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Railways
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Some reckon that the railways need to be re-nationalised and say all privatisation is bad because of this.
Well, what about British Airways? BP? The water, gas, electricity?
Are these 'bad' privatisations? Is there any popular desire to renationalise these industries? Does any political party, irrespective of their size, reckon they should be?
My point is that if all privatisation is bad due to one flawed privatisation, then how do you account for other successful privatisations?
Well, what about British Airways? BP? The water, gas, electricity?
Are these 'bad' privatisations? Is there any popular desire to renationalise these industries? Does any political party, irrespective of their size, reckon they should be?
My point is that if all privatisation is bad due to one flawed privatisation, then how do you account for other successful privatisations?
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The nature of the privatisation. BA, BP, water, gas and electricity don't rely on each other to work well. Whereas in the rail network, the company's need a great deal of co-operation for a person to get, without too many delays or too much messing around, from say derby to bournemouth. There's one route that I know of, run by Virgin, but it takes the better part of a day to do it. Where I live it's Chiltern, which are a good company individually, but if I want to go to l'boro, I need to take midland from St Pancras station, my train was delayed by an hour once, the journey takes less than that in total, it was ridiculous!
Certainly not from any pragmatic point of view.
Ideally the railways should never have been nationalised in the first place.
Where's the crap service in British Airways? They could have strikes but they have no outrageous prices in comparison with other airlines, or are any less safe.
Or BP? Sorry but these things work well. You're only saying this because you're an anarchist.
BP is actually a cracking organisation. And for the record BP doesn't stand for Bristish Petroleum anymore, it's Beyond Petroleum because of the work they do in alternative fuel sources.
Maybe they aren't but those industries which are part of the country's infrastructure work well, even if they are privatised.
I know of no practical reason why electricity should be nationalised for example. There are no major blackouts or power cuts.
According to whom? The only 'natural monopolies' are public goods like the police.
well actually there was last year, and experts reckon there isnt enough investment in infrastructure due to competition
the problem is e need to redo the entire infrastructure, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of money
If they can do it, why can't we?
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/2051094.stm. It's a bit long, sorry!
and for out network, estimates for updating come to £50 billion i believe, and that doesnt include maintenece whilst this is happening
According to the bleedin' obvious. :rolleyes: There is only one national grid, one gas system, water system, telephone system (well, OK, there is also cable, but this is not available in every area), one rail network etc etc etc
*shrugs*
Size of country? Population density? Cultural background? Route diversity and volume? These are all things that affect a rail network, and all things that differ between the UK and Japan.
Perhaps the German or French network would have been a better example? As at least culturally, we are similar, the population is roughly the same, though the UK is small compared to both countries.
A train company wanted to set up an express trains ervice between Newcastle, Leeds, Wakefield, Manchester and Liverpool. No public subsidy, it would pay it's way and compete against the current train company. The "strategic" rail authority said no, because it would "damage the profits" of the current train company, who would need "extra subsidy".
The rail network effectively is nationalised.
Things such as the national grid should not have been privatised, however the energy market SHOULD have been opened up to competition. For the most part I think it has worked, although not in the water market.
And everyone slaughters the buses for being privatised, but do believe that the private bus companies are better than the old National Bus Company. And National Express has got a lot better since it was freed from public control.
France and Germany are less densley populated than the UK and are bigger in terms of area.
Culture is a nonsense, since that has no total bearing on economic decisions.
Besides has France or Germany privatised their railway system?
you seem to be unaware almost all of our network was built over 100 years ago, and well that was built on cheap labour, and well how is it cheap these days to cover over 10000 miles of network with update to update rail and trains and signalling, whilst not pissing off the commuters who use it day in day out
i say shut it down for a year and completly rebuild it all - okay a serious amount of hassle, but it saves 15yearsof on off hassle
I think you'll find that I said that France and Germany are less densely populated. Culture is not nonsense, Japanese people may be quite happy to give a grand each to get a good rail system, whereas here, we seem to expect it for free.
Regardless of whether France or Germany have private systems, they work very well and we need to work out why. I think the answer will be volume of money and where it went.
In this country, we close everything down instead. No investment, closure of lines, the pulling of any prject that doesn't initally make money.
In the 1960s half the railway network was pulled away, including important lines such as the Waverley Route between Carlisle, Galashiels and Edinburgh, and the Somerset and Dorest railway.
In the 1980s British Rail invented the tilting train, the APT, but the then Conservative administration would not provide extra funds to get the bloody thing to work. It was scrapped, and now we buy tilting trains from fucking Fiat of all people.
Instead of building the East Coast Railway to a decent standard, it was done on the cheap. Capacity is full for electric trains- the electric sub-stations will over-heat if any more electric trains draw current from the section between Kings Cross and Hitchin.
But the fact Japan has privatised its railways shows that a privately run rail system can work!
Rail was never for free since it was funded by taxation (it certainly wasn't free at the point of delivery!).
Yes privatisation works, what do you want? A cookie? It's obvious that it works, otherwise capitalism would have failed.
Something being funded by taxation seems to confuse the british public, we want the best health care and education system, we want top notch defense and intelligence, but if you hike up taxes we'd be up in arms, that's what I mean about 'for free'.
It's especially when what's being funded is supposed to be private. Our system can't quite seem to make up it's mind.
So our main problem is there is no actual competition when it comes to the rail system in this country.