The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
For years on here I chundered on about moving to a concession model instead of the franchise model - after all, some services were already concessions (E.g. London Overground, Merseyrail). Some of the left persuasion on here argued against it, and said it should be full nationalisation. Now it looks as though we're moving to a concession model, and suddenly they're saying it's nationalisation!
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
That led to a majority of 80 and ended the Brexit crisis that had paralyzed the country for two years.
One could argue that "the Brexit Crisis" is still very much alive and kicking. The result of a majority of 80 under Johnson is not necessarily in the long term interest of the Tory Party. The Tories USP used to be competent government. If he completely blows that USP, which I think he will (and possibly is close to achieving already) then his election as leader may well prove to be a dark day. We will have to see.
This is well worth a read about how the Spectator has captured the Tory party and, in so doing, has severed most of its traditional links:
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
Disaster is far too strong a word. A "unique in the world failed experiment" is a better description. The real problem is the huge cost of such a complex system, something that they are in the process of sweeping away.
How was it 'failed'? Safer than ever, with passenger numbers having doubled. That reads as a success to me. And I doubt the concession system will be much less complex than the one it is replacing ...
One journalist has had a fun couple of days putting that piece together! Very well written.
When you think about it, there's some pretty twisted thinking behind a lot of those 19th/early 20th century paintings showing beautiful women in various states of undress . It was acceptable to depict a woman naked if she was being sold as a slave, or carried off by barbarians, or martyred by pagans, or being dragged down to hell - but quite beyond the pale to actually paint a nude.
I seem to recall that in the 60s, in America at least, some producers got around rules around pornos by pretending they were 'educational'.
Life, and pornography, finds a way.
As far back as 1859, Octave Tassaert could paint a lesbian porn scene, and get away with it by calling it "The Cursed Woman", a woman damned to hell by her unnatural proclivities.
That led to a majority of 80 and ended the Brexit crisis that had paralyzed the country for two years.
One could argue that "the Brexit Crisis" is still very much alive and kicking. The result of a majority of 80 under Johnson is not necessarily in the long term interest of the Tory Party. The Tories USP used to be competent government. If he completely blows that USP, which I think he will (and possibly is close to achieving already) then his election as leader may well prove to be a dark day. We will have to see.
Only a Remain extremist would claim "the Brexit Crisis is still very much alive and kicking". The paralysis that dominated the 2017-19 Parliament has very much ended.
There are other issues now perhaps, but there always have been and always will be. We do now have the Crisis that existed then though.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
There are no permanent victories in politics.
The GFA worked for the politics of the time. That has now changed and, so, a revised solution is needed.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
It is far simpler than that. The UK was part of something that has red lines which apply to everyone who isn't part of it. We chose to depart, create our own red lines which clash with the EU's lines, then complain that the EU are being inflexible.
We knew their position when we left. Nothing is new or unknown. We demanded 3rd country status and now complain about our treatment as a 3rd country.
If we want to trade with any trading block whether it be sovereign state or supranational we have to follow the rules of that area. Jaguar have to build cars to American spec to sell them in America. The UK will have to supply products to EEA spec to sell them in the EEA. Why should we expect the other side to change or drop their rules because we say so? Does anyone do that?
Yes.
1 Because Ireland is a special case. 2 Because politics is pragmatic. Machiavelli is a better guide than Buddha or the Quakers over how it is to be done. Sadly. 3 Because there is current equivalence in food production standards. We would not think of questioning EU food products. The opposite is also true. 4 Because the expectation that the UK compromise its internal market over NI in neither more nor less realistic than the EU doing so. And the UK and RoI are states, the EU is a trade association. 5 Because it is in the interests of RoI to compromise.
Even if you were right, surely we had a responsibility to agree these issues before we signed a binding treaty that included the Northern Ireland protocol, rather than after the event? Reneging on the protocol, or expecting it to be renegotiated after seven months, or signing it knowing it could not be implemented, seems to many of us to be pure bad faith rather than Machiavellian.
Absolutely not the case whatsoever.
Renegotiations happen all the time, its part and parcel of how life operates. If you agree a salary last year are you expected to then be bound to the same salary five years later? Or can you renegotiate your package annually seeking pay rises every year - if you're able to get them?
Is the EU still bound by the Treaty of Rome unamended? Or Maastricht Treaty unamended? Or have further treaties like Lisbon, Nice etc amended the rules.
The UK is not bound not to seek renegotiations, its perfectly within its rights to renegotiate whatever it doesn't like, at any time it chooses to do so. The UK is also not bound not to exercise Article 16 - Article 16 is literally a part of the Treaty the EU ratified and it is fully a part of international law on that basis so the UK exercising Article 16 if we choose to do so is a good faith action within the law, not a breach of the law.
Yes, you've posted the same argument dozens of times, so there's nothing new here. I know what you think, I don't agree - hope you don't mind.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
It is far simpler than that. The UK was part of something that has red lines which apply to everyone who isn't part of it. We chose to depart, create our own red lines which clash with the EU's lines, then complain that the EU are being inflexible.
We knew their position when we left. Nothing is new or unknown. We demanded 3rd country status and now complain about our treatment as a 3rd country.
If we want to trade with any trading block whether it be sovereign state or supranational we have to follow the rules of that area. Jaguar have to build cars to American spec to sell them in America. The UK will have to supply products to EEA spec to sell them in the EEA. Why should we expect the other side to change or drop their rules because we say so? Does anyone do that?
Yes.
1 Because Ireland is a special case. 2 Because politics is pragmatic. Machiavelli is a better guide than Buddha or the Quakers over how it is to be done. Sadly. 3 Because there is current equivalence in food production standards. We would not think of questioning EU food products. The opposite is also true. 4 Because the expectation that the UK compromise its internal market over NI in neither more nor less realistic than the EU doing so. And the UK and RoI are states, the EU is a trade association. 5 Because it is in the interests of RoI to compromise.
Even if you were right, surely we had a responsibility to agree these issues before we signed a binding treaty that included the Northern Ireland protocol, rather than after the event? Reneging on the protocol, or expecting it to be renegotiated after seven months, or signing it knowing it could not be implemented, seems to many of us to be pure bad faith rather than Machiavellian.
Absolutely not the case whatsoever.
Renegotiations happen all the time, its part and parcel of how life operates. If you agree a salary last year are you expected to then be bound to the same salary five years later? Or can you renegotiate your package annually seeking pay rises every year - if you're able to get them?
Is the EU still bound by the Treaty of Rome unamended? Or Maastricht Treaty unamended? Or have further treaties like Lisbon, Nice etc amended the rules.
The UK is not bound not to seek renegotiations, its perfectly within its rights to renegotiate whatever it doesn't like, at any time it chooses to do so. The UK is also not bound not to exercise Article 16 - Article 16 is literally a part of the Treaty the EU ratified and it is fully a part of international law on that basis so the UK exercising Article 16 if we choose to do so is a good faith action within the law, not a breach of the law.
The UK can legally exercise Article 16 and the EU - and other members of the global community - can respond. That's how it will work. And it will not work to the UK's advantage.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
And that’s the fundamental problem with their mindset.
For REASONS the Irish / Northern Irish border is particular complicated and sensitive.
It needs to be handled creatively.
In just saying “these are our rules now F*** off” (I paraphrase) the EU is creating unbelievable strain.
The EU has been using the peace process as blackmail to get its own way since the start, and crowbar the UK into alignment.
Everyone knows this, including the Remainers. They just don't mind because they want to neuter Brexit.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
No, the world very much gives preferential treatment to those who stand up for their own interests. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
For years on here I chundered on about moving to a concession model instead of the franchise model - after all, some services were already concessions (E.g. London Overground, Merseyrail). Some of the left persuasion on here argued against it, and said it should be full nationalisation. Now it looks as though we're moving to a concession model, and suddenly they're saying it's nationalisation!
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
*sigh* passenger rail operations have always been nationalised. A franchise is awarded to a private sector operator who fulfil the contract then hand the keys back to the owner - the state.
I remember having a brief conversation with (then Shadow Transport Secretary) Andy McDonald at a dinner when he was wanging on about the evils of Virgin Trains. Except that Virgin Trains East Coast was 90% Stagecoach so not Virgin at all other than the brand, and no Branson doesn't "own it", they lease it at best.
He looked puzzled and carried on attacking how Branson now owned the trains to London.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
For years on here I chundered on about moving to a concession model instead of the franchise model - after all, some services were already concessions (E.g. London Overground, Merseyrail). Some of the left persuasion on here argued against it, and said it should be full nationalisation. Now it looks as though we're moving to a concession model, and suddenly they're saying it's nationalisation!
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
What's interesting about the argument over masks is that those running the DfT let concessions are still thinking like private companies. They're saying "we need to say that our indoor environments are as safe as pubs etc." because they want to get more people using the trains. Obviously it's of no consequence to them as private companies, they get their management fee come what may. I guess old habits die hard so as the years go by that attitude may wane a little bit. But compare and contrast with the Mayor of London. He's not worried about the economics of public transport one bit.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
And that’s the fundamental problem with their mindset.
For REASONS the Irish / Northern Irish border is particular complicated and sensitive.
It needs to be handled creatively.
In just saying “these are our rules now F*** off” (I paraphrase) the EU is creating unbelievable strain.
How do you handle things creatively when whole sets of countries are waiting for the creative response so they can go and now give us the same rights.
There was a twitter thread on Wednesday which covered options including ignoring goods that were never going to head across the Irish border. It looks great at first glance and then you wonder what goods would be arriving in Northern Ireland that have zero chance of going south of the border - unless M&S or whatever company doing so closed all their Southern Ireland stores.
I know you think there are magic solutions that will solve everything, I just don't think they exist and I can see the EUs concerns as highlighted in my first paragraph.
You get them labelled as being for NI and if there is significant leakage then a firm gets kicked out of the scheme
And the EU should be very willing to extend the same privileges to any border situation where there has been 100 years (off and on) of conflict
So you missed the point I was making - very few lorries (I suspect almost zero) heading to NI are transporting goods destined just for NI. Most are carrying goods destined for the republic as well once they hit the warehouse.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
It wasn't anything much to do with privatisation IMO (*). It's quite simple: between 1997 and 2010, the Blair and Brown government only electrified 16-odd miles of existing railway - Crewe-Stoke. What we really needed was a constant, rolling electrification program, with advance work teams being followed by the masts and knitting teams. Do one line, and move onto another. This is pretty much what happened under Thatcher, of all people ...
The long gap with no major electrification schemes in the early 2000s meant a heck of a lot of knowledge, experience and expertise was lost.
(*) There is scuttlebutt that privatisation had one major effect: Railtrack threw out a lot of paperwork about the existing infrastructure. This made it harder to know where anything was, making placing of masts etc harder. Although others claim most of the information thrown out was old, inaccurate and worse than useless. But the lesson is simple: asset management is vital.
Like I said, as a result of Privatisation. Failtrack actively demolished not just the ability to upgrade but even do basic essential maintenance. When they were finally put out of their misery Network Rail had to start from scratch.
I fail to see how you work that out. The Labour governments ordered virtually no electrification schemes, despite their alleged interest in the railways. If they had wanted such schemes, they could have had them. They lacked the political will. You might want to ask yourself why.
