nottsnurse
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Ooo, hark at her.
So "sensible people" can't think strategic infrastructure, such as the railways, are "all-important"?
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Why is there now an obsession with re-nationalisation?
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Ooo, hark at her.
So "sensible people" can't think strategic infrastructure, such as the railways, are "all-important"?
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Er... Important, yes - all-important, no.
So how do you thing London, Manchester, Leeds etc. would cope without heavy rail commuting then?
You are grotesquely twisting this. Heavy rail commuting into any City does not affect my immediate life one jot. I appreciate their importance to the nation, but they are not all - important to me or most of the nation in general. Hence the relatively muted reaction to the GTR meltdown.
Luckily GTR are only carry a proportion of London commuters... Do you really think you are completely unaffected by the work of national and local government employees then?
I take it you live somewhere clean and leafy, and avoid cities where pollution would be even worse if we had to try to make do with road transport.
I take it you live somewhere clean and leafy, and avoid cities where pollution would be even worse if we had to try to make do with road transport.
Where I live is irrelevant - it could be somewhere clean and leafy, it could be in the middle of a big city; whichever, neither I or any of my family or close friends use heavy rail to commute into a big city, as per your post no. 573. Railways are not all-important, and would not be a major consideration (all-important) in whose policies I would vote for. A consideration - yes, but there are other more important issues at stake for me.
As for being affected by the work of national and local government employees - perhaps we shouldn't be going there. The recent antics of the masters, management and staff of the railways convinces me that the further away of 'all-important' that the industry slips the better.
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I can assure you that if the major political parties were to be saying that they were going to close down all the railways and a minor party was saying that they weren't going to. Even assuming some other minor differences then the minor party would probably find themselves in power.
As they would likely win most of the London and South East seats, along with quite a few other urban areas and not a fair few rural seats (look at the uproar when Dawlish was closed).
Yes, it's not of major concern of the status quo is broadly retained (in that there's a rail network which has broadly the same level of service), however if you were to suggest significant changes to it then that could be the thing that wins or losses the election.
I would however suggest the Nationalisation probably isn't a big enough change, unless you put some flesh on what that's going to look like.
The problem is that big organisations are inefficient, with some reports citing 50% of work being done by 10% of the workforce. Which is fine when there's 5 people as there's still lots of work to be done. Is much more of a problem when there's 50,000 staff as a lot of people will be needed just to manage those people who are doing the work.
Bring all rail jobs into one organisation (BR 2.0) and that's circa 200,000 people. Now there could be some efficiencies that could be made. However a lot of the management roles for each TOC would still be there, just with then reporting to a different board.
In some ways where you live matters very much. If you are in a city with significant rail commuting then be grateful for those people paying their fares to protect you from even worse pollution.
Wherever you live you should be grateful for the organisation of (at least) education and healthcare, roads, water supply and sewerage (and the taxes collected to provide them) which, even if you live in a clearing in a forest and home-educate your children, benefit you by providing the infrastructure that keeps you relatively disease-free and supplied with the necessities of life. Without admin and training none of it would happen, it's just a pity that so much of the organisation is done from in and around London. All this organising is done from offices in cities and it's a pound to a pinch of salt that the workers are commuters.
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Railwaysceptic
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In which case, there is not a great deal of difference between your approach to voting and mine.
Railwaysceptic
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You need to learn how to think clearly. If you not know the difference between "important" and "all-important" you have a problem.
nottsnurse
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You need to learn how to conduct yourself in a debate better. The "sensible people think like me" (ergo, if you don't agree with me you're not sensible) angle is infantile at best, bordering on trolling at worst.
MotorcycleAlan
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Please can we have separate sub forum for personal arguments and slanging matches. It adds nothing to the wider debate and is so tedious. This topic, along with the one about the bag collecting fee and many others seem so bitter.
Railwaysceptic
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And once again you avoid responding to the point at issue and choose instead to be rude.
