Rail renationalisation- do you support it?

[Railsigns]

I really dont care what you think

I don't doubt that, now that I have the measure of you.

but the facts are the TOCs are run by the Private Sector

Apart from the ones that are run by foreign state-owned railways.

Plenty on here would swap with me, and if by any chance you fancy working in the industry, simply apply online like thousands of others do.

I do work in the industry and I have done for 30 years. The difference between me and you is I'm not selfish.

 

[Moonshot]

I don't doubt that, now that I have the measure of you.



Apart from the ones that are run by foreign state-owned railways.



I do work in the industry and I have done for 30 years. The difference between me and you is I'm not selfish.

But you will quite happily accept a payrise every year of around 3%

 

[Railsigns]

But you will quite happily accept a payrise every year of around 3%

And why wouldn't I, with the inflation rate also being around 3%?

 

[coppercapped]

I dont care what you think, I m doing a job that pays a lot better than it would have done under BR. Train Drivers earn a lot more than me as well, and best of luck to them. They appear to find getting a pay rise under Privare Sector T and Cs far easier than they did in BR days

Thank you for confirming what I wrote a couple of days ago in post #698 :

The fact that pay has increased so dramatically for the staff is that BR was a monopsony - a single purchaser in the same way that a monopoly is a single supplier. Having a choice of employers does wonders for pay rates...

If monopolies are bad for consumers, monopsonies are bad for employees.

 

[Raul_Duke]

But you will quite happily accept a payrise every year of around 3%

Why would you not accept it? I’m sorry that other people seem to suffer from some sort of capitalist Stockholm syndrome where they begrudge other people getting payrises.

It’s not my fault nurses, teachers, police and firefighters are underpaid.

But if you’re mad at me for taking a pay rise then your anger is misplaced. I’m not the bad guy here...

 

[Tetchytyke]

If you read this thread, you’ll know VTEC is Virgin in name only in practical terms.

I am well aware that- like most Virgin businesses- it is the parasitic Branson creaming off the work of others. Which is why I'm just- if not more- critical of his gay-bashing best friends Brian and Ann.

 

[Gareth Marston]

1. A more efficient integrated industry structure.
2. An end to the costly pantomime that is the franchise renewal process.
3. Less public money funding private sector profits and foreign railways.
4. Less confusing for passengers and better connectivity.

I am a Company Director in two (admittedly small) companies and have worked in the public(including Government) , private and third sectors none of them have any particular magic star dust attached to them. Having been on many sides of the fence so to speak I find that most people who work in them are not doing so for ideological reasons and on the whole do a decent enough job given the constraints imposed on them. People make mistakes in all sectors and all walks of life nobody is perfect I've seen people who rate themselves very highly in the Boardroom of the private sector and in senior civil service positions make absolute clangers. The one common theme I've seen across all sectors is denial and refusal to accept responsibility for mistakes.

We all know that the 1993 Railways Act created an inefficient mess but we've been too obsessed with admitting this and it being seen that Neo Liberal dogma can result in sub optimal solutions. Nationalisation is perhaps the only way that we can repair the damage of the fragmentation caused by the 1993 Railways Act as it gives us the chance over many years to return the railway to a efficient vertically integrated national system. Most opposition to it boils down to worry that it will damage the concept of the neo liberal free market rather than any common sense recognition that something needs to be done.

 

[coppercapped]

I am a Company Director in two (admittedly small) companies and have worked in the public(including Government) , private and third sectors none of them have any particular magic star dust attached to them. Having been on many sides of the fence so to speak I find that most people who work in them are not doing so for ideological reasons and on the whole do a decent enough job given the constraints imposed on them. People make mistakes in all sectors and all walks of life nobody is perfect I've seen people who rate themselves very highly in the Boardroom of the private sector and in senior civil service positions make absolute clangers. The one common theme I've seen across all sectors is denial and refusal to accept responsibility for mistakes.

