For every one mile one passenger travels, the British taxpayer pays an average 8 pence subsidy to the train operating company. That is an average of 8p per mile subsidy for every single journey for every single passenger. That is, of course, in addition to your train fare.
The train fare system in the UK is ridiculously complicated, so much so that it makes comparison to other countries difficult in searching for like for like fares. The simple methodology adopted by this site linked to finds the UK has the second most expensive train fares in Europe. This further site linked to finds Britain has the most expensive commuter fares of eight expensive comparators. This Sky News investigation found some stunning examples of comparable British tickets being around three to four times more expensive than comparable fares in France and Germany.
Since privatisation, taxpayers have paid much more money in real terms to the rail network that they gave to British Rail, as shown by official government statistics.
Much of that taxpayer money has simply gone to the profits of the subsidised train operating companies – which peculiarly are for the most part foreign state-owned railway companies. As trains get ever more filthy and overcrowded, the promised privatisation benefits of passenger experience remain elusive.
I attended a family funeral in Norfolk just before Easter. as such events are necessarily unplanned, and I would have to come home on Good Friday when trains are very busy, I bought a first class ticket from Peterborough to Edinburgh at great expense, but ended up standing from Peterborough to Berwick. My ticket was, from memory, £210. On arrival at Edinburgh I went to Virgin customer services to ask if I might have some refund. I was told that as I had an open ticket and no reservation, I was not guaranteed a seat. I pointed out that I had received no food and no drink, as entitled by a first class ticket. The lady replied that these were “complimentary” and that meant they were a gift and not an entitlement with the ticket.
I replied that I had received no benefit from my first class ticket, neither a seat nor any refreshment, so I should at least be refunded the difference between a first and second class ticket. No, the lady replied, I had the right to stand in a first class carriage. She really did say that.
Today Britain’s train operating companies are launching a consultation on rail fares, which precludes from the start the notion that fares should be cheaper. It sounds like their motive is an attempt to remove their legal obligation to issue discounted season tickets to commuters, dressed up in guff about “flexibility” and new technology.
The urgent need is the renationalisation of the railways and for Britain to catch up with the more enlightened world in the rolling out of high speed rail. I view HS2 as a minor idea, compared to the need to provide high speed rail all the way to Aberdeen and Inverness, with a high speed network connecting all the UK cities of over 500,000 people, and involving multiple direct links to a variety of European cities. This is the kind of public project which can have a revitalising economic effect. If the Victorians could undertake economic projects on that scale with a much inferior construction technology, then so can we.
O/T
He’s done it as instructed by Netanyahu and AIPAC.
Iran nuclear deal: Trump pulls US out – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44045957
Ah Sharp Ears, great minds think alike. ?
It’s the Jooooooz, run away, run away, it’s the Joooooz!!!
Those who you refer to as Joooz just put high alert at Syrian border and are ready to hit. Next morning will be some kind of a mess.
Israel just launched missiles from Lebanon, hit Kisva, south of Damascus
O/T.
The orange man child Trump kills Iran deal, unravelling one of the few good things Obama acccomplished.
The decision could alienate the USA’s European allies. Though US bungs will quickly get them onside.
“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” Mr. Trump said at the White House in announcing his decision. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”
Watch out for the coming war on Iran.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html
Straight away, Boeing and Airbus lose $39billion contracts to supply commercial aircraft to Iran. Duh! Shot yourself in the foot there Donald? I thought it was American jobs for American workers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/boeing-airbus-to-lose-39-billion-in-contracts-because-of-trump-sanctions-on-iran/2018/05/08/820a8f08-5308-11e8-a551-5b648abe29ef_story.html?
Meanwhile the MoJ tried hard to conceal testimony from judges on defendants with no lawyers, as numbers skyrocket.
More and more people in England and Wales are appearing in a criminal court without a lawyer due to the savage cuts on Legal Aid.
“Some of them just sit there like a rabbit in the headlights and haven’t got a clue what’s going on,” one judge said in a report leaked to BuzzFeed News.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/emilydugan/the-government-tried-to-conceal-this-testimony-from-judges?utm_term=.iiwQR7L7k&__twitter_impression=true
A demolition of Netanyahu’s dodgy dossier by Ray McGovern and co..
Last weeks PowerPoint was not only based on old “intelligence”, it was fabricated. Passed to the CIA by Mujahideen-E-Khalq and most likely authored in Tel Aviv.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/07/trump-urged-not-to-pull-out-of-iran-nuclear-deal/
Interesting to see whether Europe has the stones to continue trading. A huge Airbus contract at stake.
The Long Planned War with Iran ( as Gen Wesley Clark said ).. Is On
the Rianbow Helmets will emerge..
Then we shall see more of this – With thanks to Vanessa Beeley’s youtube –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmiEyZ9anLQ
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/professors-shut-down-debate-over-assad-s-chemical-attacks-n899fjdkm
“Her proudest moment…”
Assad’s government refer to the misses Beeley and Bartlet as “our female warriors”.
Typical of you.
Vanessa Beeley and Kate Bartlett have been risking their lives in the formerly war-torn Syria while our presstitute stenographers have been sat at home printing ‘stories’ from a guy in Coventry and another in Leicester. And to think that this former bastion of news, at home and abroad, our oldest surviving newspaper, has set up a paywall for people to read its lies. John Walter would turn in his grave.
Thank you John.
Kemp Has NO IDEA WHAT A WARRIOR IS
A warrior is someone who fights for a particular cause.
Barlett and Beeley are “fighting” for Assad and Putin.
Alternatively Kempe, they are fighting for the truth, which happens to be on that side.