As for your 'Failtrack' comments: I might suggest you look at accidents that occurred under BR in the 1970s and 1980s.
An interesting trend is that few accidents/incidents are root caused by operators and trains nowadays: mostly it is infrastructure failure. There are relatively few SPADs, and locos do not derail as much.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
Disaster is far too strong a word. A "unique in the world failed experiment" is a better description. The real problem is the huge cost of such a complex system, something that they are in the process of sweeping away.
How was it 'failed'? Safer than ever, with passenger numbers having doubled. That reads as a success to me. And I doubt the concession system will be much less complex than the one it is replacing ...
How has it failed? They have run out of private sector companies who want to compete for franchises for starters. The few that are left are incapable of running the contract without comprehensive financial support from the government. Franchising collapsed under the weight of its own costs generated by a structure that no longer functioned.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
It is far simpler than that. The UK was part of something that has red lines which apply to everyone who isn't part of it. We chose to depart, create our own red lines which clash with the EU's lines, then complain that the EU are being inflexible.
We knew their position when we left. Nothing is new or unknown. We demanded 3rd country status and now complain about our treatment as a 3rd country.
If we want to trade with any trading block whether it be sovereign state or supranational we have to follow the rules of that area. Jaguar have to build cars to American spec to sell them in America. The UK will have to supply products to EEA spec to sell them in the EEA. Why should we expect the other side to change or drop their rules because we say so? Does anyone do that?
Yes.
1 Because Ireland is a special case. 2 Because politics is pragmatic. Machiavelli is a better guide than Buddha or the Quakers over how it is to be done. Sadly. 3 Because there is current equivalence in food production standards. We would not think of questioning EU food products. The opposite is also true. 4 Because the expectation that the UK compromise its internal market over NI in neither more nor less realistic than the EU doing so. And the UK and RoI are states, the EU is a trade association. 5 Because it is in the interests of RoI to compromise.
Even if you were right, surely we had a responsibility to agree these issues before we signed a binding treaty that included the Northern Ireland protocol, rather than after the event? Reneging on the protocol, or expecting it to be renegotiated after seven months, or signing it knowing it could not be implemented, seems to many of us to be pure bad faith rather than Machiavellian.
Absolutely not the case whatsoever.
Renegotiations happen all the time, its part and parcel of how life operates. If you agree a salary last year are you expected to then be bound to the same salary five years later? Or can you renegotiate your package annually seeking pay rises every year - if you're able to get them?
Is the EU still bound by the Treaty of Rome unamended? Or Maastricht Treaty unamended? Or have further treaties like Lisbon, Nice etc amended the rules.
The UK is not bound not to seek renegotiations, its perfectly within its rights to renegotiate whatever it doesn't like, at any time it chooses to do so. The UK is also not bound not to exercise Article 16 - Article 16 is literally a part of the Treaty the EU ratified and it is fully a part of international law on that basis so the UK exercising Article 16 if we choose to do so is a good faith action within the law, not a breach of the law.
Yes, you've posted the same argument dozens of times, so there's nothing new here. I know what you think, I don't agree - hope you don't mind.
And you keep posting your own argument, dozens of times, if not more, so there's nothing new there. The foolish notion that there's an issue seeking renegotiations has been posted many more times than I've responded to it.
I know what you think, but if you keep posting lines like there's a problem "expecting it to be renegotiated" then I will keep responding to that. Since I don't agree with you either - hope you don't mind.
Anyone else watch the mens Hundred cricket last night? Apart from playing silly whatsits with the overs, the time-outs (which are apparently for the benefit of advertisers) and the dreadful graphics, I don't see any difference from t20. Even the songs the crowd were singing were the same as t20.
Shan't bother any more. Not really interested in watching games where I've no local interest.
Of course, as someone who watches cricket anyway and doesn't live in a conurbation, I'm not part of the target audience!
Losing it (and evidently still smarting over having his claims trashed yesterday)
one of highest COVID rates in 🌍 - vaccinations slowing to crawl & not starting 💉 teenagers due to supply problems - truck driver shortage leading to empty supermarkets - Govt wants to tear up NI Protocol, 🇪🇺 rejects - MP expelled from Commons for telling truth about PM
Point 2 comprehensively debunked yesterday, but he repeats it…
Blame it on Boris.....its the only game in town. Keir Starmer is a poor LOTO.. that's why all the shit is being pourer over Boris..
It's a serious problem for those, like myself, who dislike the PM. There is an element of truth in what the right here call "Boris Derangement Syndrome". The entire opposition to him at the moment, and I mean all of it, is focussed on the perceived personal failings of him and his cabinet. That just keeps him as the centre of attention. Have the combined posts of Scott and RP on here shifted a single vote? No. Have FBPE managed to get any traction outside their own Twitter bubble? No. It's makes us look like ranters and plays into Johnson's hands, he is successfully winding us up. Classic Dom said the other day that the 2016 Bus Pledge was there to wind up us Remainers. I can believe it frankly,
If we want to get anywhere in removing this shower then we simply have to start ignoring him a bit more and get on with presenting our alternative to the country. Those persuadable that they're pants have been persuaded, now it's time to get on with persuading those who think that they are 'meh' that there is a better option.
Interesting but I don't agree. People decide on people products and prejudices over a long period. It was well described as the way birds build a nest. We form our opinions bit by bit and they're not easy to dismantle.
He's been around for several years and the ludicrous figure Cummings described appeals to some and repulses others. Finding someone who we like better isn't likely to change our feelings towards him. That'll be achieved as it is being at the moment. Slowly bit by bit.
Cummings didn't say the bus side was to 'wind up the Remainers. He's far too experienced in the dark arts of persuasion to think that would win him any support at all.. He did it because he 'd worked out his target market and by relatively simple research discovered the buttons to push to attract that market.
It's the way advertisers have done it for years. Johnson will be in trouble when the drip drip drip of his behaviour starts to irritate and/or the zeitgeist changes.
He also knew how to amplify the messages on the bus - the statements were also things that could be argued against as they were exaggerated but there was enough truth within them that the arguing provided confirmation rather than denial (£350m was an exaggeration, but £150m was accurate, Turkey wasn't joining tomorrow, but you couldn't deny Turkey was in the process of joining).
And that really was a great skill.
It certainly was. Turkey was perfect for him. No one could accuse someone of racism for not wanting 70 million Turks to arrive on their doorstep. Even mild racists don't like to be thought of as such.
Compare with the Farage poster. I don't know whether it's been researched but my guess is that it will lost 'Leave' support. Cummings is as astute as farage is a hopeless
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
For years on here I chundered on about moving to a concession model instead of the franchise model - after all, some services were already concessions (E.g. London Overground, Merseyrail). Some of the left persuasion on here argued against it, and said it should be full nationalisation. Now it looks as though we're moving to a concession model, and suddenly they're saying it's nationalisation!
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
*sigh* passenger rail operations have always been nationalised. A franchise is awarded to a private sector operator who fulfil the contract then hand the keys back to the owner - the state.
(Snip)
I'm not sure why you're sighing, as I know that, and it does not go against what I wrote. Besides, if they've always been nationalised in your view, then why were people complaining about privatisation?
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
And that’s the fundamental problem with their mindset.
For REASONS the Irish / Northern Irish border is particular complicated and sensitive.
It needs to be handled creatively.
In just saying “these are our rules now F*** off” (I paraphrase) the EU is creating unbelievable strain.
How do you handle things creatively when whole sets of countries are waiting for the creative response so they can go and now give us the same rights.
There was a twitter thread on Wednesday which covered options including ignoring goods that were never going to head across the Irish border. It looks great at first glance and then you wonder what goods would be arriving in Northern Ireland that have zero chance of going south of the border - unless M&S or whatever company doing so closed all their Southern Ireland stores.
I know you think there are magic solutions that will solve everything, I just don't think they exist and I can see the EUs concerns as highlighted in my first paragraph.
You get them labelled as being for NI and if there is significant leakage then a firm gets kicked out of the scheme
And the EU should be very willing to extend the same privileges to any border situation where there has been 100 years (off and on) of conflict
So you missed the point I was making - very few lorries (I suspect almost zero) heading to NI are transporting goods destined just for NI. Most are carrying goods destined for the republic as well once they hit the warehouse.
So what?
Let them go from UK to NI, or EU to NI, uninterrupted.
If there's an issue with goods going from the warehouse to the Republic that should not, then there's a problem there. Deal with it there.
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
It wasn't anything much to do with privatisation IMO (*). It's quite simple: between 1997 and 2010, the Blair and Brown government only electrified 16-odd miles of existing railway - Crewe-Stoke. What we really needed was a constant, rolling electrification program, with advance work teams being followed by the masts and knitting teams. Do one line, and move onto another. This is pretty much what happened under Thatcher, of all people ...
The long gap with no major electrification schemes in the early 2000s meant a heck of a lot of knowledge, experience and expertise was lost.
(*) There is scuttlebutt that privatisation had one major effect: Railtrack threw out a lot of paperwork about the existing infrastructure. This made it harder to know where anything was, making placing of masts etc harder. Although others claim most of the information thrown out was old, inaccurate and worse than useless. But the lesson is simple: asset management is vital.
Like I said, as a result of Privatisation. Failtrack actively demolished not just the ability to upgrade but even do basic essential maintenance. When they were finally put out of their misery Network Rail had to start from scratch.
As a point of information, it's perfectly possible for a private infrastructure manager to run an asset base very efficiently. However, they have to have the asset condition knowledge and expertise to price it properly and make it commercially sound, otherwise it doesn't work. That's why it basically works on HS1 (new build with full records) but didn't with Railtrack (Victorian + builds all over the UK with all sorts of mixed records and "WTF is that" overlays).
The whole point of privatisation is to efficiently manage risk to get a very good price. If you don't know the risk you can't do that, and you'll either profiteer a lot or go bust, possibly with a catastrophe along the way.
That's what happened to Railtrack. And Network Rail is no more efficient by the way, it just puts safety and conservatism first and doesn't have to worry about making a profit.
Well, contrary to what many here have been saying, the statistic that matters most is the growth rate of infections, because the rates of hospitalisation and death have been falling only quite gradually. If infections had carried on doubling every three weeks, as the peak rate would have implied, daily hospitalisations would have been heading for several thousand a day very soon.
But despite the growth rates of hospitalisations and deaths now looking quite alarming, the weekly growth rate in positive tests has plummeted from 74% three weeks ago to only 24% now. That is its lowest value for about 8 weeks. In fact yesterday the seven-day total was actually lower than the day before.
Of course, the effect of 19 July still remains to be seen.
I do think that we have seen the peak of new cases per day, subject to some random statistical freak, but hospitalisations and deaths are not there yet given the lags. Peak hospitalisations will probably be the first or second week in August and deaths a week or two after that. The government will want to have clear evidence that we are past the worst before the ping nonsense is switched off. Their caution about the exemptions for this suggests to me that they are still a bit twitchy about this.
Remember, deaths within 28 days is going to be an increasingly flawed metric if we have, as we do, high cases but reasonably low hospitalisations in comparison to previous waves. More people will die with COVID rather than from COVID, than in previous waves.