I made an entirely valid point about how I vote. You deliberately twisted it to give it an different interpretation. I pointed this out. You respond by claiming I am implying something I am not. Now, instead of wasting everyone's time with this obfuscation, deal with these two points:
1) is it reasonable to suggest that sensible people when choosing for whom to vote do not have only one issue in mind?
2) is there a difference between "important" and "all-important?"
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Why do people continue to use the word "leafy" in postings on this website. Which areas (except those above the treeline) are you referring to that are aboreally challenged?
Not arboreally-challenged, but arboreally rich. To me lots of trees = low housing density = little traffic (unless you are unlucky enough to live in a narrow wooded valley with a main road through it.) A superior suburb if you like, or even a country residence if you live in the commuter belt.
The opposite is no greenery but solid tarmac, houses, paved backyards and very few parks. Dense Victorian inner-city housing.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
You really have to reprogram your time machine, as it keeps cutting out in the 1920s...
If that is your opinion I suggest that you either take your blinkers off or open your eyes the next time you get the train from your residence (in mid-Cheshire I think you have said - there's green and leafy for you) into a big city. Have a look at the inner suburbs as you go into Liverpool or Manchester and see if you can spot something a bit like thisYou really have to reprogram your time machine, as it keeps cutting out in the 1920s...
https://maps.nls.uk/view/91791770#zoom=4&lat=7139&lon=5657&layers=BT
And it's not just on this forum that people know what it means, by the way. http://www.net-lettings.co.uk/londo...reen-and-leafy-suburb-steeped-in-history-3193 has
Friern Barnet: A green and leafy suburb steeped in history
and if you Google green and leafy suburb you will find lots of hits going back years. Part of our culture, you could say.
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Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Do not judge on what you know not. I was born in 1945 in New Allen Street, Miles Platting, which ran alongside the New Allen Street viaduct that led from the Miles Platting area, past the original Manchester and Leeds Railway locomotive works and into what once was the Manchester Oldham Road terminal railway station of that railway until the 1844 Manchester Victoria station was built, when it became Manchester Oldham Road goods station. All the nearby streets were either lined with setts or cobbles (lined with pitch) and gas lighting was the norm. I had two great aunts nearby who had spent all their working life in the cotton mills in Ancoats.
Where I now so reside is solely down to damn hard work at grammar school on my part from 1956 to 1962 which enabled me to obtain a place at Manchester University from 1962-1966 where I gained my First in Mathematics. This educational attainment then enabled me to progress in a career in industry rather than being an academic. I spent the last thirty-five years of my employed life in the field of senior management, finally retiring in 2010 as Senior Head of Projects at the consultancy.
I have no need of making reference to computer information of past social life, having lived my formative years in a very poor area of the northern part of the City of Manchester where I saw life as it was with my own eyes.
If the major political parties said that they were going to close down all the railways, there must have been either (a) a major technological breakthrough in their replacement, or (b) some fairly major calamity affecting the country causing the railways to be a minor detail in the grand scheme of things. Such a doomsday scenario is not really credible, so the political choices are more likely to be about investment or not, levels of subsidy, fares etc. For me, the railways are not 'all-important' and I am unlikely to only consider their future in my voting. The recent antics of the masters, management and staff of the railways convinces me that the further away of 'all-important' that the industry slips the better.
As you say, it's a pity that so much of the organisation is done from in and around London. I'm not even sure that many of these things are only organised in the centre of big cities by heavy rail commuters. The point is that these things do not make the railways 'all-important'. They are not. Neither are major political parties going to shut them down overnight, so there is no point in arguing about this doomsday scenario. The political questions are going to be about investment, subsidies, fares etc. If fares rise, capacity is constrained etc we will find different ways of working which does not involve commuting on the railways.
As you brought them into this thread, if the major political parties were advocating mass felling of trees, that would be a different matter ....
underbank
Established Member
Perhaps it's the provision of heavy rail commuting that has facilitated the huge numbers of people forced to travel into such cities, often unnecessarily and inefficiently? Is it really necessary?