Kempe
Everyone who hates Israelis using Palestinians for target practise is an anti-fascist, not an anti-Semite. And everyone who opposes USUKIS re-colonisation of the Middle East knows that the causes of world wars 1 &2 were economic rivalries between colonial powers, not supporters of cruel dictators. Your blatant trolling lies need opposing. Why on earth do you keep doing it? Are you Oliver Kamm’s peeroll?
“Everyone who hates Israelis using Palestinians for target practise is an anti-fascist, not an anti-Semite.”
Worth repeating.
” they are fighting for the truth ”
They’ve both been caught out lying.
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-eva-bartletts-claims-about-syrian-children
Not everybody who has the intelligence to see the world differently to you is a troll or a paid shill, no matter how convenient it might be to label them as such.
“Not everybody who has the intelligence to see the world differently to you is a troll or a paid shill, no matter how convenient it might be to label them as such.”
You wouldn’t happen to be referring to yourself and Vanessa Beeley and Kate Bartlett there, would you?
Here are seven short films by Vanessa showing the brutality and depravity of life under terrorist occupied Eastern Ghouta. These heartbreaking testimonies also expose the White Helmets’ true colours – not just a propaganda construct, but a psycological black op deeply embedded with western backed terrorist groups and contriving to escalate the crisis by concocting a pretext for full UK / US invasion. Why don’t we see this people on BBC I ask rhetorically https://bsnews.info/eastern-ghouta-testimonies/
Mike
Thank you
*BS News*
Nomen est omen…
Wonderful phrase – “presstitute stenographers”!
The Street of Shame has always had its whores. It is a tragedy to see The Times, under Murdoch, fallen among them.
This is what would happen were the railways to be renationalised by a leftish Labour government:
a) there would be a massive increase in government debt (the existing shareholders would need to be compensated; simple expropriation would be contrary to the international human rights provisions so beloved by many)
b) fares would be kept artificially low for electoral reasons but wage increases demanded by the unions involved would be granted; the result : more massive public expenditure, paid for in the end by the general taxpayer, whether a rail user/rail commuter or not
c) the government would no doubt be wary of seeking any efficiency gains which might involve shedding staff. Note in this connection that the refusal of governments in the age of nationalisation to seek efficiency gains by shedding labour was all the more forgivable in conditions characterised by overfull employment and an unhealthily tight labour market.
Heaven forbid ordinary working people should get a decent wage..
Don’t be so silly, Xavi, you know that wasn’t my point. Why spoil the discussion?
Did you mean assets? Or collateral they’d become if bought to offset the balance?
“a) there would be a massive increase in government debt (the existing shareholders would need to be compensated; simple expropriation would be contrary to the international human rights provisions so beloved by many)”
It’s not against any law, international or otherwise, to expropriate the ill-gotten assets of crooks, such as the filthy criminals in the City, including e.g. the “queen’s stockbrokers” Cazenove, and Hambros Bank too, and indeed all the interests who were knowingly involved in the rail privatisation heist.
You thought anyone who’s filthy rich has some kind of “human right” to keep their stuff? Wait a minute…I can guess what political party is your favourite.
I fear, Nevermind, that you’re not too well acquainted with either the UN or the EU Conventions on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Both proscribe confiscation of private property.
Unless it is done by the tories on behalf of their fat-cat friends.
Please. There is no need even to discuss the question of confiscation. So far as I am aware the franchises terminate automatically after a set period – usually five years. All the government has to do is let them lapse into public ownership.
Isn’t this correct?
Bert.
They are longer than 5 years, but yes.
I notice there’s a coordinated push on railways, intensifying since the local elections. Seems those in the employ of shareholders are doing the rounds with arguments not even speculative, just irrelevant, specious, misleading or untrue.
Charles, That’s taking the ECHR & FF to an extremely far-fetched conclusion of its policies. I don’t believe that the ECHR or the FF apply to privatised companies or the nationalisation of them. The fact is a Government is allowed to re-nationalise industries – the ECHR or F F will not hold any jurisdiction over its decisions.
This is what would really happen:-
a) The Labour party has explained that franchises would be nationalised as and when they run out. No compensation would be needed.
b) The subsidy paid to TOCs disappears as direct profit payouts or indirect profits via various jiggery pokery (e.g. high debt levels with high interet rates on that debt) would no longer be necessary. This could be used to lower fares. Note that cross subsidies between high revenue and low revenue services would be possible.
c) It would be possible through long term planning to cut costs. In addition, there must be a large amount of redundancy through various franchises all doing the same thing. It would be possible to rationalise this.
Yes Sharpears O/T
It’s really interesting to note how the world is changing in our young century.
On Ajazeera the Lobby programme was run and was quite shocking. It lead to Israel demanding Saudi Arabia closing airspace and demanding the shutdown of the channel.
The shared interest between Israel and Saudi Arabia has never been so clear after this announcement.
Sorry aljazeera
However, I certainly admit that rail renationalisation might well be popular with many electors.
We have to remember that to have had any practical experience of the more than mediocre service provided by the nationalised railways in, say, the 1970s you would now be almost 60. And for the 1960s, almost 70. Voters under the age of 50 will have had no experience of those times and are quite likely to fall for electoral bribes of the ‘you’ll get something both better and cheaper for free’. Look at the success at the last general election of Labour’s various promises on university tuition fees (some of which it’s already rowed back on since then).
Contrary to Mr John (above),I would say : do not vote for Mr Corbyn’s Labour!
Yes Charles, the existing UK model – world’s most expensive fares, abysmal service, billionaire bandits subsidized by taxpayers – is the celebrated gold standard to which the rest aspire.
Xavi – you’re being silly again for the second time in less than 5 minutes or perhaps just over excited. Did I say that the current UK system is the ‘gold standard’ to which the rest of the world aspires? Please don’t spoil a good discussion with flip statements (but thank you for remaining on topic).