We should be able to calculate how many deaths we would expect to be coincidental with Covid infection by looking at the ONS survey for population infection rates by age and actuarial life tables.
Although lots of people raise this point, so that they can handwave away the increasing death numbers, no-one wants to do the calculation.
Maybe they're worried they will still be mostly deaths from Covid and they'd rather not know?
It's never been clear to me why seeking transparent, detailed, authoritative data is to facilitate "handwaving"*. It would be good to know how many people died of covid rather than with it. It could be useful.
(*whatever that means, I mean it's bloody awful phrase that I have never heard a single person use IRL – I have only ever encountered it in PB... do you mean 'excuse'?)
If you read my comment you'd see that I don't have a problem with having the data, or using existing data to calculate a rate, as Pulpstar had a stab at doing on this thread and as I've done in a rough way before.
But some people on this board have wanted to leap to the conclusion before looking at the data. That's wishful thinking.
And on language, "handwave away" has always seemed like a normal part of debate language, but most normal human interactions don't take the form of debates.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
And that’s the fundamental problem with their mindset.
For REASONS the Irish / Northern Irish border is particular complicated and sensitive.
It needs to be handled creatively.
In just saying “these are our rules now F*** off” (I paraphrase) the EU is creating unbelievable strain.
How do you handle things creatively when whole sets of countries are waiting for the creative response so they can go and now give us the same rights.
There was a twitter thread on Wednesday which covered options including ignoring goods that were never going to head across the Irish border. It looks great at first glance and then you wonder what goods would be arriving in Northern Ireland that have zero chance of going south of the border - unless M&S or whatever company doing so closed all their Southern Ireland stores.
I know you think there are magic solutions that will solve everything, I just don't think they exist and I can see the EUs concerns as highlighted in my first paragraph.
You get them labelled as being for NI and if there is significant leakage then a firm gets kicked out of the scheme
And the EU should be very willing to extend the same privileges to any border situation where there has been 100 years (off and on) of conflict
So you missed the point I was making - very few lorries (I suspect almost zero) heading to NI are transporting goods destined just for NI. Most are carrying goods destined for the republic as well once they hit the warehouse.
So what?
Let them go from UK to NI, or EU to NI, uninterrupted.
If there's an issue with goods going from the warehouse to the Republic that should not, then there's a problem there. Deal with it there.
but you've just created a second border - between Ireland and Northern Ireland - which was May's original plan.
And remember the EU have already said we cannot have a trusted trader scheme (which is what you are trying to get here) as they simply don't trust a scheme that contains every possible company...
That led to a majority of 80 and ended the Brexit crisis that had paralyzed the country for two years.
One could argue that "the Brexit Crisis" is still very much alive and kicking. The result of a majority of 80 under Johnson is not necessarily in the long term interest of the Tory Party. The Tories USP used to be competent government. If he completely blows that USP, which I think he will (and possibly is close to achieving already) then his election as leader may well prove to be a dark day. We will have to see.
There are Brexit issues which some may see as crisis, but there is not a governmental or constitutional crisis as a result of political paralysis. It is therefore very different in its problems and likely actions so the same label doesn't work.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
Forget Thameslink, will anyone defend First Capital Connect?
There were some genuinely entrepreneurial franchises, building on the successes already delivered by Network SouthEast and Intercity who at the time of its abolition was the only profitable long-distance train operator in the world.
Most of the franchises were different levels of shit. Northern Rail has had a succession of crap operators largely running overcrowded ancient trains because the government insisted the growth that Josiah triumphs literally didn't exist. Similar crap with National Express Scotrail, Connex SouthCentral and South Eastern, Central Trains etc etc.
I got to know the model a little through Bridgeman.
AIUI, you can own the copyright on the *image* of the art work but not on the art work itself. So I doubt the Uffizi has a leg to stand on
I suspect PH has used photography from the Uffizi and the Louvre, and is reliant on Bridgeman v Corel. The two galleries neither accept that decision, nor do they accept their photography is a exact reproduction (you can see them cite compression as a difference in their response to PH).
When I visited the 'alte pinakothek' in Munich a few years ago you could take pictures of the Rubens, Rembrandts, Da Vincis and Durers in the main gallery but certain paintings in the Caravaggio display downstairs has "no photo" displayed. I think it's because those were brought in temporarily from other museums whereas the 'upstairs' paintings are resident.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
The interesting thing is why that occurred in the 1980s - and the answer is probably that Thatcher wasn't interested in the railways. She wasn't against them, as some claim - but she didn't care much for them either. She knew they were necessary (which was why the Serpell Report was canned), but was happy to let them get on with their own thing as long as they didn't cause her government bother. This allowed some very good managers to restructure things to work in a more efficient and more passenger-friendly way.
Hasn't Thameslink's problem been the same as the WCML up to 2005? Massive upgrade works causing chaos for services?
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
And that’s the fundamental problem with their mindset.
For REASONS the Irish / Northern Irish border is particular complicated and sensitive.
It needs to be handled creatively.
In just saying “these are our rules now F*** off” (I paraphrase) the EU is creating unbelievable strain.
How do you handle things creatively when whole sets of countries are waiting for the creative response so they can go and now give us the same rights.
There was a twitter thread on Wednesday which covered options including ignoring goods that were never going to head across the Irish border. It looks great at first glance and then you wonder what goods would be arriving in Northern Ireland that have zero chance of going south of the border - unless M&S or whatever company doing so closed all their Southern Ireland stores.
I know you think there are magic solutions that will solve everything, I just don't think they exist and I can see the EUs concerns as highlighted in my first paragraph.
You get them labelled as being for NI and if there is significant leakage then a firm gets kicked out of the scheme
And the EU should be very willing to extend the same privileges to any border situation where there has been 100 years (off and on) of conflict
So you missed the point I was making - very few lorries (I suspect almost zero) heading to NI are transporting goods destined just for NI. Most are carrying goods destined for the republic as well once they hit the warehouse.
So what?
Let them go from UK to NI, or EU to NI, uninterrupted.
If there's an issue with goods going from the warehouse to the Republic that should not, then there's a problem there. Deal with it there.
but you've just created a second border - between Ireland and Northern Ireland - which was May's original plan.
And remember the EU have already said we cannot have a trusted trader scheme (which is what you are trying to get here) as they simply don't trust a scheme that contains every possible company...
Actually we can have a trusted trader scheme. It just requires the EU to compromise. That the EU have said we can't, doesn't mean we can't.
So invoke Article 16 and put the trusted trader scheme on the table as our preferred solution and do ZERO checks UK to NI unless or until they come up with an alternative we can agree to. Either they'll compromise and agree the trusted trader scheme, which is what should have always been the only viable solution, or they'll come up with an even better solution that suits us even better. Either way, it ceases to be our problem.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
(Snip)
... government insisted the growth that Josiah triumphs literally didn't exist. Similar crap with National Express Scotrail, Connex SouthCentral and South Eastern, Central Trains etc etc.
That led to a majority of 80 and ended the Brexit crisis that had paralyzed the country for two years.
One could argue that "the Brexit Crisis" is still very much alive and kicking. The result of a majority of 80 under Johnson is not necessarily in the long term interest of the Tory Party. The Tories USP used to be competent government. If he completely blows that USP, which I think he will (and possibly is close to achieving already) then his election as leader may well prove to be a dark day. We will have to see.
This is well worth a read about how the Spectator has captured the Tory party and, in so doing, has severed most of its traditional links:
Interesting article thank you. Ironically it is a little hyperbolic, but as sometimes is the case the hyperbole illustrates a broader point. The piece I thought certainly applies to Johnson is this: "The second is being ill-at-ease with professionalism, expertise and attention to detail. The Spectator is a literary culture where the most valued skill is being able to write a clever, witty essay."
One journalist has had a fun couple of days putting that piece together! Very well written.
When you think about it, there's some pretty twisted thinking behind a lot of those 19th/early 20th century paintings showing beautiful women in various states of undress . It was acceptable to depict a woman naked if she was being sold as a slave, or carried off by barbarians, or martyred by pagans, or being dragged down to hell - but quite beyond the pale to actually paint a nude.
I seem to recall that in the 60s, in America at least, some producers got around rules around pornos by pretending they were 'educational'.
Life, and pornography, finds a way.
As far back as 1859, Octave Tassaert could paint a lesbian porn scene, and get away with it by calling it "The Cursed Woman", a woman damned to hell by her unnatural proclivities.
The difference is hypocrisy.
It's fine to do so to condemn, it's not to do so to enjoy.
We see the modern equivalent in the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
It is far simpler than that. The UK was part of something that has red lines which apply to everyone who isn't part of it. We chose to depart, create our own red lines which clash with the EU's lines, then complain that the EU are being inflexible.
We knew their position when we left. Nothing is new or unknown. We demanded 3rd country status and now complain about our treatment as a 3rd country.
If we want to trade with any trading block whether it be sovereign state or supranational we have to follow the rules of that area. Jaguar have to build cars to American spec to sell them in America. The UK will have to supply products to EEA spec to sell them in the EEA. Why should we expect the other side to change or drop their rules because we say so? Does anyone do that?
Yes.
1 Because Ireland is a special case. 2 Because politics is pragmatic. Machiavelli is a better guide than Buddha or the Quakers over how it is to be done. Sadly. 3 Because there is current equivalence in food production standards. We would not think of questioning EU food products. The opposite is also true. 4 Because the expectation that the UK compromise its internal market over NI in neither more nor less realistic than the EU doing so. And the UK and RoI are states, the EU is a trade association. 5 Because it is in the interests of RoI to compromise.
Even if you were right, surely we had a responsibility to agree these issues before we signed a binding treaty that included the Northern Ireland protocol, rather than after the event? Reneging on the protocol, or expecting it to be renegotiated after seven months, or signing it knowing it could not be implemented, seems to many of us to be pure bad faith rather than Machiavellian.
Absolutely not the case whatsoever.
Renegotiations happen all the time, its part and parcel of how life operates. If you agree a salary last year are you expected to then be bound to the same salary five years later? Or can you renegotiate your package annually seeking pay rises every year - if you're able to get them?
Is the EU still bound by the Treaty of Rome unamended? Or Maastricht Treaty unamended? Or have further treaties like Lisbon, Nice etc amended the rules.
The UK is not bound not to seek renegotiations, its perfectly within its rights to renegotiate whatever it doesn't like, at any time it chooses to do so. The UK is also not bound not to exercise Article 16 - Article 16 is literally a part of the Treaty the EU ratified and it is fully a part of international law on that basis so the UK exercising Article 16 if we choose to do so is a good faith action within the law, not a breach of the law.
Yes, you've posted the same argument dozens of times, so there's nothing new here. I know what you think, I don't agree - hope you don't mind.
And you keep posting your own argument, dozens of times, if not more, so there's nothing new there. The foolish notion that there's an issue seeking renegotiations has been posted many more times than I've responded to it.
I know what you think, but if you keep posting lines like there's a problem "expecting it to be renegotiated" then I will keep responding to that. Since I don't agree with you either - hope you don't mind.