Do the large employers really need their head offices in city centres? Do employees really need to work in said offices? What about building offices in "out of town" locations? What about increasing working from home? What about using the internet instead of face to face meetings?
Similar with travellers - why should someone travelling from say Preston to Bournemouth "have to" travel via the "Euston, underground, Waterloo" pattern? Why are there no "hubs" outside major cities to deal with the "through" travellers that don't need to travel through the city? Why is there no rail version of the M25 so trains can go around London rather than into it?
Yes, I know changes like that will take years/decades to happen, but we have to start somewhere. As it is, we're blindly assuming that travel patterns of last century are still valid today. I.e. where people HAD to physically travel to work in factories, mills, offices etc (i.e. the London banks and solicitors where they "walked" cheques and legal documents from building to building which is now history). I.e. where travel took so long, travellers HAD to stop overnight on long journeys, so cities were the obviously place to stop due to proliferation of hotels etc.
With a long term strategy, I'd stick my neck out and say that you could probably halve the number of people travelling into cities and either change their travel patterns, move their working locations, or increase remote working. All it needs is the will and some long term planning from both government and employers. The existing system is creaking. If firms started to find it hard to recruit into the cities (due to high wage expectations to pay higher housing and travel costs or simply people not willing to commute into cities), they'd soon find alternative ways including remote working, regional offices, etc. The current heavy rail system makes it relatively easy and affordable to travel into cities, and as long as that remains the case, the situation will just get worse.
To an extent.
Over-concentration of economic, administrative etc activity in a single place (in particular in Britain's case, London) is inefficient, because it overtaxes transport systems, commercial property resources, housing markets etc in that place, and under-uses similar resources in other places.
A lot of daily commuting, and other business travel, could probably also be replaced with people working at home.
An awful lot more rail travel could sensibly be routed away from big hubs, primarily London but also yo a great extent Brum.
However, the centres of large towns and cities, linked by high capacity transport networks, are more sensible places for many activites (particularly white collar commercial activity and retail) than car-dependent out of town locations.
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underbank
Established Member
Yet, outside the major towns and cities where there is poor public transport, it works perfectly well, i.e. the huge office complexes of various public sector/quango organisations, huge business/industrial plants, all in out of town locations, and yes, in many smaller towns/cities, retail is predominantly in out of town retail parks, etc, hence the slow death of the High Street in many towns where you have heaving retail parks yet quiet town centres at the same time! It's the fact that there is high capacity transport into cities that has caused them to become office/retail centres simply due to relative low cost and ease - there's little actual "need" for it to be there - it's just self-perpetuating.
Absolutely. This goes for me too. And a great many other people - mostly those in London and the South East!
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
And for me, if I thought a political party were proposing to do something I felt would be calamatous to the railway (all else being equal) it might become the "be all and end all" issue for that election anyway.
Or you could say that the centres of small towns the length and breadth if the country are dying on their backsides because of the self-perpetuating desire of some people to drive everywhere. I don't regard people becoming dependent on wasteful, expensive, environmentally disastrous private transport, accompanied by immense waste of land, as an example of anything working 'perfectly well'
MotorcycleAlan
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You can be as anti car as you like but it is rather more than "some people" who own and use one as people vote with their feet and clearly prefer to drive. As for being environmentally disastrous the move to electric cars will reduce that argument, and as for "expensive", well I am afraid that even with my senior railcard it is often cheaper to drive especially with 2 or more people travelling. Yes rail has a great future too, but living in a world where millions of people will give up their cars is not going to happen.
underbank
Established Member
When there are poor public transport systems outside the main cities, people have no choice but to use their cars.
Better public transport would be easier to provide if development wasn't being spread over ever-wider areas at lower density. But that's the kind of development you're arguing in favour of, for reasons that escape me
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