to live, collectively we have to live where the houses already are, you cant move a million people out of London into Northumberland without causing absolute chaos.
Millions don't have to move, there's plenty of alternative transport available and I forgot buses as an option even within London too. As has been seen with the collapse in traveller numbers this year that some people are bemoaning there are alternatives available if people want to take them. The idea that people have to take the train is a fallacy - people choose to take it because its convenient, 3x the number who took it pre-privatisation, that doesn't mean it is their only option.
Think about it logically. If 3x the number of passengers are using rail now than pre-privatisation and if they are doing so because they have no alternative then what were the other two-thirds doing under nationalisation?
Your logic makes no sense and doesn't match the facts.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Overlay that with a chart of how much public money was spent on the railways.
Hint: It goes up after privatisation.
Privatisation was a botch job. We can thank the EU for that.
I haven't able to stand Trump's price any longer, so have gone in against him again this morning.
I've done the same
Yay.
What about the EV markets ? Any guesses for the Trump electoral college vote total ?
I'm not totally immune to the prevailing sentiment that the Biden poll lead is too good to be true and so I've moved my EC centre of gravity for Trump from 195 to 210.
Jesus! Aidan Millward on YouTube has done some simracing videos exploring what 2020 F1 cars would be like going round either old Spa / Monza (answer - flat out almost the entire lap) or around shorter tracks like Brands Hatch. Where the answer was also flat put almost the entire lap which was less than a minute. That they're going to have a sub 1m lap on an actual grand prix should be interesting...
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Overlay that with a chart of how much public money was spent on the railways.
Hint: It goes up after privatisation.
I'm perfectly OK with privatising it fully and eliminating subsidies.
If people wish to pay full price for their rail then let them do so, I see no need for the state to subsidise their travel.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
What evidence that they don't? This graph says otherwise.
What does that graph show? The major spike upwards starts at the point where Railtrack's board had decided they were a property company. A series of disasters based on lax infrastructure maintenance and the signing of an upgrade contract that from an engineering perspective was impossible bankrupted them. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time we had a series of franchises falling over due to their ability to understand that a train is not a bus. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time the cost to the taxpayer quintupled despite an explosion in fares. That is not a success of privatisation. At the same time the technical expertise was allowed to retire and not replaced so that when investment into technology was needed we had forgotten how to do things like resignalling schemes and electrification schemes leading to massive delays and costs. That is not a success of privatisation.
And my perennial question - what was privatised? What is almost always referred to are passenger rail operations. A few private operators exist - Grand Central, Hull Trains, Heathrow Express. Otherwise every legacy operation is not and never has been privately owned. Virgin Trains et al owned a fixed term contract to run trains. They didn't buy assets the way that utilities were privatised.
Yes it's nonsense, sadly, from Philip.
Network Rail, the nationalised track operator, came into force in 2002.
His own graph shows strong growth under nationalisation.
Recent problems have been significantly because Network Rail proved unable to finish its projects on time.
I see the "Biden has dementia" meme has come out to play early in this thread.
I seem to remember a lot of discussion in 2016 with some people (not necessarily on here) adamant that Clinton had some sort of neurological condition that would impair her presidency. Funny how that immediately vanished on November 4th and has never been heard of again.
The private sector doesn't make any money, hence the subsidies.
Or the trains would simply charge proper prices and react accordingly. They might even be cheaper if liberated from state control as they could consider innovations like driverless trains easier.
Trains existed before state control and exist globally in many nations without it too.
Railtrack was so successful as a private company it went bust
So?
So its investors lose their money, strip its assets and sell them to a new venture. The free market doesn't mean that every company must be profitable and no business can fail - and if a business in a capitalist economy fails then it is the investors who lose their money, not the taxpayer.
If Railtrack had been allowed to just go bust we'd have no railways at all
Well as PT would say if that’s what the market says then so be it.
Even his beloved Tories don't agree with him
I am not a Tory loyalist, I have never said I am. If the Tories disagree with me then I stick by my own principles not theirs. Surely that is the right thing to do? Or do you think I should be like HYUFD and defend the Tory line whatever it is?
I think you're pretty blinkered to think that privatised railways in this country work when we have two decades of evidence that they don't.
We had decades of British Rail to prove absolutely that nationalised railways don't work. British Rail had ever falling passenger numbers whereas privatised rail has ever increasing numbers.