Actually, I think you'd struggle to find a previous post from me on the NI protocol (there may be a random one, but I don't think so), so you're making that up.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
And that’s the fundamental problem with their mindset.
For REASONS the Irish / Northern Irish border is particular complicated and sensitive.
It needs to be handled creatively.
In just saying “these are our rules now F*** off” (I paraphrase) the EU is creating unbelievable strain.
How do you handle things creatively when whole sets of countries are waiting for the creative response so they can go and now give us the same rights.
There was a twitter thread on Wednesday which covered options including ignoring goods that were never going to head across the Irish border. It looks great at first glance and then you wonder what goods would be arriving in Northern Ireland that have zero chance of going south of the border - unless M&S or whatever company doing so closed all their Southern Ireland stores.
I know you think there are magic solutions that will solve everything, I just don't think they exist and I can see the EUs concerns as highlighted in my first paragraph.
You get them labelled as being for NI and if there is significant leakage then a firm gets kicked out of the scheme
And the EU should be very willing to extend the same privileges to any border situation where there has been 100 years (off and on) of conflict
So you missed the point I was making - very few lorries (I suspect almost zero) heading to NI are transporting goods destined just for NI. Most are carrying goods destined for the republic as well once they hit the warehouse.
So what?
Let them go from UK to NI, or EU to NI, uninterrupted.
If there's an issue with goods going from the warehouse to the Republic that should not, then there's a problem there. Deal with it there.
but you've just created a second border - between Ireland and Northern Ireland - which was May's original plan.
And remember the EU have already said we cannot have a trusted trader scheme (which is what you are trying to get here) as they simply don't trust a scheme that contains every possible company...
Actually we can have a trusted trader scheme. It just requires the EU to compromise. That the EU have said we can't, doesn't mean we can't.
So invoke Article 16 and put the trusted trader scheme on the table as our preferred solution and do ZERO checks UK to NI unless or until they come up with an alternative we can agree to. Either they'll compromise and agree the trusted trader scheme, which is what should have always been the only viable solution, or they'll come up with an even better solution that suits us even better. Either way, it ceases to be our problem.
We only have to look back to March to see how much Boris would love to implement Article 16 but doing so would have serious consequences elsewhere which is why he acted so quickly when the EU accidently triggered it before walking back on that attempt.
Simply but Boris has in NI created a problem that cannot be resolved without consequences and desperately needs someone else that he can pin the blame consequences on.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
For years on here I chundered on about moving to a concession model instead of the franchise model - after all, some services were already concessions (E.g. London Overground, Merseyrail). Some of the left persuasion on here argued against it, and said it should be full nationalisation. Now it looks as though we're moving to a concession model, and suddenly they're saying it's nationalisation!
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
*sigh* passenger rail operations have always been nationalised. A franchise is awarded to a private sector operator who fulfil the contract then hand the keys back to the owner - the state.
(Snip)
I'm not sure why you're sighing, as I know that, and it does not go against what I wrote. Besides, if they've always been nationalised in your view, then why were people complaining about privatisation?
Because both major parties are pushing ideology. The treasury over-ruled John Major's idea to recreate the big 4 and gave us Railtrack et al. "Its now privatised" they said. "Eugh, privatised is bad" said Labour. Both wrong.
The successful model is the commercialised state entity model pushed by Thatcher and adopted by so many of the European rail networks. So many of our franchised operators are run by Arriva, owned by Deutsche Bahn, owned by the German government and run commercially.
State ownership works, but only if commercial. When the state tries to directly control industry - as the godawful Department for Trannsport has been increasingly doing for the last few years - it all turns to shit.
The Tories failed to privatise passenger rail operations or the network. Labour failed to show that state ownership and control works. Both are wrong. But their supporters parrot what they say no matter how far from reality it is.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
We only have to look back to March to see how much Boris would love to implement Article 16 but doing so would have serious consequences elsewhere which is why he acted so quickly when the EU accidently triggered it before walking back on that attempt.
His life would be much easier if Trump had won that's for sure.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
(Snip)
... government insisted the growth that Josiah triumphs literally didn't exist. Similar crap with National Express Scotrail, Connex SouthCentral and South Eastern, Central Trains etc etc.
????
You rightly said that passenger numbers had doubled. Which is why the government created a Northern franchise that allowed for Zero growth. Services got overcrowded. Could the operator run more trains or hire more stock? No. It was the wilful pretence that the growth didn't exist and a refusal to inject any money back into the franchise to allow it to cope.
That led to a majority of 80 and ended the Brexit crisis that had paralyzed the country for two years.
One could argue that "the Brexit Crisis" is still very much alive and kicking. The result of a majority of 80 under Johnson is not necessarily in the long term interest of the Tory Party. The Tories USP used to be competent government. If he completely blows that USP, which I think he will (and possibly is close to achieving already) then his election as leader may well prove to be a dark day. We will have to see.
Only a Remain extremist would claim "the Brexit Crisis is still very much alive and kicking". The paralysis that dominated the 2017-19 Parliament has very much ended.
There are other issues now perhaps, but there always have been and always will be. We do now have the Crisis that existed then though.
No, Philip, only a right wing extremist Brexit fanatic would think that the Brexit crisis for the country is over, or perhaps a gullible chump that swallows the "Get Brexit Done" message. Take your pick which one applies to you (both maybe?).
Opinion polls demonstrate that a growing majority now think it was a mistake (which is therefore a clear failure e in terms of such an important foreign policy)and we still have the crisis in Northern Ireland which you are applying your key board warrior expertise to in belief that there are simple solutions with respect to anything in Ireland (lol).
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
No, they don't.
+1 - it's currently a domestic dispute - I suspect the only time it becomes interesting to the US will be when the dispute gives them something they can use for other purposes.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
The interesting thing is why that occurred in the 1980s - and the answer is probably that Thatcher wasn't interested in the railways. She wasn't against them, as some claim - but she didn't care much for them either. She knew they were necessary (which was why the Serpell Report was canned), but was happy to let them get on with their own thing as long as they didn't cause her government bother. This allowed some very good managers to restructure things to work in a more efficient and more passenger-friendly way.
Hasn't Thameslink's problem been the same as the WCML up to 2005? Massive upgrade works causing chaos for services?
I know very little about Thameslink’s problems, I only know whenever I’ve used it two trains in three have been cancelled. I wondered if the problem may be over-optimistic timetables as much as anything as I gather that’s a regular occurrence.
It is slightly disturbing in light of how many problems it caused that there are those who advocate further upgrades to the WCML as an alternative to HS2...
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
It wasn't anything much to do with privatisation IMO (*). It's quite simple: between 1997 and 2010, the Blair and Brown government only electrified 16-odd miles of existing railway - Crewe-Stoke. What we really needed was a constant, rolling electrification program, with advance work teams being followed by the masts and knitting teams. Do one line, and move onto another. This is pretty much what happened under Thatcher, of all people ...
The long gap with no major electrification schemes in the early 2000s meant a heck of a lot of knowledge, experience and expertise was lost.
(*) There is scuttlebutt that privatisation had one major effect: Railtrack threw out a lot of paperwork about the existing infrastructure. This made it harder to know where anything was, making placing of masts etc harder. Although others claim most of the information thrown out was old, inaccurate and worse than useless. But the lesson is simple: asset management is vital.
Like I said, as a result of Privatisation. Failtrack actively demolished not just the ability to upgrade but even do basic essential maintenance. When they were finally put out of their misery Network Rail had to start from scratch.
I fail to see how you work that out. The Labour governments ordered virtually no electrification schemes, despite their alleged interest in the railways. If they had wanted such schemes, they could have had them. They lacked the political will. You might want to ask yourself why.
As for your 'Failtrack' comments: I might suggest you look at accidents that occurred under BR in the 1970s and 1980s.
An interesting trend is that few accidents/incidents are root caused by operators and trains nowadays: mostly it is infrastructure failure. There are relatively few SPADs, and locos do not derail as much.
Labour under Blair cancelled alot of infrastructure projects - mainly road but quite alot of other stuff. This was so that the they could keep the budget under control while piling money into the NHS.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
For years on here I chundered on about moving to a concession model instead of the franchise model - after all, some services were already concessions (E.g. London Overground, Merseyrail). Some of the left persuasion on here argued against it, and said it should be full nationalisation. Now it looks as though we're moving to a concession model, and suddenly they're saying it's nationalisation!
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
*sigh* passenger rail operations have always been nationalised. A franchise is awarded to a private sector operator who fulfil the contract then hand the keys back to the owner - the state.
(Snip)
I'm not sure why you're sighing, as I know that, and it does not go against what I wrote. Besides, if they've always been nationalised in your view, then why were people complaining about privatisation?
Because both major parties are pushing ideology. The treasury over-ruled John Major's idea to recreate the big 4 and gave us Railtrack et al. "Its now privatised" they said. "Eugh, privatised is bad" said Labour. Both wrong.
The successful model is the commercialised state entity model pushed by Thatcher and adopted by so many of the European rail networks. So many of our franchised operators are run by Arriva, owned by Deutsche Bahn, owned by the German government and run commercially.
State ownership works, but only if commercial. When the state tries to directly control industry - as the godawful Department for Trannsport has been increasingly doing for the last few years - it all turns to shit.
The Tories failed to privatise passenger rail operations or the network. Labour failed to show that state ownership and control works. Both are wrong. But their supporters parrot what they say no matter how far from reality it is.
I would go for run by Deutsche Bahn using Arriva as a brand to hide the fact - but that's because I've travelled in enough other countries to know the Arriva name is now international...
The central section of the EWR is an interesting one for this. They want to reopen the line between Bedford and Cambridge - except it will be going nowhere near where the old line was. So it is a reopening of a capability, albeit on a new line.
It'll be interesting to see which way it goes; my own view is that the northern route is unsustainable - especially if it involves building a chord on the meadows in Cambridge. There's a whole host of other nimbys to fight right there. My fear is that the opposition will be so strong that the entire scheme gets dropped.
Yes, I agree the southern route is the best option available and if they went north there'd be a bunch of practical disadvantages and merely a different set of villagers who'd rather not be next to a railway line; it comes down to "can we actually bloody build anything in a reasonable timeframe, or will the planning and consultation process take forever and allow the people who it disadvantages (there will always be some) to knock it off course or delay it?". (My input to the consultation was along the lines of "put the line wherever you think best, but just get on with it, oh, and PS really it should have been electrified from the start"...)
This morning's run involved going from Barrington over towards Haslingfield, and the campaigners have painted lines on the road showing where the cutting may go, along with boards to show the cutting slope. I saw another in Haslingfield on the drive back.
The 'southerners' have a very efficient and organised campaign. As far as I can see, the 'northerners' are nowhere near as organised. I'd love to know who's behind CamsBedRailRoad.
And yes, it should have been electrified from the start.
we are absolutely shite at doing electrified railways in this country. Heck, they even cut the electrification of the GWML and the MML back to Cardiff and Kettering (later Market Harborough) respectively whereas any fool could see both schemes were pretty well worthless, even counterproductive, if not carried through to Swansea and at the very least Derby and arguably all the way to Sheffield respectively.
And as for the failure to electrify the reopened stretches of the Waverley route, don’t get me started.
