Labour’s race to nationalise the railway system risks costing taxpayers more than £1bn a year as financial discipline breaks down, train operators have warned.
You mean capitalists, who personally get to keep any savings, keep a better hold of costs than bureaucrats, who do not?
My, my…
Property is theft, right? Your property…
I still don’t understand why politicians would want to take the blame for delayed trains rather than be able to shout at private businesses. Just look at the Post office and how they are being held responsible for the Horizon failures and jailing of innocent sub post masters.
Ah, I now see my error, expecting politicians to take responsibility.
@BiND, It surprises me too, especially as Labour gets its Union backers to fight the (Tory) government, but eventually a Labour government finds that the Unions are mad dogs that are prepared to savage their ‘owners’.
The stupidity of owning XL bullies also relates to how those owners vote.
I agree also, BiND and Excavator Man.
As a former bureaucrat, I’d naturally automatically dump the responsibility on someone else.
Labour will just create BritRail or some such crass branding, and then the Treasury will shit all over them when the costs become obvious.
Britain’s railways is already/still State-owned; they were never privatised.
Who owns track & infrastructure? The State.
Who owns the rights to run rail services and franchises them out? The State.
If the railways are not State owned, pubs with tenants aren’t owned by the breweries,
Alternative framing: group of companies sucking at the government teat issues speculative warning about bad things happening if their free milk is taken away.
The bit about “removing competition” is amusing. On any given route there’s a monopoly.
Bloke in North Dorset
July 30, 2024 at 7:15 am
I still don’t understand why politicians would want to take the blame for delayed trains…
Because of what F A Hayek called the fatal conceit: those who believe they can have enough knowledge and collect it to plan and control complex systems where knowledge is fragmented and each fragment resides in individuals throughout the demos.
The two key fundamental principles of Socialism (and Fascism) are elevation of the State above the individual and central economic planning and control. Whether Socialism or Fascism best describes Labour and Conservative these days is fodder for an interesting debate – although the difference is only cosmetic in practice.
Having a single entity running the railways has lots of cost benefits compared to the fragmented, overly bereaucratic nightmare that we currently have. State owned doesn’t have a good track record (:-)) but the current arrangement is expensive.
Maybe the UK could have the China State Railway Group run the whole operation……very efficient organisation indeed, covered most of China in a Very Fast Train network in about 10 years. The time it seems to have taken the London to Birmingham train scheme to have laid no track.
Jim (i t a)
But could the China State Railway Group shove anyone in the UK who gets in their way into the gulag??
Interesting point, Boganboy…..a list of the company shareholders shows some surprising people, including Blackrock, and also UK interests!via Google..)
The two key fundamental principles of Socialism (and Fascism) are elevation of the State above the individual and central economic planning and control.
Now to really upset Theo.
This is why, at the moment, I’m broadly in favour of fascism. The state you’re in now, democracy won’t get you out of it. Because nobody is going to vote for what would be needed. And it’s democratically elected socialism that’s got you into it. The Tories for the past couple of decades, at least, being a socialist party.
So the only way you’re going to get out of it is a strong dictatorship dragging you out, yelling & screaming by the scruff of your the necks.
The Hugo Boss uniforms are optional might be a nice touch. I’d go easy on the hairstyles & moustaches though. Bit too obvious. Try not to invade Poland
That’s why I don’t think Reform is the answer. There far too much libertarianism about Reform. And libertarianism is the last thing you need. Libertarianism is like communism. It’s great in theory but doesn’t work in practice when has to deal with actual humanity. You only have to look at the Samizdata site. A bunch of intellectuals been blowing wind for years without producing a single workable idea. Maybe Farage has hidden depths, but I just don’t see it. He’s a classic liberal. You’re suffering from classical liberalism.
Excavated Man,
“ It surprises me too, especially as Labour gets its Union backers to fight the (Tory) government, but eventually a Labour government finds that the Unions are mad dogs that are prepared to savage their ‘owners’.”
Indeed, it’s almost like they forgot about ‘74 to ‘79 or more likely falling in to the arrogant “this time it will be different” belief.
Bloke in Scotland,
Do you really think that there’s any difference between things being in separate companies than being in separate departments in a modern digital world? Everything you consume is about fragmented organisations. Apple hire Foxconn to make their phones and they buy things from Samsung (who buy from ARM), Corning, a little company in Swindon. Take a flight and the airport, aircraft, maintenance and the people who supply your in-flight meals are all separate companies.
It’s what John B says, only worse. Because a tied pub can at least decide if it wants a dartboard, and a quiz night and I’m guessing, how much to charge for a pint. The railway contract has extreme micromanagement – what trains they will get, when and where they will run them, where they get their staff from, whether they have ticket offices at a station or not. And the people are charge are people like Louise Haigh who did some youth services work and knows piss all about transport.
Why are National Express, Wizz Air etc cheaper AND more profitable? Because they’re owned by capitalists who want to see growth of their investment, run by people with 20+ years experience in some sort of transportation. So they work to make as much money on a seat, to cut costs, add value to customers. The railways still have ticket offices long after every other form of transport ditched them because of how expensive they are. There’s one in Surrey that sells 2 tickets per day. Two.
@WB
We can all sing the praises of free enterprise, competition, markets etc etc. But that isn’t the way the world is going at the moment. You are governed by people who are directly opposed to that. So you’re not going to get more of it, you’re going to get less of it. People are voting for less of it.
Earlier today I was watching a documentary about the final years of British Rail. One of the comments was “British rail had become the most cost-efficient railway in Europe, needing the least amount of funding from the taxpayer.”
My immediate thought was: why did it need *ANY* funding from the taxpayer? Surely its funding should come from the people buying its services: its customers.
There’s an argument to be made that railways should be like the roads: the “highway” road/tracks owned by the State and funded through taxation, but the “users” buses/trains using the “highway” are whoever wants to use it, private or public or whatever. National Express doesn’t own the A625 or pay access charges to use it to run a bus along it, why should the people running a train between Chesterfield and Rotherham own the track between Chesterfield and Rotherham, and why should the owner be the State?
BIS,
I’m only saying what’s right, not where things are going.
Socialism is very seductive, because it tells people they can have free money. People can wrap it up in “good of the nation” but they really just want the Little Red Hen to do all the work while they sit in the pub.
And it leads to fascism because when it doesn’t work, people look for someone else that’s the problem, like Chinese who are working harder than them. Or immigrants. So you then get fascism. And that doesn’t work either.
Look at France. A country that generally doesn’t like to work much or care about customers, except for the rather excellent cake shops. And they’re voting for Le Pen who is basically a national socialist. Or Scotland. Anyone with some get up and go moves to England. They tried socialism with Labour and when that didn’t work, switched to National Socialism. You know, our problems are the English. And whether Farage or Tice know it, or like it, it’s the direction Reform are going to go in. All those Northern shitholes with ex-Labour voters. They still want all the economic bits of Labour.
It’s only when shit gets really bad, and you realise no versions of socialism work that people accept the free market. Like Ireland in the late 80s eventually realised that they were dirt poor from national socialism. That’s about over, though. The vote for Sinn Fein is rising.