Your tone has a familiar ring. Your slip has been showing since page 1.
What is being missed here is also the role of the Strategic Rail Authority and the Rail Passenger Council. The Tory motto in any services that might help the ranks of the ordinary working people is ‘Vested Interests Rule OK’ – that is, those of their wealthy funders and the very rich. Some years ago, in fact, a good few years ago, I had a legitimate, serious complaint against First Great Western Railways (I have to say the very worst, most incompetent, dishonest, expensive rail operating service in this country). I attended a meeting with the then Director of FGWR (Mr Kinchen-Smith who I mentally thought of as the ‘kitchen sink’ and the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Rail Passenger Council who felt I was owed a great deal of compensation for the severity of the daily delays in my travel. Well, all I can say is no wonder FGWR is the worst train operating company in the UK – neither the Director nor the managers at the meeting were fit to be cleaning carriages let alone managers. They didn’t have a clue what they were doing, saying or how their business operated. They had all these alleged facts and figures and a load of ‘soundbites’ but nothing of substance. They hadn’t banked on me. I had done my research, performance, quality insurance and turning around failing services being my stock-in-trade at the time. I stuck to stating statistical facts, figures, performance failures throughout the meeting and, when they had no ‘soundbites’ left and realised they could not answer my questions, they terminated the meeting. They were a bunch of cowboys then and still are now. However, I was advised by the Chair of the Rail Passenger Council that making a complaint to the SRA was a waste of time as they would merely protect the interests of the TOC’s – in other words, they were not impartial in any sense of the word. They would probably renew FGWR’s operating licence despite very public failures in its services and an extremely high level of discontent. So, in whatever form I am in no doubt that a nationalised train service is the best option. Just adding a little something to support my view here – does anyone remember the Virgin Trains East Coast line renewal – which the SRA awarded to FGWR – but Virgin won a subsequent court case. It turns out that an independent, highly respected company in the City was tasked to undertake a full review of both bids and how FGWR had been awarded the bid. I remember reading several articles at the time but the firm of City Analysts clearly and unequivocally stated that there had been highly illegal and irregular contact between the FGWR, the Dept of Transport and the SRA – characterised by a set of e-mails – which showed how the DoT, SRA and FGWR manipulated information, provided full support to FGWR for their bid – even though it was completely untenable and they already had an appalling track record and acted generally, in an illegal manner vis-a-vis this bid. Bring back nationalisation – it has to be a great deal better than this kind of back-handed approach to issuing TOC licences!
I wonder how you would have got on bringing the same complaint against British Rail. Probably the same result.
Xavi, you are not being silly – you are right.
“However, I certainly admit that rail renationalisation might well be popular with many electors.”
Yes, and we’re all the great unwashed, don’t you know? Either that, or we don’t like the criminal theft of public resources by the filthy spivs inside and outside the City of London who are so respected in the Tory party (and by Blairites too). Not “hard workers”. Filthy lying spivs who have had it coming to them for about 300 years.
Note to Scottish nationalists: what would happen if you pressurised the SNP leadership to focus on the City of London, meaning the financial interests who own it, rather than on “London” as a dogwhistle term for “England”?
Tories foam at the mouth with hatred at the thought of working class people thinking they have a “right” to a decent publicly funded rail service where the funding goes into running the service and not mostly into spivs’ pockets, or a right to health treatment that’s free at the point of use, etc. etc. etc. And we’re all stupid! We’re all youngsters! We’re all freeloaders! Right?
For most Tories the main ideology is simply that “the general public” are scum. It comes down to those five words. Most Tories have massive chips on their shoulders but they don’t know it, and most are as thick as too short planks, who wouldn’t know a syllogism if it booted them up their coccyx.
That working class people (why do you only mention working class people by the way – is Mr Murray ‘working class’?) are entitled to expect a decently funded rail service can certainly be a valid point of view but what is the validity of saying that the decent funding should be public? Is it not valid to take the view that the funding should be borne at least in majority part by the actual users (ie, the beneficiaries)? Would you for instance argue that motorists – I assume you are a motorist? – should not be obliged to pay vehicle licence duty and have their motor insurance premiums be paid for by general taxation? I feel your response (both content and style) is more the expression of a desire for class warfare than a serious contribution to the discussion initiated by Mr Murray.
Wrong Charles, oh so wrong. Not only are the passengers (oops sorry, it’s customers these days isn’t it – for passengers they would have to provide a service, for customers just tickets) already paying an extortionately high price for a terrible service but the TOCs are posting record profits whilst still being heavily subsidised by the Tax payer – to the tune of billions of pounds of Govt subsidies. So the passengers are not only paying exhorbitantly but through their taxes, are paying even more. Notwitstanding this, the Govt refused to freeze train price hikes every year so the TOCs raise fares way above the cost of inflation without any interference from the Govt. Last year, the rises were very high, apparently, to fund engineering works that are the responsibility of Network Rail and the TOCs. Passengers should not experience fare increases for these issues. The TOCs record billions of pounds of profits – they should invest at least 1/3rd of that back into the rail infrastructure and engineering works.
Vehicle License Duty does not pay for the roads – if it did it would have to at least treble. I don’t have a car but pay for the roads and road users via taxation, so why shouldn’t the railways be paid for in the same way?
Plus the Tories have got us back to their preferred position where rail users are subsidising road users – vehicle duty frozen for x number of years now while rail fares rise above inflation year after year.
Where did I make reference to the great unwashed? My point was that the majority of voters have no experience of the state of the railways when they were nationalised; it is clear that they might well be attracted to populist policies of the sort ‘everything will be better and cheaper if nationalised’.