It is very simple: privatisation killed our knowledge base and research drive. So when it came to Great Western they had to start from scratch, over-engineered and had massive cost overruns. That project has pushed the government into believing that wires cost more money than they are worth hence the absurd situation we're now in where we are both trying to reduce emissions and have electric units going to scrap thanks to lack of use.
It wasn't anything much to do with privatisation IMO (*). It's quite simple: between 1997 and 2010, the Blair and Brown government only electrified 16-odd miles of existing railway - Crewe-Stoke. What we really needed was a constant, rolling electrification program, with advance work teams being followed by the masts and knitting teams. Do one line, and move onto another. This is pretty much what happened under Thatcher, of all people ...
The long gap with no major electrification schemes in the early 2000s meant a heck of a lot of knowledge, experience and expertise was lost.
(*) There is scuttlebutt that privatisation had one major effect: Railtrack threw out a lot of paperwork about the existing infrastructure. This made it harder to know where anything was, making placing of masts etc harder. Although others claim most of the information thrown out was old, inaccurate and worse than useless. But the lesson is simple: asset management is vital.
Like I said, as a result of Privatisation. Failtrack actively demolished not just the ability to upgrade but even do basic essential maintenance. When they were finally put out of their misery Network Rail had to start from scratch.
I fail to see how you work that out. The Labour governments ordered virtually no electrification schemes, despite their alleged interest in the railways. If they had wanted such schemes, they could have had them. They lacked the political will. You might want to ask yourself why.
As for your 'Failtrack' comments: I might suggest you look at accidents that occurred under BR in the 1970s and 1980s.
An interesting trend is that few accidents/incidents are root caused by operators and trains nowadays: mostly it is infrastructure failure. There are relatively few SPADs, and locos do not derail as much.
Labour under Blair cancelled alot of infrastructure projects - mainly road but quite alot of other stuff. This was so that the they could keep the budget under control while piling money into the NHS.
On that subject, if anyone wants a fairly cheap win on nationalisation, buying out the M6 Toll would be a no brainer.
They have just raised the price to £7 for a car and are yet again wondering why the road is virtually empty.
One journalist has had a fun couple of days putting that piece together! Very well written.
When you think about it, there's some pretty twisted thinking behind a lot of those 19th/early 20th century paintings showing beautiful women in various states of undress . It was acceptable to depict a woman naked if she was being sold as a slave, or carried off by barbarians, or martyred by pagans, or being dragged down to hell - but quite beyond the pale to actually paint a nude.
I seem to recall that in the 60s, in America at least, some producers got around rules around pornos by pretending they were 'educational'.
Life, and pornography, finds a way.
As far back as 1859, Octave Tassaert could paint a lesbian porn scene, and get away with it by calling it "The Cursed Woman", a woman damned to hell by her unnatural proclivities.
The difference is hypocrisy.
It's fine to do so to condemn, it's not to do so to enjoy.
We see the modern equivalent in the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame.
The Mail has it down to a fine art. The one that made me laugh a few years ago was a picture of Carla Delavigne with her latest girlfriend on the Sidebar of Shame next to an article denouncing gay marriage.
That led to a majority of 80 and ended the Brexit crisis that had paralyzed the country for two years.
One could argue that "the Brexit Crisis" is still very much alive and kicking. The result of a majority of 80 under Johnson is not necessarily in the long term interest of the Tory Party. The Tories USP used to be competent government. If he completely blows that USP, which I think he will (and possibly is close to achieving already) then his election as leader may well prove to be a dark day. We will have to see.
There are Brexit issues which some may see as crisis, but there is not a governmental or constitutional crisis as a result of political paralysis. It is therefore very different in its problems and likely actions so the same label doesn't work.
Indeed it depends on how you define "crisis". I would say the mess the government has made of the arrangements for NI fall into the crisis category. If you want to dance on pinheads you could say other matters relating to Brexit could be described as the Brexit Problem. That will run for years and years.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
The interesting thing is why that occurred in the 1980s - and the answer is probably that Thatcher wasn't interested in the railways. She wasn't against them, as some claim - but she didn't care much for them either. She knew they were necessary (which was why the Serpell Report was canned), but was happy to let them get on with their own thing as long as they didn't cause her government bother. This allowed some very good managers to restructure things to work in a more efficient and more passenger-friendly way.
Hasn't Thameslink's problem been the same as the WCML up to 2005? Massive upgrade works causing chaos for services?
I know very little about Thameslink’s problems, I only know whenever I’ve used it two trains in three have been cancelled. I wondered if the problem may be over-optimistic timetables as much as anything as I gather that’s a regular occurrence.
It is slightly disturbing in light of how many problems it caused that there are those who advocate further upgrades to the WCML as an alternative to HS2...
That's because people don't understand the issue HS2 is designed to fix - it allows WCML and ECML capacity to be increased by implementing a standard speed on the line removing the issues created by forcing slower and faster trains to run on the same track.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
No surprise you would prefer troubles kicked off again. Damn colonies.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
It is far simpler than that. The UK was part of something that has red lines which apply to everyone who isn't part of it. We chose to depart, create our own red lines which clash with the EU's lines, then complain that the EU are being inflexible.
We knew their position when we left. Nothing is new or unknown. We demanded 3rd country status and now complain about our treatment as a 3rd country.
If we want to trade with any trading block whether it be sovereign state or supranational we have to follow the rules of that area. Jaguar have to build cars to American spec to sell them in America. The UK will have to supply products to EEA spec to sell them in the EEA. Why should we expect the other side to change or drop their rules because we say so? Does anyone do that?
Yes.
1 Because Ireland is a special case. 2 Because politics is pragmatic. Machiavelli is a better guide than Buddha or the Quakers over how it is to be done. Sadly. 3 Because there is current equivalence in food production standards. We would not think of questioning EU food products. The opposite is also true. 4 Because the expectation that the UK compromise its internal market over NI in neither more nor less realistic than the EU doing so. And the UK and RoI are states, the EU is a trade association. 5 Because it is in the interests of RoI to compromise.
Even if you were right, surely we had a responsibility to agree these issues before we signed a binding treaty that included the Northern Ireland protocol, rather than after the event? Reneging on the protocol, or expecting it to be renegotiated after seven months, or signing it knowing it could not be implemented, seems to many of us to be pure bad faith rather than Machiavellian.
Yes. But we didn't. That's politics. What I think is that the landing place for Brexit with a deal was narrow, that privately Boris decided that no deal was too dangerous, and that there was no choice but to accept a deal which all sides knew was imperfect, and all sides knew or should have known would/could lead to civil disorder in NI.
Deeply unsatisfactory; part of the problem of getting so immersed into the EU without a succession of referenda to affirm public opinion that getting out was bound to be unsatisfactory.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
No surprise you would prefer troubles kicked off again. Damn colonies.
I suspect it would take the actual troubles to kick off in style again (remember we've already seen death threats) before the EU thinks about compromising.
Here in Edinburgh we're getting cool and cloudy mornings, warming up and some sun in the afternoons and gloriously sunny pleasant evenings to enjoy ourselves.
started cloudy very early but sunshine all the way in Ayrshire from morning, very light breeze as not far from coast , very pleasant
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
No surprise you would prefer troubles kicked off again. Damn colonies.
I am sure you lot could send in some Scottish regiments. They are always pretty enthusiastic in putting down rebellion in the colonies. If of course you are inferring your supportable unhistorical tripe about Scotland being "a colony", please try and brush those chips off and have a little more confidence in yourself and your countrymen. You are not a colony and never have been.
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
The EU cannot be seen to show favoritism to one third party country without offering other third party countries similar concessions.
That is the biggest issue here - and one most people do seem to be completely missing
And that’s the fundamental problem with their mindset.
For REASONS the Irish / Northern Irish border is particular complicated and sensitive.
It needs to be handled creatively.
In just saying “these are our rules now F*** off” (I paraphrase) the EU is creating unbelievable strain.
How do you handle things creatively when whole sets of countries are waiting for the creative response so they can go and now give us the same rights.
There was a twitter thread on Wednesday which covered options including ignoring goods that were never going to head across the Irish border. It looks great at first glance and then you wonder what goods would be arriving in Northern Ireland that have zero chance of going south of the border - unless M&S or whatever company doing so closed all their Southern Ireland stores.
I know you think there are magic solutions that will solve everything, I just don't think they exist and I can see the EUs concerns as highlighted in my first paragraph.
You get them labelled as being for NI and if there is significant leakage then a firm gets kicked out of the scheme
And the EU should be very willing to extend the same privileges to any border situation where there has been 100 years (off and on) of conflict
So you missed the point I was making - very few lorries (I suspect almost zero) heading to NI are transporting goods destined just for NI. Most are carrying goods destined for the republic as well once they hit the warehouse.
So what?
Let them go from UK to NI, or EU to NI, uninterrupted.
If there's an issue with goods going from the warehouse to the Republic that should not, then there's a problem there. Deal with it there.
but you've just created a second border - between Ireland and Northern Ireland - which was May's original plan.
And remember the EU have already said we cannot have a trusted trader scheme (which is what you are trying to get here) as they simply don't trust a scheme that contains every possible company...
Have they? I thought there was a committed agreement to intoduce one, and they were just sitting on their bottom, whistling.
Has @JosiasJessop really tried to pick at my "Failtrack" comment?
They failed! Catastrophically! A failure to do basic maintenance not only led to a succession of deadly accidents, they then had to impose blanket 20mph speed restrictions because "where else might there be gauge-corner cracking" was met by "we have no idea".
They had no idea how to manage the handful of upgrade projects they tried, a Manchester resignalling scheme was trying to things the manufacturer of the equipment said was impossible. They literally bankrupted themselves (and Virgin Trains with them) with the West Coast fiasco where the upgrade was never completed.
A company that killed people due to corporate negligence, failed to fulfil its basic function and then bankrupted itself through incompetence can be described as having failed.
Why are the Olympics still branded “2020”? It makes the whole affair even more absurd.
Euros made the same weird decision. Didnt stop it being one of the best tournaments ever.
The Euros did have crowds, albeit limited. I think Tokyo could have had limited numbers if the Japanese vaccination program wasn't amongst the slowest in the rich world.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to: a) agree an unworkable deal b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready” d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair. They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
The interesting thing is why that occurred in the 1980s - and the answer is probably that Thatcher wasn't interested in the railways. She wasn't against them, as some claim - but she didn't care much for them either. She knew they were necessary (which was why the Serpell Report was canned), but was happy to let them get on with their own thing as long as they didn't cause her government bother. This allowed some very good managers to restructure things to work in a more efficient and more passenger-friendly way.
Hasn't Thameslink's problem been the same as the WCML up to 2005? Massive upgrade works causing chaos for services?
I know very little about Thameslink’s problems, I only know whenever I’ve used it two trains in three have been cancelled. I wondered if the problem may be over-optimistic timetables as much as anything as I gather that’s a regular occurrence.
It is slightly disturbing in light of how many problems it caused that there are those who advocate further upgrades to the WCML as an alternative to HS2...
That's because people don't understand the issue HS2 is designed to fix - it allows WCML and ECML capacity to be increased by implementing a standard speed on the line removing the issues created by forcing slower and faster trains to run on the same track.