We all know that the 1993 Railways Act created an inefficient mess but we've been too obsessed with admitting this and it being seen that Neo Liberal dogma can result in sub optimal solutions. Nationalisation is perhaps the only way that we can repair the damage of the fragmentation caused by the 1993 Railways Act as it gives us the chance over many years to return the railway to a efficient vertically integrated national system. Most opposition to it boils down to worry that it will damage the concept of the neo liberal free market rather than any common sense recognition that something needs to be done.

Do we?

 

[Railwaysceptic]

Is your worst of both worlds scenario really much different to today? As things are, the DfT micromanage and balls things up even when Network Rail and the TOCs don't. Why would renationalisation necessarily have to follow this model?

Because if the railways were renationalised, the DfT, Network Rail and the Treasury would have the whip hand completely, with no privately owned and irreverent TOC to challenge them and expose their gross incompetence. Plus, once the railways ceases to be a gravy train for the select few, no British Government will chuck taxpayers' money into the bottomless pit in the way Governments have since privatisation. It's not by chance, by coincidence, by some freak of circumstance that since privatisation successive Governments have poured taxpayers' money into the railways without bothering to ensure the money was spent wisely.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

I am a Company Director in two (admittedly small) companies and have worked in the public(including Government) , private and third sectors none of them have any particular magic star dust attached to them. Having been on many sides of the fence so to speak I find that most people who work in them are not doing so for ideological reasons and on the whole do a decent enough job given the constraints imposed on them. People make mistakes in all sectors and all walks of life nobody is perfect I've seen people who rate themselves very highly in the Boardroom of the private sector and in senior civil service positions make absolute clangers. The one common theme I've seen across all sectors is denial and refusal to accept responsibility for mistakes.

We all know that the 1993 Railways Act created an inefficient mess but we've been too obsessed with admitting this and it being seen that Neo Liberal dogma can result in sub optimal solutions. Nationalisation is perhaps the only way that we can repair the damage of the fragmentation caused by the 1993 Railways Act as it gives us the chance over many years to return the railway to a efficient vertically integrated national system. Most opposition to it boils down to worry that it will damage the concept of the neo liberal free market rather than any common sense recognition that something needs to be done.

I assure you my deep scepticism about the wisdom of renationalising our railways has nothing to do with a blind faith in free market economics. I am well aware of the short-comings of the free market. I am also aware that many right wing politicians who profess to believe in the free market in fact believe in a rigged market which guarantees their friends huge profits, usually at the expense of the consumer, the taxpayer or both.

 

[squizzler]

Because if the railways were renationalised, the DfT, Network Rail and the Treasury would have the whip hand completely, with no privately owned and irreverent TOC to challenge them and expose their gross incompetence. Plus, once the railways ceases to be a gravy train for the select few, no British Government will chuck taxpayers' money into the bottomless pit in the way Governments have since privatisation. It's not by chance, by coincidence, by some freak of circumstance that since privatisation successive Governments have poured taxpayers' money into the railways without bothering to ensure the money was spent wisely.

I feel this to be so true. The ability for private companies to raise capital for the railways, whether from the market or from government, is arguably more important than whether it is spent in the optimal way.

As for whether money is being spent optimally, it is so hard to say because the railways needed so much investment to enable existing routes cope with modern traffic. It is a bit like a private individual buying their council house and putting in a new boiler, having it re-wired and replacing the kitchen. The building will be much sounder after the upgrade but visitors might think the owner was ripped off because the house is basically the same and the same money could have brought a hot tub!