What is attractive about the current, non-populist model, Charles? One that the rest of Europe seems resistant to adopting.
I definitely had experience of the nationalised railways – way better than we have now.
what is a spiv?
Kristen, it’s a sort of cheeky chappy conman who is always wheeler dealing and is fundamentally dishonest, making a living out of misrepresentation and conning people.
Do you have any evidence that the nationalised railways in the 60’s and 70’s was mediocre? I thought not.
Anecdotally, I recall that it was perfectly OK, and that ticket prices were reasonable.
Of course if you support neoliberalism, then your unevidenced rhetoric is understandable.
In otherwise, everyone who remembers the railways after the Beechings sell off? Besides, as someone who used the railways frequently up until privatisation, trains were not only cheaper and more convenient (single fare on complex journies across many networks for example) but better served by many more routes and services. Because, after all, it was a service.
The evidence is all to the contrary.
Weird, posted in response to Charles above…
J – You are right about the fares – these days, you can’t even by a return on many routes – you have to buy two singles – making the journey much more expensive.
Well, as I have said before, my experience of British Rail was ancient carriages, ancient and knackered locomotives that kept failing, delays up to two hours on a two-hour journey, a complete lack of reliability in that you had to ring the station to see if your train was on time, or more often, how late it was running if it was running at all, a total lack of any information when things did go wrong, etc etc. Set against this, the rank and file railway workers were usually as helpful as they could be, but this only contrasted with the complete ineptitude of the management.
“We have to remember that to have had any practical experience of the more than mediocre service provided by the nationalised railways in, say, the 1970s you would now be almost 60.”
Well, I am over 60 and the train service was much better in British Rail days and much cheaper. Plus Manchester to Euston was a faster service then and very reasonably priced, not as now, only if you book weeks ahead for a specific train.
The decision to reimpose sanctions is very disappointing to me as work in in Iran on a regular basis, in fact I have only just returned from Tabriz.
I have brought up sanction snap back a lot with customers (and taxi drivers) and nobody really seemed that bothered, there was never a sense of urgency in getting a deal done or delivered which always frustrated me especially when customers kept telling me “no rush, it will happen”.
It soon became clear that their are a lot of very very wealthy Iranian business men that never really wanted sanctions lifted, obviously the everyday folk was very happy to have sanctions lifted.
Over the past year I’ve seen tourism grow hugely and the general standards rise, new cars, internet speed, 4G, new shops etc etc
I don’t know if Trump will cause change or drive Iran into partnership with China and Russia but either way I’m rather depressed that I will probably not see my friends and colleagues again. I have just had lots of messages from them saying they are not concerned about Trump but I certainly am.
What worries me is that it seems that you only taken seriously if you actually have nuclear weapons. You have something to negotiate with, and this I fear will be road Iran will take.
I don’t know where everything will end up but I do think things will get a lot worse before it gets better.
We saw with North Korea what Trump’s methods are. By blowing a problem out of all proportion and then apparently solving it he gets a hubris rush. As for the pleasure of having strange creatures inspect his inner cavers, like Boris Johnson, it’s only a gigantic film-set made from scaffolding, brown silicon and tarpaulin and the money and materials came from his overseas aid budget. Trump has no policy except Trump staying on top, and the key to achieving this is to appease the Zionists. Iran and Israel are old croney comedians like Morecombe and Wise. it’s the little dance they do together using big threats and fulsome rhetoric against Obama, the creator of Daesh, that show one that we are inside a massive Hollywood people scare prop.
netanyahoo only got the job of starring in gangster movies because of his extremely ugly face.
“The lady replied that these were ‘complimentary’ and that meant they were a gift”
She’s talking b***ocks. If you didn’t receive them, you shouldn’t go by what some twit at the railway station tells you. You should consider making a claim. How can goods or services be a “gift” if you only get them when you buy something? I would argue that they’re obviously part of the package you’re buying. In othe words, they are part of what they company agreed to provide to you under the contract of sale, in return for your payment. Even if you were to accept the word “gift”, a promise to give someone something is still enforceable.
Phone companies use this trick all the time. Sometimes they even call what you’ve paid for an “allowance”, as if you’re not really entitled to it but they might give you it as a privilege, out of the kindness of their hearts, so long as it’s convenient for them, and so long as you’re a good boy or girl.
So quit whingeing and send them a b***ard of a letter. Claim for the time and money you had to spend getting sustenance when eventually you were able to, for the discomfort you experienced on a hot day, and of course for the cost of preparing and writing the letter.
The managing director of Virgin Trains is Phil Whittingham, [email protected]
I was very surprised to see First class carriages on trains at Exeter, where I have been working recently. I didn’t know we still had this class relic in public transport. If the only reason people use it is to secure a seat and a snack, of course these things are a right not a wish as part of the service. but it should not be called First class; it should be called seat and snack class to distinguish it from everything else. Quite apart from the snobbish Victorian connotations, how can one compare the experience of sharing a train with hundreds of other passengers with the freedom to stop, pray, eat, etc as desired in an air-conditioned car? I came back from work last night with 10 boxes of carpet tiles, all my tools and family on board. HS2 will mostly ferry young execs form Birmingham and Manchester down to London for a days work because housing in the capital is unaffordable. The nobs from London will still be using their executive cars.
I spent three different periods working for the railways.
Each time I returned the people were paid more and cared less.
Under the original BR, employees were passionate about the company, not just their own jobs. People were frustrated by the continuing tory strangulation of funds in order to prepare for the sell off. At one stage I worked for four different companies in 3 years and only moved 20 yards, such were the nonsense consultancy re-badging and re-divisioning of resources.