Yup - the first, basic lesson of modern high speed passenger trains, is that they need to run on dedicated lines.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
Don’t tell Christian Wolmar that. The first chapter of his anti-privatisation polemic Broken Rail is called ‘was BR as bad as its sandwiches?’ and the second edition had a footnote to say that actually BR did amazing sandwiches and was an early pioneer of vacuum packed....
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
The interesting thing is why that occurred in the 1980s - and the answer is probably that Thatcher wasn't interested in the railways. She wasn't against them, as some claim - but she didn't care much for them either. She knew they were necessary (which was why the Serpell Report was canned), but was happy to let them get on with their own thing as long as they didn't cause her government bother. This allowed some very good managers to restructure things to work in a more efficient and more passenger-friendly way.
Hasn't Thameslink's problem been the same as the WCML up to 2005? Massive upgrade works causing chaos for services?
I know very little about Thameslink’s problems, I only know whenever I’ve used it two trains in three have been cancelled. I wondered if the problem may be over-optimistic timetables as much as anything as I gather that’s a regular occurrence.
It is slightly disturbing in light of how many problems it caused that there are those who advocate further upgrades to the WCML as an alternative to HS2...
That's because people don't understand the issue HS2 is designed to fix - it allows WCML and ECML capacity to be increased by implementing a standard speed on the line removing the issues created by forcing slower and faster trains to run on the same track.
Yes. The failed West Coast upgrade of the 00s has left us with a railways drastically short of capacity. Ironically had the upgrade been completed it would have been even more acute a problem.
Railtrack only managed to complete Passenger Upgrade 1. Upgrade 2 would have barred all traffic from the fast lines other than Pendolinos running at 140mph with moving block signalling. The pressure on the slow lines carrying freight, stopping and inter-regional passenger services would have been immense.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
No, they don't.
+1 - it's currently a domestic dispute - I suspect the only time it becomes interesting to the US will be when the dispute gives them something they can use for other purposes.
Not entirely true. 31M Americans claim to be "Irish Americans" and the current POTUS is one of them. They still have a very strong influence in US politics, and the Dems in particular and Ireland could be a useful distraction for Biden.
Interestingly there are 16M people in UK who claim Irish heritage (including myself), though we don't tend to call ourselves "Irish Britons"
Has @JosiasJessop really tried to pick at my "Failtrack" comment?
They failed! Catastrophically! A failure to do basic maintenance not only led to a succession of deadly accidents, they then had to impose blanket 20mph speed restrictions because "where else might there be gauge-corner cracking" was met by "we have no idea".
They had no idea how to manage the handful of upgrade projects they tried, a Manchester resignalling scheme was trying to things the manufacturer of the equipment said was impossible. They literally bankrupted themselves (and Virgin Trains with them) with the West Coast fiasco where the upgrade was never completed.
A company that killed people due to corporate negligence, failed to fulfil its basic function and then bankrupted itself through incompetence can be described as having failed.
I agree with most of that - but again, you miss that similar things happened under BR - except they could not bankrupt themselves because they were government owned.
Besides, note that Network Rail has been nationalised since Railtrack folded, and most of the failures in the railway system was down to them - from the WCML Upgrade fiasco to the GWML electrification.
Has @JosiasJessop really tried to pick at my "Failtrack" comment?
They failed! Catastrophically! A failure to do basic maintenance not only led to a succession of deadly accidents, they then had to impose blanket 20mph speed restrictions because "where else might there be gauge-corner cracking" was met by "we have no idea".
They had no idea how to manage the handful of upgrade projects they tried, a Manchester resignalling scheme was trying to things the manufacturer of the equipment said was impossible. They literally bankrupted themselves (and Virgin Trains with them) with the West Coast fiasco where the upgrade was never completed.
A company that killed people due to corporate negligence, failed to fulfil its basic function and then bankrupted itself through incompetence can be described as having failed.
So what you’re saying is, it was bad but not quite as bad as British Rail?
Has @JosiasJessop really tried to pick at my "Failtrack" comment?
They failed! Catastrophically! A failure to do basic maintenance not only led to a succession of deadly accidents, they then had to impose blanket 20mph speed restrictions because "where else might there be gauge-corner cracking" was met by "we have no idea".
They had no idea how to manage the handful of upgrade projects they tried, a Manchester resignalling scheme was trying to things the manufacturer of the equipment said was impossible. They literally bankrupted themselves (and Virgin Trains with them) with the West Coast fiasco where the upgrade was never completed.
A company that killed people due to corporate negligence, failed to fulfil its basic function and then bankrupted itself through incompetence can be described as having failed.
Gauge corner cracking was understood. Just politically, they couldn't name the cause.
Strangely, all of goods wagons without anti-lock brakes got replaced/remnoved from higher speed running very very fast.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
No, they don't.
+1 - it's currently a domestic dispute - I suspect the only time it becomes interesting to the US will be when the dispute gives them something they can use for other purposes.
Not entirely true. 31M Americans claim to be "Irish Americans" and the current POTUS is one of them. They still have a very strong influence in US politics, and the Dems in particular and Ireland could be a useful distraction for Biden.
Interestingly there are 16M people in UK who claim Irish heritage (including myself), though we don't tend to call ourselves "Irish Britons"
The idea that the US Congress will pass a preferential trade deal to a UK that has damaged (or worse) peace in Ireland is literal fantasy. They cannot have been clearer that we can go whistle if we screw over Ireland. As you say, the Irish lobby and block in Congress is strong.
Some nice cloud cover at the moment. Reminds me of coming back from an Aussie holiday and really enjoying seeing the beautiful grey smothered sky on return.
That led to a majority of 80 and ended the Brexit crisis that had paralyzed the country for two years.
One could argue that "the Brexit Crisis" is still very much alive and kicking. The result of a majority of 80 under Johnson is not necessarily in the long term interest of the Tory Party. The Tories USP used to be competent government. If he completely blows that USP, which I think he will (and possibly is close to achieving already) then his election as leader may well prove to be a dark day. We will have to see.
This is well worth a read about how the Spectator has captured the Tory party and, in so doing, has severed most of its traditional links:
The article is exaggerated. The Speccie deals in decent writing, simple presentation of biggish and very general ideas, looking as if it thinks for itself, and in recent years happens to have have been the house journal of a lot of people in or close to power. This is bound to be the case for at least one major UK political weekly at different times.
I notice that in response the NS has upped its game and carries at least some sane, thoughtful and readable material. Good. I think Tribune has ceased publication. Bad.
If you want any help at all about policy detail rather than biggish ideas you are going to waste a lot of time reading the Spectator. That is why its circulation is at record highs, and at the same time everyone takes the Economist but finds it almost unreadable.
BTW the fact that Boris embodies those who have broad aims, preferences and ideas but think policy details is for dull people in suits in boring offices is part of his popular appeal.
He can be summed up in things like: Brexit, Olympics, Vaccinations, Squash the Sombrero, Boris Bikes, Global UK. It must drive the policy wonks nuts.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
No, they don't.
+1 - it's currently a domestic dispute - I suspect the only time it becomes interesting to the US will be when the dispute gives them something they can use for other purposes.
Not entirely true. 31M Americans claim to be "Irish Americans" and the current POTUS is one of them. They still have a very strong influence in US politics, and the Dems in particular and Ireland could be a useful distraction for Biden.
Interestingly there are 16M people in UK who claim Irish heritage (including myself), though we don't tend to call ourselves "Irish Britons"
That's just the charming US tendency to be both super patriotic and also really precise (at least for one line of their family tree) about their antecedents. It's why any wikipedia page for an American actor tends to read like 'they are of irish/scots/portuguese/Cherokee descent'.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
There are no permanent victories in politics.
The GFA worked for the politics of the time. That has now changed and, so, a revised solution is needed.
NHS nurses dancing around beds is almost starting to look sane.
On trampolines no less! God, that was embarrassing! Advertising to the world that Britons are obsessed with the NHS ( a system that only the developing world is envious of) or suggesting we are a bunch of hypochondriacs, or both.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
No surprise you would prefer troubles kicked off again. Damn colonies.
I suspect it would take the actual troubles to kick off in style again (remember we've already seen death threats) before the EU thinks about compromising.
Only one side will be compromising , when trouble starts and Biden phones Bozo with orders.
"Be fair to Thomas. He has a far greater role than you may realize. He is one of the leading life coaches for preschool age boys on the Autism Spectrum. I have been impressed by his communication of important lessons to his most devoted fans like "You should try new things, you might like them" and, much appreciated by their class mates, "It is easier to make friends with someone if you don't crash into them". All valuable lessons for our wonderful, quirky grandson."
and
"My son (now 23) as a two and a half year old, proudly described his freshly deposited stools in terms of their proportion as the various trains in the series, “Mum! I’ve done a Gordon, a Henry, a James and an Edward!” He certainly did. Priceless."
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
America gives a flying fuck. They have already warned us about what we are trying to do. The world tends not to give preferential treatment to untrustworthy shits.
No, they don't.
+1 - it's currently a domestic dispute - I suspect the only time it becomes interesting to the US will be when the dispute gives them something they can use for other purposes.
Not entirely true. 31M Americans claim to be "Irish Americans" and the current POTUS is one of them. They still have a very strong influence in US politics, and the Dems in particular and Ireland could be a useful distraction for Biden.
Interestingly there are 16M people in UK who claim Irish heritage (including myself), though we don't tend to call ourselves "Irish Britons"
The idea that the US Congress will pass a preferential trade deal to a UK that has damaged (or worse) peace in Ireland is literal fantasy. They cannot have been clearer that we can go whistle if we screw over Ireland. As you say, the Irish lobby and block in Congress is strong.
Again, if a trade deal with the UK boosts US jobs and the US economy they won't give a flying fuck.
Biden the Irishman has literally fucked Ireland's economy more than we ever could with his minimum global tax rate.
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
No surprise you would prefer troubles kicked off again. Damn colonies.
I suspect it would take the actual troubles to kick off in style again (remember we've already seen death threats) before the EU thinks about compromising.
Only one side will be compromising , when trouble starts and Biden phones Bozo with orders.
I know people on here have reservations about Biden’s mental acuity, but I don’t think he’ll be taking orders from Johnson. Heck, even most of us aren’t.
Has @JosiasJessop really tried to pick at my "Failtrack" comment?
They failed! Catastrophically! A failure to do basic maintenance not only led to a succession of deadly accidents, they then had to impose blanket 20mph speed restrictions because "where else might there be gauge-corner cracking" was met by "we have no idea".
They had no idea how to manage the handful of upgrade projects they tried, a Manchester resignalling scheme was trying to things the manufacturer of the equipment said was impossible. They literally bankrupted themselves (and Virgin Trains with them) with the West Coast fiasco where the upgrade was never completed.
A company that killed people due to corporate negligence, failed to fulfil its basic function and then bankrupted itself through incompetence can be described as having failed.
Gauge corner cracking was understood. Just politically, they couldn't name the cause.
Strangely, all of goods wagons without anti-lock brakes got replaced/remnoved from higher speed running very very fast.
Oh, was that the primary problem? Any decent article or website on that, please?
