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Hatfield, nobody to blame!
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4318994.stm
What a waste of time. No person is to blame for this, it all happened in some chilly other dimension where getting ten men together to form a company creates an eleventh for them to hide behind.
As usual, the law is an ass.
On this basis the great train robbers should have incorporated, that way the "company" could have done time for them.
What a waste of time. No person is to blame for this, it all happened in some chilly other dimension where getting ten men together to form a company creates an eleventh for them to hide behind.
As usual, the law is an ass.
On this basis the great train robbers should have incorporated, that way the "company" could have done time for them.
0
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Which is why the individual defendants were acquitted of all charges.
It is worth noting that the corporate body has been penalised.
Sounds good, but isn't actually possible. I control my actions and should therefore be responsible for them. you control yours and so should you. You cannot control me, I cannot control you. "Collective action" is sloppy thinking.
Each person involved should have been individually assessed for liability and found liable as individuals.
Which is bullshit, because it doesn't exist. It doesn't feel pain, and it doesn't have to tend graves or rebuild it's life. It only gets the half life that it does have because of the actions of(that word again) individuals.
Quite right, they all were individually responsible. Under manslaughter the prosecution must prove a "controlling mind" in a group of individuals. Again, the law is an ass. If it was one of mine in the crash I wouldn't be fobbed off with this kind of crap. Would you?
Ve ver only obeyink orderz will never wash with me, sorry. You get an order to do something you know to be stupid and risky, you have the option to stop work, alert authorities, or do something. By not doing anything but take your paycheck you are negligent and liable for that action and inaction.
Isn't personal responsibility fun?
Hatfield happened as direct result of greedy scumbags refusing to repair the line because it 'costs money'. As a result 4 people died and many more were injured.
That nobody will go to jail for this is nothing short of a fucking disgrace.
And, for the millionth time, another clear example of why private companies and public services do not mix.
the re ason no one was nicked was because under existing law no individual or group of could be shown to be aware and maliciously acting in a certain manner.
Yep, thats what you get when you run things on a purely profit basis.
Oh, nonsense.
British Rail were perfectly capable of not doing things properly, or doing things on the cheap, and killing people because of it. And they did so on numerous occasions, in fact.
For all those who wail and gnash their teeth at the private railways, I suggest they remember two little words: Clapham and Junction.
Who do you think has killed more people per year, nationalised rail or privatised rail?
But the one thing you NEVER got when British Rail existed and managed the railways was repairs being neglected or delayed indefinitely for the sole reason of maximising profit. Never, ever.
The whole system was fully integrated and managed a thousand times better and more efficiently than it is today- ask anyone in the industry. Passengers' (not 'customers') interests were put first. As opposed to now, when they don't even count at all.
Even with the unfair starvation of money that plagued BR for several decades, the railways were a million times better than they are today. Privatisation has done fuck all good- for everyone apart from the Tory ministers who arrange the sale of assets, their friends in the industry and shareholders of private companies, that is.
Yes, its still not perfect, still some companies (paticularly National Express), still tryng to do everything on the cheap and ruin services, but on the whole everyone does seem to be working together as a team to improve the railways, which is what should be happening anyway.
Er, they did. All the time.
Well not for profit exactly, but BR often neglected repairs because they didn't want to spend the money on them. Especially on rural railways.
It was better integrated, for sure, but better managed? Passengers were never put first.
For all the faults of Virgin, for instance, now there is a train every 30 minutes from Newcastle to Brimingham. There used to be three or four a day.
BR tried to shut down many rural railway lines, including the Settle-Carlisle line. Arriva increased the services, and re-instated intercity-standard trains to the line.
Many of the faults of the privatised railway are actually directly attributable to the Strategic Rail Authority- the SRA is, of course, the Government. It is the SRA who want to have the last London-Newcastle train two hours earlier than it is now. It is the SRA who want to close many rural railway lines in the north of England and in Scotland. Arriva put a lot of time into extending rural railway services, and the SRA have made the new franchisee get rid of them all.
It is not a matter of private or public ownership, it is a matter of good management. British Rail was good at managing its infrastructure, but it ran trains for its own convenience, nobody else's. The infrastructure is not managed as well now, but Network Rail is a company owned by, er, the Government. The train service is umpteen times better now than it ever was under British Rail, which is why passenger numbers have gone up by about one third since privatisation.
And let's not even mention the astronomical rise in prices, that has made train travel in Britain the most expensive in the world, to a breath-taking level. £280 for a fucking ticket to Manchester? They must be having a laugh
And on top of this, private companies are actually costing the taxpayer more than old BR did. When a company does well, it keeps all the profits. When it doesn't, or the line needs improving, it gets the government to subsidise and pay for it all. Nice little deal they got there!
I suggest you buy Private Eye regularly and check the 'Signal Failures' column where these and many more horror stories can be found.
Believe me, BR did a far better job, with far less resources than private companies have done so far. And if successive Tory and Labour governments had actually funded BR like other countries have funded their own public railways, British Rail would still be in existence and would still be the best railways in the world, as it used to be until the 1950s.
Not true. BR tried to shut down every route that didn't run to London, and the SRA are again in the process of doing the same thing.
The SRA sets the terms of the franchise, and they set which trains run where. The TOCs can't- by law- cut the service below the level it was in BR days.
Only if you turn up on the day and buy the most expensive ticket there is. Be more flexible and you can get places for pence.
You mean like how First Great Western pay £60m pa in subsidy to the Government, and how GNER pay £100m pa in subsidy to the Government?
A lot of that column is largely a collection of half-truths, spin and propaganda written by people with a trade unionist agenda.
Although you should note, as an avid reader of it, how much of the problems stem completely from the SRA. Who, as we've already discussed, are the Government you trust so implicitly to run a party in a brewery.
I'd agree with that though.
I don't think the railways should have been privatised, but at the same time British Rail were never the beacon of wonderfulness everyone tries to claim. They lied to get my local line, the S&C, shut down. They tried to get half of West Yorkshire's commuter network closed down through half-truths and fudging the timetables to make them useless. Many of Britain's rural railways are in a much better state since BR was abolished, and that is a simple fact.