i love travelling by train, there is something civilised about it. if you wanted to you could make an analogy that trains show what is both good and bad with the country, well you could, i won’t…
on all my recent travels by train there has only been the one occasion that there has been a serious delay. for the most part it was handled professionally, until the crew of the train changed and then we were all left in the dark again.
in the main i have find the staff to be very helpful, except the bloke at crewe who directs passengers to the various replacement coaches who is the most miserable jobsworth that ever lived.
most of the time i travel by virgin trains.
i am impressed that they can run four first class coaches that will have very few customers in them, but only run five standard class coaches on the same train that will be packed.
i am impressed by the ticket prices that are going to rise once more above the rate of inflation in 2008.
poor old tony blair wanted so desperately to leave an enduring legacy (it seems it is the done thing for politicians to want to leave something of note behind), his dream was partially scuppered by his involvement in iraq but it was also hampered by his blind loyalty to the thatcherite economic ideology of the market always being right. if he had been able to shake off the blinkers of thatcherism as easily as he has converted to catholicism he would have realised that one of the easiest ways of establishing a legacy would have been to renationalise the railways.
the point of privatising the railways was manifold: to break the power of the unions, to fill the public coffers and, of course, to prove that the market is the best way to do anything. the profit motive being the mainspring of innovation, entrepreneurial vision and efficiency.
well that was the plan. that was the spin.
for the railways it has meant a worsening service and increasing prices. there has been padding in the timetable in order to be able to say 95% of trains are now on schedule.
as it is christmas not only is it a time of deep religious belief it is also the time of bonuses. it is impressive to see that sir richard branson is about to trouser a £24 million dividend from virgin trains. all very nice for sir richard, who is a man of the people, well a man of the very rich people.
the dividend was defended as being a reflection of the companies “ success in attracting more customers”.
but hold your iron horses there pardner (see what i did there?) virgin have attracted more customers, so more customers means more money coming, means more profit. so by the rules of the profit motive and efficiency prices should come down! it just doesn’t work that way.
so virgin, whose service isn’t the best are about to put their prices up again. once more it will be above the rate of inflation. once more the reason will be to invest in the company.
lets not forget that for all the talk of the railways being private enterprises all the rail operators have their snouts in the public trough. virgin alone has had over £1 billion in public money to help subsidise their operation. frankly if sir richard can get that sort of money out of the treasury perhaps he does deserve is dividend.
even better people like sir richard get feted for being great businessmen when frankly even i could make a company work if i knew i was going to get public money, i knew i had a captive market and i know i could raise the prices when i wanted to.
today there were complaints that the rail system was going on a virtual shutdown for 50 hours, there were calls for the government to make sure there was a better service next year. the government said (rightly) it was for the train operators to make the decision.
we all know that private companies have not provided us with a better service, even the politicians. the political class do not want to invoke nationalisation for fear of upsetting “middle england”, meanwhile sir richard and his ilk are laughing all the way to the bank.
gordon brown do you want to have a legacy? well i tell you what you need to do and that is nationalise the rail. you will have your legacy, you will save money and you will be hailed a hero.
2 comments:
Excellent post and so right. Ironic how the new St Pancras has been having work done over xmas and engineering works are causing delays this new year.
You see, France has a much better rail system!
I do loathe the fact the railways are touted as private companies yet underwritten by the public purse to the tune of millions. When the shareholders in Railtrack whined about their losses and how dare the government intervene and demanded compensation I thought fine, here's your compensation. After you scunners pay back to the exchequer the billions you've had in subsidies. Oh dear, looks like you owe *us* money :-)
And as for prices - home to the folks several times over the hols and to visit my dad in hospital and oh look, a single ticket to Glasgow from Edinburgh costs almost the same as a return. WTF??? And why does a longer journey such as going to London cost 3 times as much as a cheap flight? Ohh, no, says GNER and Virgin, book early and get a return trip for this bargain price. Ok, I want to go to London in 3 weeks, can I book at that cheap rate? Er, no, not advance enough, you need to book 16 years in advance to get the super-saver rate...
That said how crap was the nationalised service in the old days? Crap, ancient rolling stock, dirty carriages, piss-poor public service from grumpy, lazy staff, trains always late or cancelled and endless strikes because the management dared to ask a staff member to do a couple of hours work instead of snoozing. Re-nationalising might work, but along with buying them back we'd need to try and make the staff feel proud to work there like they did back in the days of steam or we'd end up with a lazy bunch like we did in the 70s and 80s again.
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