So what is the heart of the problem? It is not the great Ulster sausage famine. It does not lie in the complexities of phytosanitary standards or the mechanisms of legal interpretation – all of which could be solved with pragmatism and mutual trust. When this problem is dissected, the message written on its heart will be: Boris Johnson is constitutionally incapable of accepting the relationship between cause and effect
Wrong. What is at the heart of the problem is that the EU and the UK want a good relationship in this new situation but that the EU assumes it is OK for the UK to bend its red lines over UK sovereignty and integrity but not OK for the EU to bend its red lines over the single market forbidding entry to high quality products with equivalent standards.
The RoI and UK are sovereign states, the EU is an elaborate trade association. Its elevation into a body that could give sovereign states the runaround is one of the reasons Brexit won the referendum. They are not learning.
It is far simpler than that. The UK was part of something that has red lines which apply to everyone who isn't part of it. We chose to depart, create our own red lines which clash with the EU's lines, then complain that the EU are being inflexible.
We knew their position when we left. Nothing is new or unknown. We demanded 3rd country status and now complain about our treatment as a 3rd country.
If we want to trade with any trading block whether it be sovereign state or supranational we have to follow the rules of that area. Jaguar have to build cars to American spec to sell them in America. The UK will have to supply products to EEA spec to sell them in the EEA. Why should we expect the other side to change or drop their rules because we say so? Does anyone do that?
Yes.
1 Because Ireland is a special case. 2 Because politics is pragmatic. Machiavelli is a better guide than Buddha or the Quakers over how it is to be done. Sadly. 3 Because there is current equivalence in food production standards. We would not think of questioning EU food products. The opposite is also true. 4 Because the expectation that the UK compromise its internal market over NI in neither more nor less realistic than the EU doing so. And the UK and RoI are states, the EU is a trade association. 5 Because it is in the interests of RoI to compromise.
Even if you were right, surely we had a responsibility to agree these issues before we signed a binding treaty that included the Northern Ireland protocol, rather than after the event? Reneging on the protocol, or expecting it to be renegotiated after seven months, or signing it knowing it could not be implemented, seems to many of us to be pure bad faith rather than Machiavellian.
Absolutely not the case whatsoever.
Renegotiations happen all the time, its part and parcel of how life operates. If you agree a salary last year are you expected to then be bound to the same salary five years later? Or can you renegotiate your package annually seeking pay rises every year - if you're able to get them?
Is the EU still bound by the Treaty of Rome unamended? Or Maastricht Treaty unamended? Or have further treaties like Lisbon, Nice etc amended the rules.
The UK is not bound not to seek renegotiations, its perfectly within its rights to renegotiate whatever it doesn't like, at any time it chooses to do so. The UK is also not bound not to exercise Article 16 - Article 16 is literally a part of the Treaty the EU ratified and it is fully a part of international law on that basis so the UK exercising Article 16 if we choose to do so is a good faith action within the law, not a breach of the law.
Yes, you've posted the same argument dozens of times, so there's nothing new here. I know what you think, I don't agree - hope you don't mind.
And you keep posting your own argument, dozens of times, if not more, so there's nothing new there. The foolish notion that there's an issue seeking renegotiations has been posted many more times than I've responded to it.
I know what you think, but if you keep posting lines like there's a problem "expecting it to be renegotiated" then I will keep responding to that. Since I don't agree with you either - hope you don't mind.
Actually, I think you'd struggle to find a previous post from me on the NI protocol (there may be a random one, but I don't think so), so you're making that up.
"Be fair to Thomas. He has a far greater role than you may realize. He is one of the leading life coaches for preschool age boys on the Autism Spectrum. I have been impressed by his communication of important lessons to his most devoted fans like "You should try new things, you might like them" and, much appreciated by their class mates, "It is easier to make friends with someone if you don't crash into them". All valuable lessons for our wonderful, quirky grandson."
and
"My son (now 23) as a two and a half year old, proudly described his freshly deposited stools in terms of their proportion as the various trains in the series, “Mum! I’ve done a Gordon, a Henry, a James and an Edward!” He certainly did. Priceless."
The only possible solution is, as always in NI, a very large dollop of fudge.
There was no "fudge" in the GFA. The obligations and occasionally painful compromises of all parties were clear. That's why it worked.
Is not compromise itself an example of a fudge?
Not in the context of this discussion which appears to be signing an agreement with the EU then trying to get them to do something else in practice that is to their detriment because that's more convenient for the UK.
All parties lived up the commitments they signed up to in the GFA.
AIUI the EU agreed to collaborate to find a work around. They haven’t done so at all. So the UK is coming up with its own approach.
More generally: I don’t give a flying fuck. If the protocol is endangering peace and community harmony in Northern Ireland then the only right thing to do is bin it.
No surprise you would prefer troubles kicked off again. Damn colonies.
I suspect it would take the actual troubles to kick off in style again (remember we've already seen death threats) before the EU thinks about compromising.
Only one side will be compromising , when trouble starts and Biden phones Bozo with orders.
NI doesn't work like that.
Any officials trying to enforce rules the locals don't like gets a visit from the "Community Leaders". Suits, not too many tattoos and some table manners.
It rarely gets to the stage of posting a picture of your kids going to school through the letterbox, or your car spontaneously combusting.....
Anyone who doesn't like this, doesn't like the Peace Process.
Rail privatisation has been a disaster. Even the Tories agree.
I'm not a Tory, but I utterly disagree. Despite the tragedy last year, rail is safer than ever, whilst passenger numbers have increased massively pre-Covid. In what way do you see it as being a 'disaster'?
The problem is that the youngsters cannot recall how bad British rail had got in the 70's and 80's. Starved off investment, old rolling stock, tatty outlook and a very classic nationlized outlook on life. They see the shiny new rolling stock, and vastly improved services and think, ah yes, but it could all be better if nationalized because no-one would be making profits.
You can argue, very cogently, that the model of privatisation was terrible. I think it was. Choice works in things like groceries - I have a range of supermarkets, at a range of prices and quality (not always the same thing). I can pick and choose. That doesn't work for rail services. On the whole to go from A to B there will be one company only, so no choice at the point of service, only companies competing to run franchises for a period of years.
We have also continued to subsidize rail travel, but in a way that makes people think that we don't. This leads to complaints that we don't support rail in the same way that other countries do, and this is unfair. Its just not as obvious.
I think the best thing for a young chap (say under 35) who wants to privatise the rail network again, would be to watch comedy from the 70's and 80's and see how often BR is mocked. Its instructive...
For years on here I chundered on about moving to a concession model instead of the franchise model - after all, some services were already concessions (E.g. London Overground, Merseyrail). Some of the left persuasion on here argued against it, and said it should be full nationalisation. Now it looks as though we're moving to a concession model, and suddenly they're saying it's nationalisation!
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
*sigh* passenger rail operations have always been nationalised. A franchise is awarded to a private sector operator who fulfil the contract then hand the keys back to the owner - the state.
(Snip)
I'm not sure why you're sighing, as I know that, and it does not go against what I wrote. Besides, if they've always been nationalised in your view, then why were people complaining about privatisation?
Because both major parties are pushing ideology. The treasury over-ruled John Major's idea to recreate the big 4 and gave us Railtrack et al. "Its now privatised" they said. "Eugh, privatised is bad" said Labour. Both wrong.
The successful model is the commercialised state entity model pushed by Thatcher and adopted by so many of the European rail networks. So many of our franchised operators are run by Arriva, owned by Deutsche Bahn, owned by the German government and run commercially.
State ownership works, but only if commercial. When the state tries to directly control industry - as the godawful Department for Trannsport has been increasingly doing for the last few years - it all turns to shit.
The Tories failed to privatise passenger rail operations or the network. Labour failed to show that state ownership and control works. Both are wrong. But their supporters parrot what they say no matter how far from reality it is.
Okay, that sounds like a reasonable argument, and one I have some, if not full, sympathy for.
To back it up, I would argue that BR was very efficient in the 1980s. However, it was efficient at managing a shrinking network. Renewals cost too much on a route? Rationalise it. A freight service getting in the way of passenger services? Price them out when it comes to renewing the signals and pointwork.
IMV (and some may disagree) the best thing privatisation did was remove some old thinking within the management; made them think about expansion rather than retraction. There was zero chance of that happening under BR.
The railways can never be fully privatised for one reason: enhancements cost much more than will ever be got back; but the nation decides that the benefits outweigh the costs - e.g. in allowing more passenger services to run.
NR has three main threads: *) Maintenance. Maintaining the existing track and infrastructure. *) Renewals. Renewing life-expired track and infrastructure. *) Enhancements. Improving the network's capabilities, e.g. new loops, new track, new signalling systems, new routes, electrification.
IMV passenger and freight payments should cover Maintenance and Renewals: in other words, keeping the existing network operating. Enhancements (especially major ones) should be paid for by the government and, even if proposed by NR, should be given the go-ahead by the government.
Has @JosiasJessop really tried to pick at my "Failtrack" comment?
They failed! Catastrophically! A failure to do basic maintenance not only led to a succession of deadly accidents, they then had to impose blanket 20mph speed restrictions because "where else might there be gauge-corner cracking" was met by "we have no idea".
They had no idea how to manage the handful of upgrade projects they tried, a Manchester resignalling scheme was trying to things the manufacturer of the equipment said was impossible. They literally bankrupted themselves (and Virgin Trains with them) with the West Coast fiasco where the upgrade was never completed.
A company that killed people due to corporate negligence, failed to fulfil its basic function and then bankrupted itself through incompetence can be described as having failed.
I agree with most of that - but again, you miss that similar things happened under BR - except they could not bankrupt themselves because they were government owned.
Besides, note that Network Rail has been nationalised since Railtrack folded, and most of the failures in the railway system was down to them - from the WCML Upgrade fiasco to the GWML electrification.
I have made the case that neither "privatised" nor "nationalised" as defined by the tow parties works. So I am not attacking Railtrack to attack "privatisation". It simply was a failed business.
As for "similar things happened under BR" that isn't true is it? When did BR fail to network-wide complete basic maintenance? When there were infrastructure-fail accidents (Newton, Bellgrove, Clapham) there were specific equipment (or design) failures.
And your point about NR is true to a point - it isn't the best company! But the WCML upgrade was not them, it was Railtrack. The lack of knowledge both of how to run electrification schemes or even what the network looked like (a big GWML issue) was down to Railtrack
Comments
The amusing fact is that the government has much more detailed control over the railways than they ever had under BR. I'm unsure it's been to the railway's advantage (cough IEP)...
https://www.geoffmulgan.com/post/spectators-v-doers-the-challenge-for-the-uk-s-ruling-clique?fbclid=IwAR00cJ0Q0_MRh1ts3C6q7nd9PcYRVvEg4iLcXZJx0Gj8AUwl3cbFtnZHD1M
There are other issues now perhaps, but there always have been and always will be. We do now have the Crisis that existed then though.
The GFA worked for the politics of the time. That has now changed and, so, a revised solution is needed.