My second and third engagements with the railways was dominated by consultants creaming, and averagely skilled people who I had known previously working for £25k per annum, 6 years later charged in at £1,200 per day consultants with “expert knowledge”.
Tory privatization basically removed all the skills from the industry and all the issues from there- network rail etc followed on
If I recall correctly the rolling stock leasing companies were sold on at huge profits within a few months of being set up. Funny, but the government didn’t demand the money back from the City firms that had “advised” it. It was a criminal heist pure and simple. It’s reminiscent of how a few mafia bosses (“oligarchs”) in Russia acquired most of that country’s industry at knockdown prices.
At one point government funding of the British rail sector was running at five times what it was when the sector was in state hands. That’s while services have been cut and prices have soared. How can anyone call that any kind of success in the public interest? Yet there haven’t even been any prosecutions, let alone jail sentences. Britain is as corrupt as Ireland or Russia or Spain, any day of the week.
One of the three leasing companies, Porterbrook, was sold by the government for £528m and then eight months later it was sold on for £826m. And nobody went to jail. Similar sell-ons happened with the other two leasing companies. Not only has nobody gone to jail, but the theft has continued for more than 20 years, with involvement by Tory, Tory-LibDem, and Labour governments, and the City of London criminals are grinning. This is the reality of Britain. A similar story can be told of what has happened with tertiary “educatin”, with a large number of youngsters being “taught” any old shit so long as they get into big debt.
It’s all about the City.
The criminal way that the Tories privatised the railways is not an argument against private ownership, it is an argument against that sort of privatisation. Just because something can and is done badly does not mean it should not be done or cannot be done better.
“Under the original BR, employees were passionate about the company, not just their own jobs.”
You must have been talking to railwaymen. Railway enthusiasm was frowned on amongst the management. I remember hearing from a computer expert who went to do a job in the BR HQ at Derby. He went by rail, the HQ being handy for the station. Talking to the management when he got there, he found that everyone he spoke to drove to work, despite getting free travel on the train. I also recall a letter to a railway publication from a manager who said that he found being a railway enthusiast very helpful when dealing with union representatives, as they were usually enthusiasts too. However, he had withheld his name and address because he said that being known to senior management as an enthusiast would be bad for his promotion prospects.
Malaga Airport to Arroyo de la Miel – €2.05 … Exeter to Exmouth (around the same distance) £4.80. Somewhere there’s a message.
Absolutely.
Malaga – María Zambrano railway station to Ronda. An amazing scenic journey into the interior of Andalucía in a squeaky clean RENFE train at a fraction of the cost of a comparable trip in the UK, not that there are any!
**
I am grateful to m’learned friend!
If UK railways really were a conduit for bolstering the profits of train operating companies then life would be simple but unfair.
The reality is that fares are expensive and subsidies are provided and yet train operating companies still cannot make a profit
https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21736560-franchises-financial-woes-raises-questions-over-rail-privatisation-virgin-east-coast-close
The real problems relate to the fact that the UK is a small, densely populated country with a history of common law. This all means that infrastructure is overloaded and any additional infrastructure has long lead times and is very expensive due to land acquisition difficulties and costs.
Comparisons to geographically larger, less densely populated countries with a different legal system are as misleading today as they have ever been.
But comparisons to the cost of running services in the UK under BR vs costs of running the same services under RB(ranson) and his ilk are completely valid
I get the feeling Loony would object to comparisons made with geographically smaller, more densely populated countries with the same legal system just so long as he could make the thieving corrupt City of London filth and the Tory spivs smell like roses.
I feel that your comments would gain more respect if you refrained from your over liberal use of words like ‘scum’, ‘spivs’, ‘filth’. ‘criminal’ and other manifestations of the language of the gutter. It is most unimpressive. Is this the way to conduct a civilised discussion?
To answer your question, I believe so, yes.
Enough with passionless clinicalism. It gives most of the ground to the enemy at the get-go.
Do you have any idea how much the elite circles despise the lower orders, the sheer level of their contempt? Return it to them, doubled, and we might get somewhere.
Your mileage may, of course, differ.
I get the feeling N_ would not object to any comparisons just so long as he was able to call the City of London thieving corrupt filth and the Tory spivs.
But neither Mr Murray nor any of the excited commenters have made precisely that comparison. Are you aware of the huge deficits the nationalised British Rail used to run (paid for by general taxpayers many of whom might never have set foot in a railway carriage)?
Not really no.
British Rail was a fully integrated enterprise that in addition to the day to day running of the network also manufactured, maintained and repaired rolling stock. The latter part of its operations were all smashed and destroyed. It will not be coming back.
It was deliberately smashed and destroyed in order to meet the demands of German companies for new markets. it is still going on. Here is a case from 2011 where the British government chose to prioritize the demands of Germany over its own citizens need for work.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/8617292/Britains-last-train-making-company-Bombardier-announces-1400-job-cuts.html
The evidence of what the EU is, is all around you. It is everywhere.
First the Mail, and now The Telegraph.What a fount of impartia, unprejudicedl knowledge you are!
“But comparisons to the cost of running services in the UK under BR vs costs of running the same services under RB(ranson) and his ilk are completely valid”
Those are not figures that we have been given. Do you happen to have them to hand?
“still cannot make a profit”
That’s all a crock of public relations, paid for and printed in the Economist. Somebody’s making a huge profit. Maybe the books of those companies show that all their funding gets paid out in costs. So what? What about the books of their suppliers? The money paid by the government and by passengers is real money. Why does it cost so much more than it did to run a railway? Oh the poor capitalist scum are hit by such inflated prices! Oh how my heart bleeds for them! It’s a heist, a criminal heist involving multi-billion-pound level corruption.