 

[Bwlch y Groes]

I suppose the big problem at the moment with this debate is that both sides of it are being articulated very poorly by their proponents

On the one hand, the privatised rail industry is terrible at making a case for itself in the media. They keep pointing to things like passenger numbers and more services, thinking that people aren't bright enough to work out that this mostly would've happened regardless, or the infrastructure projects that are coming from the DfT rather than any TOC, or general comment about "how bad British Rail was". They neglect to use the actual strong evidence that they have in favour privatisation, like the transformation of Chiltern and c2c. They don't make the effort to fully explain how privatisation benefits passengers - they just use lazy, sloppy arguments and people see through it very quickly. They always have

On the other, even as someone broadly in favour of state-owned railways, the case Labour et al are making for nationalisation at the moment is incredibly reactionary. They're tapping into the sort of wider discontent people have always had about the railways - high fares, not enough capacity, poor punctuality - and saying how they would do things better if it was nationalised, without in any way explaining how they would go about doing this. The result of this is pundits on the left like Owen Jones sincerely arguing that a nationalised railway would be run more efficiently than the "wasteful" privatised railway, which makes absolutely no sense to anyone with the slightest understanding of how the industry works. It all makes me even more annoyed than privatisation to begin with - I hate to use the term, because it's unfair a lot of the time, but this argument is pure Magic Money Tree

This sort of populist rabble-rousing does nothing to benefit the genuine case to nationalise. In particular it's massively inflating expectations. As part of my role, I see a lot of comments from customers who seem to think that all the ills of the railway will be solved by nationalisation - that on the first day of BR Mark II, into the station will roll double-decker 125 mph trains with leather seats, free food and drink, and it'll all be for a £1 return from Glasgow to London - oh, and it'll be on time every day. And the thing is, it's all well and good Labour using that political capital now, but if they do get into a position where they can nationalise, we all know that it'll take 20 years and the rate of change will be barely noticeable. I wouldn't be surprised if in this scenario, people will end up just lurching back towards supporting re-privatisation again. Labour's making a huge rod for its own back

The biggest problem the industry has is that most of the talking and influencing is done by journalists and politicians who haven't the slightest clue what they're talking about. And the media's fine with this because all they want is hot takes anyway, rather than any kind of nuanced opinion. I'm sure that's always been the case but it's particularly stark now where we have two entrenched sides. I know there are people in the industry who could articulate a much better case for keeping the railways privatised than we're seeing, even though I don't agree with that. It's just that ironically the fragmented nature of the privatised railways means that no one seems to be taking a lead on communicating that effectively

What Labour need to do is build on what they have already proposed. It's all well and good saying how you're going to acquire the franchises - but you really have to emphasise that this will be a slow process. You also need to explain how this will be run. My fear is that the DfT won't want to concede direct control, which will leave it at the whims of politicians like the NHS and the education system, with dramatic change every time a different government takes over and no attempt at long-term planning. We could have a situation where Labour get into government, begin nationalising the franchises, then they lose the next election without completing the job, and the Tories call a halt to the process. What happens then? They have left so many questions unanswered - and that's before we get onto their other policies of state-owned rolling stock, infrastructure investment, electrification, stopping the spread of DOO...

 

[squizzler]

Because if the railways were renationalised, the DfT, Network Rail and the Treasury would have the whip hand completely, with no privately owned and irreverent TOC to challenge them and expose their gross incompetence. Plus, once the railways ceases to be a gravy train for the select few, no British Government will chuck taxpayers' money into the bottomless pit in the way Governments have since privatisation. It's not by chance, by coincidence, by some freak of circumstance that since privatisation successive Governments have poured taxpayers' money into the railways without bothering to ensure the money was spent wisely.

Since my first response to this comment I realised it might have something to do with human psychology, specifically a trait called loss aversion.

In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it's better to not lose $5 than to find $5.

Applied to the debate in hand, this effect would explain why people have greater concern over the perceived inefficiencies of the privatised industry than in its apparent ability to attract more money than British Rail ever could.

 

[HowardGWR]

I don't think that the general public is very interested in this subject. Most UK people don't go anywhere near a railway, except perhaps to pick up Johnny or Jemima from college at end of term, in the case of mainly middle class people. So when an opinion poll asks them if "the railways" should be nationalised, they simply remember the following, unconsciously: -
a) constant bad publicity about railway travel from the mainstream press, rarely any good,
b) a vague idea that it has been privatised at some point in the last century
c) not knowing the difference between NR nationalised and TOCs franchised, and certainly not knowing anything about ROSCOs and bank lending,
d) their normal political views, Labour or Tory or half way,
e) striking staff.