Precisely. Not sure if CHB will have seen the graph in my prior post as it was a broken link first time around, but this is unequivocal. Nationalisation failed, privatisation has succeeded better than expected. The difficulties with privatisation is caused by the fact its been more popular than expected.
Overlay that with a chart of how much public money was spent on the railways.
Hint: It goes up after privatisation.
Yes, this can be deigned from the broadly flat (It bumps around a bit) 85 -> 95 inflation adjusted average compared to 2017 subsidy of ~ 10p per passenger mile. The subsidy per mile will be heading north once more post covid. The one issue with state operation is the implied assumption that fares should come down as a result. Certainly pre-covid you could have had state operation and actually increased fares (To squish the subsidy per mile); now I'm not certain you'd be able to have the fair market ticket rate be able to do that as demand has fundamentally fallen.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyf97LAjjcY
Nick Clegg even says the Leave campaigners have "come clean" about the fact we would leave the Single Market. There was no doubt that both sides were saying it.
And my perennial question - what was privatised? What is almost always referred to are passenger rail operations. A few private operators exist - Grand Central, Hull Trains, Heathrow Express. Otherwise every legacy operation is not and never has been privately owned. Virgin Trains et al owned a fixed term contract to run trains. They didn't buy assets the way that utilities were privatised.
You have to recognise that for 15 odd million+ people who live in the London commuter belt, rail transport is vital, and cannot be replaced simply with bicycles and buses - this is demonstrated by the carnage the TFL rail strikes cause.
Racist dog whistling
The fact that under Nationalisation passenger numbers fell while post-privatisation they have nearly trebled in volume would rather indicate that privatisation has been a tremendous success.
I am going to make a guess and say if BR was still around we would have seen similar increases. Population growth is the cause.
Yet still – still! – hundreds of tourists line up each and every day at ticket machines in Kings Cross station, causing lobby congestion for no reason whatsoever. Tourists wasting their own holiday in the worst way possible: pointless queueing. No wonder so many northerners whine about London.
Get rid of the machines. Get rid of the ticket offices. Have a few roving staff manning the gates and helping customers. Get an information desk where – if an old lady really cannot fathom tapping in – you can give her a free daily Oyster pass if she is over 75 years of age, upon request.
Just get rid of the machines.
The fact is that people found alternative ways of getting about when they didn't want to use British Rail and have found alternative ways (including not getting about) this year when they wanted to do so.
Just because Rail is convenient does not make it the only option.
Ergo you have proven absolutely nothing. Try again.
Going in one day and back the next, with a cheap hotel in town, might be a wash except on your time, you might even get away with the first off-peak train in the morning.
The one-week-a-month model is far preferable for the employees, they could live pretty much anywhere and travel in, the Caledonian Sleeper service would need to buy a few more trains.
As you say, much more flexibility is required from the train companies, but in almost every case that flexibility means a reduction in revenue and a required investment in technology. Nonetheless, it should be part of all new franchise agreements.
Of course your usual anti-London attitude is plain, without London the country would be screwed.
There really has to be a bingo type opportunity here.
Passenger & taxpayer spend (Adjusted for inflation) per passenger from 1840 through to 2020.
In effect SWR is paid by the Government a fixed fee to operate the service, whereas now they are given a franchise for a set length of time, they make money, lease the trains, etc?
I am not an expert, you know far more than I do so I refer to your knowledge to tell me how I don't understand
Is it because without subsidies, the companies would have all gone bust and we'd have no railway at all?
Sure . . . 🙄
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-tory-mp-slammed-social-22589249
Network Rail, the nationalised track operator, came into force in 2002.
His own graph shows strong growth under nationalisation.
https://twitter.com/RepDonBeyer/status/1299109222936981506
If you live in rural Northumberland, you cannot get by without a car. It’s just impossible to live a normal life without one.
If you live in central London, or perhaps central Manchester, having a car is a luxury at best, a huge inconvenience at worst.
The problem on both sides of the “bubble” is not being able to recognise that circumstances differ.
I don't see why London can't reinvent itself as a leisure city. A place where we stay a couple of days to enjoy the amenities. This will take up spare capacity on the transport system and in the fullness of time, many offices can become hotels.
Any guesses for the Trump electoral college vote total ?
You are a crank, but sometimes cranks come up with cranky ideas that are rather clever.
Rail numbers overall collapsed pre-privatisation and trebled after it:
Rail as a share of all transport fell pre-privatisation and increased consistently post privatisation.