In 2001 Railtrack essentially went bankrupt
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/railtrack-goes-bankrupt-with-debts-of-33bn-9132843.html
Many of the 300,000 shareholders who lost out there would have been ordinary people working in ordinary jobs – not typically described as “capitalist scum”
What about the “books of their suppliers”? Do you mean the books of entities like Carillion? Best ask PwC as they have been appointed liquidators for that failed entity. That collapse has left 3,200 “capitalist scum” unsure as to whether their jobs still exist.
@Loony, oh Tory troll. You wrote
“yet train operating companies still cannot make a profit”
Then I wrote about how train leasing companies were sold on at a massive profit within months of privatisation on the advice of the City of London’s “finest”.
Now you say Railtrack essentially went bankrupt. Yes they did, and they were neither a train operating company nor a leasing company. How can a company go bankrupt when it gets huge government subsidies for running what used to be run in the state sector at a much lower cost? Ask anyone from Ireland, Russia, Nigeria, China or Italy, or anywhere in the world except Britain or perhaps Scandinavia, and you’ll get the right answer. They stole. And politicians helped them. That’s how. It’s time that the massive OBVIOUS corruption got called by its name in Britain.
Enron went bankrupt too. Oh the poor self-sacrificial darlings. Were profits down?
“Why does it cost so much more than it did to run a railway?”
How do you know that it does?
Excellent points, Loony. The speed and (legal) ease with which the French government built the various French TGV lines provides proof of your points.
Ah, that’s why you called me uncivilised. I thought for a moment you were a critic of injustice who just had a different approach and different formative influences from mine. Silly me. Not if you think the Tory Loony makes excellent points you’re not.
It’s almost as if it’s in the franchise owners interests to increase needless costs to cream off as much money as possible….
CommonSpace website reported the other day that the Home Office refused a visa for a Canadian teacher of Gaelic to come to the island of Mull and take up a post at the school there. The only qualified applicant for the job was turned down by Amber Rudd’s Home Office, thereby putting the teaching of Gaelic in jeopardy on the island.
Will Sajid Javid be more sympathetic? I don’t know if he speaks Urdu, but some of his relations must speak what is, like Gaelic, a minority language in the HO’s jurisdiction. Come on Sajid.
I agree with your point, but it’s also interesting that the intending employer, presumably Argyll and Bute council (run by a Tory, LibDem and Independent coalition), couldn’t attract any qualified applicants from Scotland, especially since the Canadian person may well speak Gaelic with a Cape Breton twang. Perhaps they should offer more money and benefits? Are the Home Office claiming the council filled in the visa sponsorship form wrong? Just a guess.
I’m not exactly a classical economist but if there’s standing room only on trains, representing high demand, that to me suggests the tickets are too cheap.
In an unencumbered market you’d expect two things to happen; 1) tickets would become more expensive, alleviating the problem of crowding, and 2) railway operators would bring more supply to the market (that is, more trains).
The problem here, then, arguably, isn’t that the free market is failing but that it isn’t being allowed to function as a free market ought to. There’s a lot of this going around.
There are some things that I definitely think the free market shouldn’t be allowed near, like say policing, but I don’t think transport is one of them.
Why should I as a person who doesn’t use public transport, subsidise those who do?
And while we are on the subject, why should my use of the roads be hampered by bus and bicycle lanes? I am paying to subsidise buses, I am paying for road manintenance, and now I have subsidised buses taking up half the roads I pay for.
As if that isn’t bad enough, if I drive on these bus lanes i am fined by government officials and courts that I also pay for and should I refuse to pay those fines I risk being imprisoned in an institution that, you guessed it, I have also paid for.
I don’t love the free market but maybe we should try it some time.
Hatuey
Or simply there is no viable alternative in many cases for using the railways as many of us common people have noticed.
SA, I don’t understand what you mean by no alternative. If you are talking about commuters then it seems to me there are many alternatives. There are buses, which I also subsidise and which are generally cheaper, or they could get a job that didn’t require lengthy journeys.
Why should I subsidise someone in say Wolverhampton who is lured to work in London? Why? He’s only going to work in London out of self interest / greed. The same logic can be applied anywhere.
Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there’s people who are on benefits. You might think there’s a clearer case for subsidising their travel but here it really breaks down. Many of them already get mobility cars (paid for by me again) and more or less refuse to use public transport.
And if they (the poor) are simply poor and don’t have mobility cars then why do they expect someone else to pay and — more importantly — where are they going that’s so important? If you’re skint you really shouldn’t be jaunting around sight seeing.
So I’m paying for greedy people to commute. I’m paying for their buses and trains. I’m paying for the roads. I’m not allowed to use half the roads I pay for because some nutter decided to give priority to buses. I pay for many of the cars clogging up the parts of the roads I am allowed to use. And as if that isn’t bad enough, the whole system is dire and leaves everybody feeling aggrieved.
Why not leave it entirely to the free market, it surely couldn’t do a worse job?
There are buses….
This is the giveaway Hat. Surely you do not really think that buses are an alternative to railways?
“Or simply there is no viable alternative in many cases for using the railways as many of us common people have noticed.”
There is always a viable alternative to using the railways, it’s what everyone in the countryside uses and it’s called a car.
Also I seem to remember that you like to test out these absurd theories whilst you really think the opposite, not so?
The test for whether a service or utility should belong to the nation are that they affect our security and well being as a nation, that they are basic infrastructures that have value beyond the profit they generate, and transport is one of these whether you are a user or not.
Another category of course introduced by the red Tories and endorsed wholeheartedly by the blue ones is that of organisations that are too big to fail. This of course include a lot of the gangster money grabbing and laundering institutions who can be nationalised when nescessary.