Some of this also goes for the folk who do use the railway.

All this jumble produces a reactionary opinion, not based on what you and I on this forum might take into consideration.

If they are asked what are the main considerations in deciding their vote at a general election, they won't mention ownership and control of the railway, even if they are given a blank box for 'any other concern'.

So the opinion poll results are valueless to most politicians: only those with commuter constituencies will give it even two minutes of ponder.

 

[jon0844]

I know it was two days ago, but the Mirror clearly has it in for a private railway and Virgin, going for this hilarious story of rip off trains.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/uk-ireland/passenger-shares-virgin-trains-rail-11806711

I must consider moaning next time I get a flexible first class plane ticket instead of a restricted economy ticket...

A passenger on a Virgin Trains service has shared her not inexpensive ticket price.

On Friday, Twitter user Laura posted a photo of her London to Manchester rail fare. The ticket was £484. Apparently Laura's holiday to Norway cost less. A man who saw the tweet said he recently flew to Iran, 3,600 miles away, for less.
Laura's journey was an 'open' return in First Class, which means she had the option of a 'free' lunch (usually a sandwich and a drink or two), and could travel on any service, there and back.


The ticket type is the most expensive. It was also booked last minute, and by Laura's employer. But people still called the price "extortionate".

 

[Railsigns]

So the opinion poll results are valueless to most politicians: only those with commuter constituencies will give it even two minutes of ponder.

A typical response to an opinion poll that's contrary to one's own viewpoint is to discredit all opinion polls and play down their usefulness. The fact that organisations keep funding these opinion polls must mean that they count for something.

 

[lordbusiness]

A few points I'd like to make;
1 The industry is rubbish at handling the press and public expectations . I would love to see every train running to time but it's just not going to happen. I wish every time I got in the car I knew I would arrive on time, without breaking down or get stuck in traffic for whatever reason. The public accept that road journeys can be delayed yet seem to think that every rail journey must arrive on time. Bad things happen.
2. Cost. Admittedly some journeys are expensive but the whole cost of living is increasing- shops, utility companies can put prices up-to-date why not railways? My daily commute by car is a round trip of 44 miles. This costs me over £5000 per year ( including HP on the car). When people moan about paying £4000 a year for a season ticket for a longer journey they need to have a reality check (or try doing the commute by car/bus instead).
3. Cost to the Nation. Until I see some real figures from Labour I cannot see how they will fund this or balance the books. My fear is that despite all the big promises the industry will end up competing with Health, Education,Welfare etc and will lose out. According to RDG figures 3p in every £1 goes to TOC owners- this is not going to fund a lot of investment and will in all likelihood disappear into Govt coffers and never be seen again.
The probable end game will be to cut costs will mean job losses and service cuts to balance the books.

Personally, longer franchises and integrated infrastructure is the way ahead.

 

[Gareth Marston]

A few points I'd like to make;

3. Cost to the Nation. Until I see some real figures from Labour I cannot see how they will fund this or balance the books. My fear is that despite all the big promises the industry will end up competing with Health, Education,Welfare etc and will lose out. According to RDG figures 3p in every £1 goes to TOC owners- this not going to fund a lot of investment and will in all likelihood disappear into Govt coffers and never be seen again. The probable end game will be to cut costs will mean job losses and service cuts to balance the books..

The narrative from RDG and Govt is only a partial picture there are many many more organizations making profit from the railway than the TOC's. The Rolling Stock Leasing Companies make as much if not more and the construction companies Network Rail farm renewals and enhancements to as well. In fact the total profit taken for the industry is probably near a Billion pounds equivalent to 10% of your fare or 30% of the Government subsidy.

The railway is already in a market with Health, Education,Welfare etc where do you think the £3.5 Billion of Govt Subsidy per annum is coming from?

