Do you think it's a good idea OT. Should we have done it?
The form of Privatisation taken in 1994 was based upon the Swedish template. For people to argue that this was an untried and untested "new" idea, simply shows their lack of knowledge.
What gets forgotten by everyone is that under BR the money to invest in the Railway system came only from the Government - HM Treasury. Ultimately HM Treasury only gets money by taxation or by borrowing.
The stability of any economy is measured by its debt ratio, and is why we are now having so many problems.
Hardly anyone on here can understand the simple concept that there is a limit to the amount of money any Government can generate through taxation and ultimately borrow without destabilising the economy - G Brown please note.
The money that has been invested in the Railway system in the UK could NEVER have been found from Government sources, and borrowing to invest would simply have reduced money available to other areas of the economy which depend upon Government money.
Those who shout loudest about Privatisation are also those who shout loudest about reducing money going into the NHS, Education, etc. They are simply unable to grasp the fact that money will always be in high demand and short supply. If you look at the money invested in the NHS, very, very little has changed (we have new buildings of course, and Doctors and Dentists are making fortunes) but in actual fact many NHS Trusts cannot afford to pay the lease costs on their brand new hospitals (Hinchingbroke being a perfect example) and are not employing Doctors/ nurses, etc, thus leaving the brand new wards permanently closed down.
If nothing else this proves that throwing money at "state owned/operated" organisations is not the answer.
Whilst we had some good people in BR we also had a far bigger pool of complete wasters who were completely inept at their jobs, and whose very existence caused us huge problems and waste.
Thameslink was blocked for decades by one idiot who would not see sense, claiming there was no market for the route !
We were hidebound by Trade Unions which existed simply to extract the maximum amount of money, overtime, etc for doing as little as possible.
We had a series of Socialist Governments who kow towed to the TUs to the point where any attempt to improve how we operated met with fierce opposition. The Railways were used by the various Labour Governments as instruments of their economic policy, normally related to pay restraint, and they reduced our subsidy by increasing at less than inflation, effectively a cut, although this was continually denied.
We were riddled with a form of insidious corruption, for example I remember stopping a fiddle that involved a relief signalman travelling some 30 odd miles south to work boxes whilst the relief signalman based in the south travelled 30 odd miles north to cover boxes there. Because they were paid overtime based on walking time, the total time to get there and back in just one day sometimes equated to nearly a complete day, and that was without the shift on top of that ! 28 hours for 8 hours work before enhancements.
I recall train crews demanding 12 hours to work short turns, which made many trips so uneconomic that it was cheaper to just withdraw the service.
I remember cases where train crew on a 7hr 30m turn would demand 12 hours if the train was only minutes late claiming that they could not get out and back in their turn, even though there was adequate standing time at destination. Attempts to try to stop this were met with threats of industrial action, which of course Management backed down from because ultimately the Minister did not want that and anyone who created such a scenario would have a relatively junior career path.
I could go on at length about the waste we had to endure. The TU Rep who made it impossible to manage unless she got her own way, and we ended up with over 60 odd different rosters, some only changing by a few minutes. It was always take and never give.
Privatisation was therefore inevitable given the state of ther Railway and the amount of money needed. Anyone who disputes that is simply idiotic.
That the money needed could NOT have been provided from Government is indisputable. It never could be.
The route "chosen" for Privatisation was not a Ministerial or indeed a Prime Ministerial decision in reality, and those who argue it was are simply playing a Political game. All Ministers and Governments of every persuasion and colour make decisions based upon what the civil servants tell them. That has always been the case. This is why in 1997 Labour set out on a course to Politicise the Civil Service and replace independent Civil Servants with either Labour appointees or those who were sympathetic to their ideals.
In the case of Major, the Treasury simply produced a number of proposals within which only one proposal was demonstrably better. This was how the model for Privatisation was chosen. It was not done by (as some would have you believe) Mrs Thatcher sitting with a small group of her Ministers deciding how to destroy the Railways.
The Treasury case was based upon a whole myriad of different Companies, each of whom would be paying Corporation Tax and employing people, again increasing Taxation Revenue.
That was why Labour did not renationalise.
Personally I dislike the Privatisation we have. I think it has been a disaster for the UK. Those who gambled on Bliar and Brown NOT renationalising withoiut compensation (as they repeated over and over again into the General Election) made a fortune. If you look at the relationship of those who did make massive amounts of money and in many cases became millionaires overnight, you will see a clear picture emerge.
I have argued both here and elsewhere that vertical privatisation could be implemented here very quickly and very easily, and still be compliant with the demands of the EU.
Network Rail is not the answer. It costs a fortune, is now swallowing up much of the money in running its ever growing organisation, and has embarked on policies towards its Contractor base that have effectively shrunk the labour market of qualified people whilst at the same time ensuring that future schemes will cost more becuase we now have insufficent numbers of engineers to achieve Network Rail's so called "plans". Those who are left in the UK are to some extent those incapable of taking up very highly paid jobs overseas, yet they will be the one's leading the new Modernisation schemes. I have already seen people I would not trust to run a bath being appointed to key positions in Network Rail project teams. One or two I have dismissed in the past because they were so incompetent that everything they touched turned to disaster.