The test you talk about as if it’s real is actually a figment of your imagination. There is a principle that applies to areas of the economy that are considered strategically important in security terms. One of the reasons agriculture was integrated in Europe via the CAP, for example, was because they deemed food to be one such area of importance to national economies. It was a flimsy argument then and it’s flimsier now.
But nobody to my knowledge argued that Nigel traveling from Wolverhampton to London in order to work in a laundry was a strategic aspect of the economy which had implications for national security.
Maybe if we didn’t subsidise Nigel’s travel he wouldn’t do that and the London laundries would be forced to relocate to places where there was a better supply of labour. And that, of course, would be better for the taxpayers like me, the environment, and the economy as a whole in terms of spreading the wealth. Most importantly, it would be better for Nigel who wouldn’t need to waste so many hours a day traveling.
When I’m online I don’t really factor in what motivates people in terms of what they say. You shouldn’t either. Play the ball, forget the man.
You seem to be a Thatcherite of the ‘three is no such thing as society’ and a neoliberal of the kind that places profits and immediate utility against human endeavour and collective good. Such people have no redemption in my books unless they recant and do penance to redeem themselves.
There rather than three.
SA, you seem to forget that the railways were not provided as a service by a beneficent government, they were built by private companies for private profit. In any case, the “basic infrastructure” of the railways, the land , stations and track, are already in public ownership. Are you suggesting that all road transport should be nationalised, including your car (if you have one)? Roads after all, “are basic infrastructures that have value beyond the profit they generate” and the trackbed of the railways is the same as the roads. Indeed, in most other countries, it is the rail road.
“Why should I as a person who doesn’t use public transport, subsidise those who do?”
I hadn’t had you down as a Tory before, Hatuey.
That kind of argument leads to the privatisation of everything, or almost everything, armed private company goons all over the place, and mass extermination by market or other means.
I’m afraid I don’t think very well into any category. There are aspects of, and dynamics generated by, the free market which I think are efficient and useful to society.
The idea that transport should be treated as more important than say mining or manufacturing — or balloon selling, for that matter — has no real logic or reasoning underpinning it. It’s just a matter of opinion and one that I disagree with.
I think there are more important things we could use public money for. I think the money would be better spent by the taxpayer too. It’s trendy to be unquestioningly left-leaning these days but when you actually look at what we subsidise as taxpayers, a lot of it is really welfare for big businesses and the rich, not the poor as people would have you believe.
Well. I have to give credit to Mr Bostick on here. He certainly sticks at it!
😉
Thank you very much, Sharp Ars !
You remind me of a previous poster on here who shall be nameless. He was banned eventually.
You mean someone who was/is generally polite, not cynical nor embittered, highly rational with well reasoned arguments, original, well-read, patiently suffered fools and was not given to childish tit-for-tat degenerated name-calling, etc.? How terrible to let loose such class and elegance amongst sadly embittered squatters subsidised by state benefits.
PS Charles, in the end Freud got the better of you, I note!
Also who spends a lot of time in sock puppetry, if there is such an expression. This last one could be very clever but I guess the moderators know what they are doing. Good try.
He provides no reasoning at all for Britain having the world’s most expensive rail system. And what’s with this childish name calling of yours, Yusuf? Seems a bit odd to be praise somebody for refraining from it merely as a prelude to launching into it yourself?
Titter.
The staff in Edinburgh were incorrect here. Contact virgins customer relations team and advise you were unable to sit on the service. Let them know the service you were on and enclose a copy of your ticket. They’ll reimburse you the difference between standard and first.
Your rights are laid out in the national rail conditions of travel & this particular one is on page 23 in section 31. Hope this helps!
Excellent comments from the regulars on here today. One wonders if the newcomers have been sent in on a mission. Perhaps some even work in the world of the privatised railway world of spivs and get rich quick boyos.
Whittingham N_. Ah yes. KPMG. The incubator. You come across them in the world of NHS privatisation. They even loan their staff to some MPs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Whittingham
Bostock trots out the usual story of nationalised industries being a disaster. Not so East Coast Rail. But more to the point, these 1960/1970 disasters were run by awful management, with awful trade practices, fighting unions with some awful practices. The idea that a better system is to send most of the money made to the Cayman Islands is ludicrous. The current financial model has ruined the UK, leaving a large proportion of the population destitute, in debt, Ill educated and properly shafted. Fiat money. The idea that having a country of people who merely consume is absurd and is sadly propagated by some on this blog.
Craig,
( Off topic)
Let us hear you on President Trump’s decision to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran.
Thanks.
Courtenay
P.S. Most likely you would gotten there even without my prompting. Sooner rather than later -O.K? It is important.
“you would gotten there”
So – would have gotten there…
right!
Craig, you’ve given us less than half the story . How does everyone else in Europe seemingly manage it better than us. Is our government incompetent or perhaps corrupt.
God knows the roads are no joy and the country always seems to be in debt!
UK roads are also screwed – and why would they not be.
In 1982 there were 12 million vehicles on the roads. Today there are 44 million. Do you think there are almost 4 times as many roads today than in 1982?
Whilst the British are largely useless in most things they do at least train their drivers (especially professional drivers) to a high standard. So that too needs to be undermined – and the best way is to flood the roads with foreign lorries. Here are some of the wholly predictable consequences of that policy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3070844/Motorway-accidents-involving-foreign-lorries-soared-14-cent-Polish-drivers-topping-crash-league-table.html
Haha, you’re quoting the Daily Mail as a source for your specious claims. too funny. All those foreigners, innit.
Someone else with basic comprehension problems.
The Daily Mail is the reporting vehicle. The source is Accident Exchange. The claims are not mine but are those of Accident Exchange.
Hopefully the foregoing has assisted in lifting the fog of confusion that you appear to be lost in.