Subsidies per passenger mile are below what they were pre-privatisation (and much of these "subsidies" are actually funding HS2 and Crossrail):
The data speaks for itself. Privatisation has been a success, nationalisation was a failure.
Sturgeon answers/responds/condemns.
Sturgeon must not answer/respond/condemn!!
Yes, it will cost a few councillors to the nimby party, but it will also generate huge growth in construction and create a lot of jobs during a recession, bringing in much-needed government revenues.
The political point, that people aged 35-45 who don’t own property are disproportionally non-Tory voters, needs to be made clear to the rebel MPs. Getting more homeowners needs to be a high priority for a government seeking re-election.
As metrics go this seems to be in the top 1 to me.
Some of the carriers are in public hands today, and some are in private hands.
Many, but not all, of those that are in public hands belong to the publics of other countries.
If Fysh was writing letters saying that we would stay in the Single Market and if this was quite common and happened to lots of people then why are none of these letters - or no videos - available in the public domain?
https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/1299236398873088001?s=20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-money
The spending fluctuated so you should presumably want to look at an average. The average pre-privatisation figure looks much higher to me than it is currently - albeit it was higher under Labour post-Hatfield it has since come back down again.
Commuters had complained about the ironing board seats on new trains like on Thameslink and gWr. These are trains specced by the DfT and imposed on the franchisee where not only is the spec shit (hugely expensive retrofit of tray tables, underpowered engines etc) but the price is £bonkers (gWr negotiated something like a 50% price drop for higher specced Class 802 units vs the DfT procured 800s).
"a fixed fee to operate the service" has been used so many times in the past. Like when Virgin Trains effectively went bust following the Railtrack fail West Coast Upgrade where VT couldn't afford to pay the contracted premiums to government for services it couldn't run on infrastructure that wasn't upgraded.
Nothing is set in stone.
Ferrari will hate that.
Perhaps we should deregulate and privatise much of the bits DfT are behind?
Perhaps it hasn't been privatised fully and perhaps we should look at privatising it more. You make some good points.
That's a success.
So is in fact the underlying driving factor simply how much the state wants to spend on a railway and can they ever be made to actually cover their own costs ?
Hint: It goes up after privatisation.
Even for the minority of franchises not operated wholly or in part by a foreign government the like of First Group does not own the service. The trains. The infrastructure. The operating name even. You keep talking up the success of privatisation being an increase in passenger numbers - this is just not true.
Lets look at the increased passenger numbers on Cross Country as my example. We've already covered that the operator is nationalised and the operation is nationalised. In 13 years the trains are the same as they were. Which means horrendous overcrowding and punative fare hikes to discourage travel. This is literally the same as BR was ordered to do in the same position with rising passenger numbers and no ability to run more services or buy new trains.
Your graph shows a drop in passenger numbers through until the mid-80s. As it would do with the network shrunk and a modal shift to roads. You then see a rise in the 80s. The sectorised BR was a huge success. Intercity was the only profitable long distance passenger operation in the world. What "privatisation" did was smash this so that profitable operations became loss-making due to the absurd legal framework used. Which is why the cost to the taxpayer has quintupled despite an explosion in fares.
What should have happened is what happened elsewhere. British Rail Ltd. A state owned arms length commercial organisation free to operate in the market. Keep all thats good about the state run rail operations most passengers benefit from today with marketisation allowing them to raise funds and expand. Instead of having foreigners run our stuff better than we do it could have been the other way round...
Edit: That sounded all wrong.
Think about it logically. If 3x the number of passengers are using rail now than pre-privatisation and if they are doing so because they have no alternative then what were the other two-thirds doing under nationalisation?
Your logic makes no sense and doesn't match the facts.
Where do you have it right now as we speak?
https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/1299252877651832832?s=20
If people wish to pay full price for their rail then let them do so, I see no need for the state to subsidise their travel.
I seem to remember a lot of discussion in 2016 with some people (not necessarily on here) adamant that Clinton had some sort of neurological condition that would impair her presidency. Funny how that immediately vanished on November 4th and has never been heard of again.
The subsidy per mile will be heading north once more post covid.
The one issue with state operation is the implied assumption that fares should come down as a result. Certainly pre-covid you could have had state operation and actually increased fares (To squish the subsidy per mile); now I'm not certain you'd be able to have the fair market ticket rate be able to do that as demand has fundamentally fallen.