Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009 ... -edinburgh

I'm guessing that post meant something. Care to translate?

i think it was suppose to be a train noise thang.

It’s to be expected – as long as things like the railways are run as private businesses, then this will happen. Railway networks are part of the country’s infrastructure, and should be run as that – not by profit-focussed businesses with shareholders to please, but as a service to the citizens of the country. If the transport network grinds to a halt because private businesses can’t see past their divident payments and bonus systems, then we’ll be have more problems than we currently do.

Re-nationalise the rail network, and the utilities. There is no place for profiteering in these areas.

Added and I agree

Last time I used it, it was still GNER.

My late father used to take us to see the trains racing by just north of Grantham when I was young. I in turn took my kids to the same place to see the Intercity 125's flash by at the same place.

They never made that sound

They have to be sounding their horn to make that sound. And it's quite hard to get the Doppler effect in text.

I was using the East Coast Main Line earlier this week to travel up to Scotland and have done for years. It was better when it was GNER and also cheaper but that's just the silly rules about ticket price increases. I did like it when the train companies realised that they may have to reduce prices this year due to deflation (ticket increases are based on inflation multiplied by something so a negative number had them proper worried).

Definite +1 about the running of utilities and national infrastructure. It's just a shame that the government is probable no better at running this sort of thing than a private company and without the excuse of having to pay shareholders. Something along the lines of a building society/co-op would be my suggestion. At least if it's owned by the customers rather than shareholders there might be some incentive not to gouge as much money out of us as possible while putting so little back.

Sorry about that, my original post was a sign of excitement.

I started working for them when it was GNER, then it went NXEC and everything went downhill. They can't organise [LIFTED], and shifts are constantly changed without informing staff, resulting in trains going out short-crewed (and then staff being blamed).

Can't wait for nationalised rail - the union has been calling for it for a while.

The problem with National anything is, although it's a utopian principle it generally ends up full of lazy jobsworths who cost a fortune and provide a poor service. There's also the usual corrupt nepotism which bumps the costs up even higher.

I'm for it in principle, but they do need honest motivated staff somehow.

Well the current NXEC staff who are seen by the public will be kept on for sure (according to RMT) and we're pretty motivated already. The demoralisation and terrible moods come from the ridiculous hoops that management make us jump through.

Upper management might have a shuffle, as it did when NXEC took over from GNER, but I can't really say anything for sure.

Which neatly summarises the performance of National Express in this case, as far as all reports go. To be fair, NE did pay the government a whopping wedge for the right to run the service... which they then passed on to their customers in whopping price rises. So Gordon was happy but the people who actually had to use the service weren't. Reliability was good once the East Coast upgrade was completed (which they didn't have to pay for, the taxpayer did - that was nice for them) but apparently maintenance and customer service were significantly 'sub optimal'.

I don't get this dogmatic view people have that public sector is workshy and expensive, whereas the private sector is somehow by definition efficient and go-getting and 'damnit, we'll get this done if I have to stay here all night! And I won't ask for overtime either!'

Frankly, it's cobblers. There are some parts of the public sector that are efficient, well run and good value for the taxpayer. Equally, there are some private companies doing government funded work that are staffed by sloths and run by chuckleheads. There are any number of PPP/PFI schemes that are massively over budget and late and, to be blunt, where private enterprise has taken the taxpayer for a ride.

The government has just today decided to not go ahead with part-privatising the Royal Mail. They have their excuse why but the real reason is everyone but them had figured out it was a titanically bad idea that was likely to end in a complete debacle, lose the taxpayer a wagonload of cash in the long run and leave anyone outside a city centre with a mail service that could best be described as 'patchy'.

'Private good, public bad' is right up there with 'four legs good, two legs bad'. And only one of them was meant to be a parody.

Oh, and according to the BBC, NE were proposing a few months ago to 'sell back' the franchise to UKGov by giving the government £100million as a termination payment. Lord Adonis (the Minister for Transport) rejected the idea. This same Minister of Transport has now taken the franchise off NE... for nothing.

When's the election due again?


Jon

Example?



I refer you to my earlier comment:



How many of these PFIs are run by an MP's personal acquaintance or have MPs on the board, or as advisers? From a certain documentary I saw about the health service, pretty much all of the worst examples. I think it's the link to government money that brings corruption with it.

The DVLA is actually a pretty good example. By private sector standards they'd be considered a great success; they make the government a tidy profit and they have innovated technologically insofar as MOTs are now entirely computerised for example and they offer pretty much all of their services direct to the consumer via the web. They run a national operation out of a single building (well, two, as of recently) in Swansea and they've managed to cut their costs significantly over the last few years. So if they were privately run but publicly funded, they'd be held up as a shining example. Of course, they also get stuff wrong sometimes and they've had a couple of nasty IT leaks. Which judged by public service standards, isn't very good.

It's actually quite hard to come up with a simplistic judgement of value as the majority of public services that actually have things like an income and could potentially have books to balance were sold off years ago. It's hard to say, for example, if the Revenue and Customs department represent good value because it's hard to match their 'incomings' against their 'outgoings'. In most cases, the taxpayer pays for things and gets services back but putting a value on those services is little more than a finger in the air judgement. The Public Audit Office is supposed to report to the government on whether public money is being well spent in various places but frankly you'd need to be an ACCA certified accountant to make heard or tail of most of what they put out.


I'm sorry, that's a tangent. Whether a PFI represents good value for the tax payer isn't dependant on whether there's a MP or someone connected with an MP on the executive. There are plenty of fairly poor PFI/PPP projects where the only time an MP had anything to do with it was when they turned up at the opening ceremony.

You're right of course - the PFI/PPP scheme is ripe for corruption and exploitation. As to a degree are public services. in terms of that, neither seem to be a particularly better answer than the other.

My proposition is the idea that taking a public sector service and privatising it will always lead to a better, cheaper service for the taxpayer is simplistic at best and dogmatic at worst. The evidence to support it is very patchy. Not that public sector was inherently better than private. There's no overbearing weight of evidence either way.

Jon

As much as I want to see the return of British Rail, HSTs in the National Express livery are GORGEOUS.