One of the problems with Britain now, is because of monetarism / Thatcherism / Privatisation, it is thought that everything “must make a profit” It is important to understand that we are living in a form of “fantasy money land” with Fiat money. So, if the government simply prints money to pay for things, there is no need for a pubic service to be “making a profit”. The need for privatisation is the need for looting of the system by those at the top.
We are living with the consequences of lack of investment due to looting and selfishness of those on the gravy train.
Sure there has been looting, and why not the looters get rich. They have both motive and opportunity.
The real question is why the general population has stood idly by and allowed the looting to continue with barely a word of complaint. If the victims of all this looting don’t care then why should the looters care?
The middle and investor classes (managerial class?) were led to believe they could profit from the dismantling of the state (quite a few did for a while.)
Utter ill-concieved junk. Nobody is arguing that transport must make a profit. Just as nobody is arguing that selling balloons must make a profit. If it makes a profit well that’s fine.
I simply don’t see why I as a taxpayer should pay for trains or balloons that I don’t use. If enough people want balloons or trains and are prepared to pay what it naturally costs to provide them, I have no problem with someone making a profit.
As usual, the left leaning cadres of the world are guided by their bleeding hearts and not their heads. But their hearts are as always wrong; subsidising transport helps businesses more than it helps the deserving poor.
Nationalising transport is the equivalent of giving billions of pounds to private industry and encourages them to behave stupidly too.
Then there’s the blessed commuters who are somehow deemed to be deserving and sacred. They travel so many miles a day out of pure self interest and for some reason think other mugs should pay. I’m sorry but fuck them. Get a job closer to home.
“I simply don’t see why I as a taxpayer should pay for trains”
You already do. As has been patiently explained to you, since privatisation the rail subsidy has equal to and above what the railways cost before privatisation. As usual, those who have generally profited from a destructive, unnecessary, unfair and costly ideology are loathe to have it removed from their sticky paws. Or as Upton Sinclair said:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
“As has been patiently explained to you, since privatisation the rail subsidy has equal to and above what the railways cost before privatisation.”
Where has it been explained? Groundlessly asserted, yes, but I don’t remember seeing an explanation.
I fear, Nevermind,… And Rightly Too.. You Torturer of women
People should live in eternity. Problem solved.
I cannot find the quote (due doubtless to ‘algorithms’), but even the execrable Ted Heath remarked about Privatisation that it was ‘Selling off the family silver’.
But then again, Hitler is said to have liked dogs.
It was Harold Macmillan in 1985. His family had silver, Heath’s didn’t.
It seems almost all privatisations are pretty disastrous. On the matter of rail it is noted:
The failure of state-subsidized private rail is summed up by the case of one company that was brought into public hands in 2009. According to the Office of Rail Regulation in 2013, when it came to taxpayers’ money the publicly owned East Coast mainline was the most efficient rail company, receiving far less public money than any of the UK’s fifteen privately run rail franchises. Just 1 per cent of East Coast’s income was a government subsidy, compared to up to 36 per cent for privately owned companies. East Coast had made leaps and bounds in performance after nationalization, including a big drop in complaints by passengers. But the Establishment’s free-market fundamentalism does not work pragmatically on the basis of ‘what works’, and, in January 2015, it was handed to a joint venture between Virgin – a company run by the tax exile Richard Branson – and Stagecoach, whose chairman, Brian Souter, was best known for his campaigns against gay rights. Public ownership had proved an embarrassing success that had to be ended. Labour’s Tom Watson tells me of a former transport minister who said to him: ‘These train operating companies are the nearest thing we’ve got to rogues and vagabonds in commerce, and regulatory arrangements are completely inadequate.’
[Jones, O. (2015) “The Establishment and how they get away with it.” London. Penguin Books. [p. 173]]
More recently I have persistent problems with mail not arriving. I now have a utility demanding that I pay a late-payment surcharge because the clapped out mail service – which can take up to 13 days to deliver, that is when they deliver at all – has not delivered the bills.
Bert.
And yet Concorde was funded by taxpayers for said City spivs to cross the Atlantic in 3 hours….
See that’s actually one of the few sane points I have read here on this subject. This is generally how subsidies work — they define it as some moral cause and then when you look closer it turns out you are really subsidising some bunch of greedy morons that have plenty and encouraging them to do something that is just stupid and needless.
What would happen if we stopped subsidising commuter travel to say London? Well, we can guess that a lot of businesses in London would struggle to fill jobs. Is that a nightmare? No. They would either need to relocate to places where there was a better supply of labour or pay more wages.
The free market is a drag eh, threatening to increase wages, spread the wealth, and help the environment… what a nightmare.
Hatuey
There’s the market, which is the god of Thatcherites, but like most if not all other man-made gods it can neither see nor hear, nor harm nor benefit. Tuning in to hotel TV yesterday, I was momentarily exposed to a whole sub-class of morons who actually believe in it, in the business reports in the early hours. there was a kind of cosy young imam who was head of corporate finance somewhere being questioned by a female cleric. There seemed no purpose in the liturgy other than the glorification of the false deity itself. It would do this and it would do that. Well if it was that easy, why can’t the nasty party just ask their god to fix a customs alliance with the EU without having to be nice to wogs. Just ask it to do it. or if you can’t be bothered, just stick it on a chit and light a candle or fill a glass of libation from France.
Dear market, we want wogs to be nice to us and not tax our imports, and we also want to stop them coming to our country because they are wogs. Taz.
What would happen if we stopped subsidising commuter travel to say London?
Well houses in the suburbs would be worth a lot less and you know what happens to governments that cause house prices to fall, don’t you?
Charles Bostock
May 8, 2018 at 21:16
you would be right to fear Nevermind ya little shit..torturer of women