I think one of the issues was a wide variation in the quality of the services. So, for example, in the 1980s the south eastern region was radically overhauled and improved under Chris Green, so it went from making large losses while being effectively run down for closure to nearly breaking even. And he started the process that led to surely the best of the franchises, Chiltern Trains. Meanwhile under Bob Reid (both of them) express passenger services were dramatically improved and actually were not at all bad, although they suffered compared to the TGV in France or mainline trains in Germany.
But away from that, on minor commuter routes or rural railways, things were often still a bit shit. Travelling on railway lines in Gloucestershire and Wales showed how they had been starved of investment, with elderly, uncomfortable and unreliable trains delivering services that were inconveniently located if they happened at all. Meanwhile, there was no serious attempt to sort out the legacies of the late 1960s where the railways had been deliberately run down - e.g. the closure of Gloucester and Cheltenham’s main railway stations so that the remaining stations were inconveniently sited and poorly served, leading to dwindling passenger numbers. Which meant there was - and in many cases still is - a huge logistical problem.
But you could make the same comments about privatisation. Yes, Chiltern Trains has been a dazzling success, but will anyone defend Thameslink?
Which imo is why Museums have always focussed on physically preventing people taking photographs.
Everyone knows this, including the Remainers. They just don't mind because they want to neuter Brexit.
I remember having a brief conversation with (then Shadow Transport Secretary) Andy McDonald at a dinner when he was wanging on about the evils of Virgin Trains. Except that Virgin Trains East Coast was 90% Stagecoach so not Virgin at all other than the brand, and no Branson doesn't "own it", they lease it at best.
He looked puzzled and carried on attacking how Branson now owned the trains to London.
As for your 'Failtrack' comments: I might suggest you look at accidents that occurred under BR in the 1970s and 1980s.
An interesting trend is that few accidents/incidents are root caused by operators and trains nowadays: mostly it is infrastructure failure. There are relatively few SPADs, and locos do not derail as much.
I know what you think, but if you keep posting lines like there's a problem "expecting it to be renegotiated" then I will keep responding to that. Since I don't agree with you either - hope you don't mind.
Compare with the Farage poster. I don't know whether it's been researched but my guess is that it will lost 'Leave' support. Cummings is as astute as farage is a hopeless
Let them go from UK to NI, or EU to NI, uninterrupted.
If there's an issue with goods going from the warehouse to the Republic that should not, then there's a problem there. Deal with it there.
The whole point of privatisation is to efficiently manage risk to get a very good price. If you don't know the risk you can't do that, and you'll either profiteer a lot or go bust, possibly with a catastrophe along the way.
That's what happened to Railtrack. And Network Rail is no more efficient by the way, it just puts safety and conservatism first and doesn't have to worry about making a profit.
But some people on this board have wanted to leap to the conclusion before looking at the data. That's wishful thinking.
And on language, "handwave away" has always seemed like a normal part of debate language, but most normal human interactions don't take the form of debates.
And remember the EU have already said we cannot have a trusted trader scheme (which is what you are trying to get here) as they simply don't trust a scheme that contains every possible company...
There were some genuinely entrepreneurial franchises, building on the successes already delivered by Network SouthEast and Intercity who at the time of its abolition was the only profitable long-distance train operator in the world.
Most of the franchises were different levels of shit. Northern Rail has had a succession of crap operators largely running overcrowded ancient trains because the government insisted the growth that Josiah triumphs literally didn't exist. Similar crap with National Express Scotrail, Connex SouthCentral and South Eastern, Central Trains etc etc.
Hasn't Thameslink's problem been the same as the WCML up to 2005? Massive upgrade works causing chaos for services?
So invoke Article 16 and put the trusted trader scheme on the table as our preferred solution and do ZERO checks UK to NI unless or until they come up with an alternative we can agree to. Either they'll compromise and agree the trusted trader scheme, which is what should have always been the only viable solution, or they'll come up with an even better solution that suits us even better. Either way, it ceases to be our problem.
It's fine to do so to condemn, it's not to do so to enjoy.
We see the modern equivalent in the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame.
Simply but Boris has in NI created a problem that cannot be resolved without consequences and desperately needs someone else that he can pin the blame consequences on.
The successful model is the commercialised state entity model pushed by Thatcher and adopted by so many of the European rail networks. So many of our franchised operators are run by Arriva, owned by Deutsche Bahn, owned by the German government and run commercially.
State ownership works, but only if commercial. When the state tries to directly control industry - as the godawful Department for Trannsport has been increasingly doing for the last few years - it all turns to shit.
The Tories failed to privatise passenger rail operations or the network. Labour failed to show that state ownership and control works. Both are wrong. But their supporters parrot what they say no matter how far from reality it is.
Opinion polls demonstrate that a growing majority now think it was a mistake (which is therefore a clear failure e in terms of such an important foreign policy)and we still have the crisis in Northern Ireland which you are applying your key board warrior expertise to in belief that there are simple solutions with respect to anything in Ireland (lol).
It is slightly disturbing in light of how many problems it caused that there are those who advocate further upgrades to the WCML as an alternative to HS2...
It makes the whole affair even more absurd.
Scott Campbell
@ScottCambo85
·
17h
Can see me gubbing a viagra the night!! No shagging or fuck all Jst to keep the sheets off ma legs!!
They have just raised the price to £7 for a car and are yet again wondering why the road is virtually empty.
Deeply unsatisfactory; part of the problem of getting so immersed into the EU without a succession of referenda to affirm public opinion that getting out was bound to be unsatisfactory.
They failed! Catastrophically! A failure to do basic maintenance not only led to a succession of deadly accidents, they then had to impose blanket 20mph speed restrictions because "where else might there be gauge-corner cracking" was met by "we have no idea".
They had no idea how to manage the handful of upgrade projects they tried, a Manchester resignalling scheme was trying to things the manufacturer of the equipment said was impossible. They literally bankrupted themselves (and Virgin Trains with them) with the West Coast fiasco where the upgrade was never completed.
A company that killed people due to corporate negligence, failed to fulfil its basic function and then bankrupted itself through incompetence can be described as having failed.
There are two separate issues here.
1. Is the agreement itself. It clearly doesn’t work, was never likely to work, and is punitive to GB-NI trade which from memory is the great a majority of trade relating to NI.
It urgently needs to replaced, and given that the U.K. has conceded a regulatory border in its own territory I have much sympathy with @Charles and @Philip_Thompson’s solutions which is effectively to leave it to the U.K. to police by exception.
2. Is the brazen bad faith of Johnson to:
a) agree an unworkable deal
b) ignore predictable warnings on said deal
c) sell it to the country as “oven-ready”
d) lie that it would avoid any kind of border between GB and NI
e) u-turn on all of the above and blame the remainer parliament for making him do it.*
The EU are not innocent in this affair.
They will need to move, if they care about the people on the island of Ireland.
But it is hard for them to do so as well when Boris and “Frosty” are pissing on their leg and telling them it is raining.
Remainers need to be more acute in their criticisms of the NIP. Leavers need to be more aware that Boris’s “Millwall diplomacy” is likely to be sub-optimal.
*Boris created his own trap by trashing May’s (better) deal; and refusing to concede any further delays. He therefore left new deal or no deal on the table, and Parliament was naturally keen to avoid a ruinous and democratically obscene “no deal”.
Having arrived by train, "The Railway" seemed appropriate.
A comfortable armchair and a nice pint of cask ale.
Cheers!
Railtrack only managed to complete Passenger Upgrade 1. Upgrade 2 would have barred all traffic from the fast lines other than Pendolinos running at 140mph with moving block signalling. The pressure on the slow lines carrying freight, stopping and inter-regional passenger services would have been immense.
Interestingly there are 16M people in UK who claim Irish heritage (including myself), though we don't tend to call ourselves "Irish Britons"
Besides, note that Network Rail has been nationalised since Railtrack folded, and most of the failures in the railway system was down to them - from the WCML Upgrade fiasco to the GWML electrification.
Strangely, all of goods wagons without anti-lock brakes got replaced/remnoved from higher speed running very very fast.
I notice that in response the NS has upped its game and carries at least some sane, thoughtful and readable material. Good. I think Tribune has ceased publication. Bad.
If you want any help at all about policy detail rather than biggish ideas you are going to waste a lot of time reading the Spectator. That is why its circulation is at record highs, and at the same time everyone takes the Economist but finds it almost unreadable.
BTW the fact that Boris embodies those who have broad aims, preferences and ideas but think policy details is for dull people in suits in boring offices is part of his popular appeal.
He can be summed up in things like: Brexit, Olympics, Vaccinations, Squash the Sombrero, Boris Bikes, Global UK. It must drive the policy wonks nuts.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jul/23/all-the-trains-in-my-sons-train-podcast-ranked-by-how-much-i-hate-them
and comments such as
"Be fair to Thomas. He has a far greater role than you may realize. He is one of the leading life coaches for preschool age boys on the Autism Spectrum. I have been impressed by his communication of important lessons to his most devoted fans like "You should try new things, you might like them" and, much appreciated by their class mates, "It is easier to make friends with someone if you don't crash into them". All valuable lessons for our wonderful, quirky grandson."
and
"My son (now 23) as a two and a half year old, proudly described his freshly deposited stools
in terms of their proportion as the various trains in the series, “Mum! I’ve done a Gordon, a Henry, a James and an Edward!” He certainly did. Priceless."
And then I come to PB ...
Biden the Irishman has literally fucked Ireland's economy more than we ever could with his minimum global tax rate.
The US gives a shit about the US.
Any officials trying to enforce rules the locals don't like gets a visit from the "Community Leaders". Suits, not too many tattoos and some table manners.
It rarely gets to the stage of posting a picture of your kids going to school through the letterbox, or your car spontaneously combusting.....
Anyone who doesn't like this, doesn't like the Peace Process.
To back it up, I would argue that BR was very efficient in the 1980s. However, it was efficient at managing a shrinking network. Renewals cost too much on a route? Rationalise it. A freight service getting in the way of passenger services? Price them out when it comes to renewing the signals and pointwork.
IMV (and some may disagree) the best thing privatisation did was remove some old thinking within the management; made them think about expansion rather than retraction. There was zero chance of that happening under BR.
The railways can never be fully privatised for one reason: enhancements cost much more than will ever be got back; but the nation decides that the benefits outweigh the costs - e.g. in allowing more passenger services to run.
NR has three main threads:
*) Maintenance. Maintaining the existing track and infrastructure.
*) Renewals. Renewing life-expired track and infrastructure.
*) Enhancements. Improving the network's capabilities, e.g. new loops, new track, new signalling systems, new routes, electrification.
IMV passenger and freight payments should cover Maintenance and Renewals: in other words, keeping the existing network operating. Enhancements (especially major ones) should be paid for by the government and, even if proposed by NR, should be given the go-ahead by the government.
LA 2028
Brisbane 2032
somewhere in Europe 2036.
As for "similar things happened under BR" that isn't true is it? When did BR fail to network-wide complete basic maintenance? When there were infrastructure-fail accidents (Newton, Bellgrove, Clapham) there were specific equipment (or design) failures.
And your point about NR is true to a point - it isn't the best company! But the WCML upgrade was not them, it was Railtrack. The lack of knowledge both of how to run electrification schemes or even what the network looked like (a big GWML issue) was down to Railtrack