 

[Gareth Marston]

I don't think that the general public is very interested in this subject. Most UK people don't go anywhere near a railway, except perhaps to pick up Johnny or Jemima from college at end of term, in the case of mainly middle class people. .

The National Travel Survey consistently for years now has shown that around 60% of the population use the railway once a year.

 

[Gareth Marston]

I suppose the big problem at the moment with this debate is that both sides of it are being articulated very poorly by their proponents

On the one hand, the privatised rail industry is terrible at making a case for itself in the media. They keep pointing to things like passenger numbers and more services, thinking that people aren't bright enough to work out that this mostly would've happened regardless, or the infrastructure projects that are coming from the DfT rather than any TOC, or general comment about "how bad British Rail was". They neglect to use the actual strong evidence that they have in favour privatisation, like the transformation of Chiltern and c2c. They don't make the effort to fully explain how privatisation benefits passengers - they just use lazy, sloppy arguments and people see through it very quickly.

If the TOC's cant articulate why they should exist then why should they?

 

[northwichcat]

Could nationalisation mean more 3rd party staff on the railways if the Conservatives are the governing party? After all while East Coast was in the public domain they awarded a contract for manning the telephone service to a company with staff in Portsmouth and India instead of continuing to use their own call centre in the North East. While, DWP are known to use G4S staff at Job Centres and to use ATOS Origin for PIP assessments.

 

[Gareth Marston]

Could nationalisation mean more 3rd party staff on the railways if the Conservatives are the governing party? After all while East Coast was in the public domain they awarded a contract for manning the telephone service to a company with staff in Portsmouth and India instead of continuing to use their own call centre in the North East. While, DWP are known to use G4S staff at Job Centres and to use ATOS Origin for PIP assessments.

More? ye gods. Were at the point now where anyone with orange high viz clothing on with some sort of branding on it could be a legitimate worker on the railway.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The result of this is pundits on the left like Owen Jones sincerely arguing that a nationalised railway would be run more efficiently than the "wasteful" privatised railway, which makes absolutely no sense to anyone with the slightest understanding of how the industry works.

A vertically-integrated railway system would be more efficient though.

As it stands, every single layer has its own privatised business running it, and each of them takes their cut for their trouble. The TOC takes their cut, the ROSCO takes their cut, the engineering contractor takes their cut, the manufacturer of the trains takes their cut. The cleaning company takes a cut, the catering company takes a cut, etc etc etc. And that's before we consider the vast sums spent on things such as delay allocation that are only necessary because one private company a) doesn't want to pay for another's mistakes and b) wants to profit from another's mistakes.

The effect of this is that astonishingly huge amounts of cash get salami-sliced out of the industry in profit every year. The headline profit margin of 4% on a TOC (much as I am firmly of the opinion it is money for old rope) isn't the main issue and is just the tip of the iceberg.

People rail against the cost of engineering increasingly exponentially, but the inflation is the perfect example of this salami-slicing in action. A project funded by BR and managed by BR, with trains built by BR's own factory and hardware forged in BR's own factory, is inevitably more efficient than the current situation where each item is made by a different private company, all taking their cut of the fee.

As we've seen with the water industry and, to a lesser extent, with telecommunications, this level of vertical integration cannot be managed by private businesses because they cannot be trusted to not ruthlessly exploit their monopoly position. Even with regulation, water company profits are genuinely obscene. And even with regulation, BT through their Openreach subsidiary regularly take the Mickey out of non-BT companies.

 

[Bwlch y Groes]

If the TOC's cant articulate why they should exist then why should they?

I agree entirely, of course. That wasn't meant to be a defence of the TOCs. But they don't seem to want to make the case for it. I do wonder if they're too scared about upsetting the "alliance"

A vertically-integrated railway system would be more efficient though.

Again, I agree, but that's not really what OJ's arguing, is it? He's literally saying a nationalised railway would run services more efficiently and make profit on lines that currently make a loss. Ludicrously high expectations

 

[quantinghome]

I feel this to be so true. The ability for private companies to raise capital for the railways, whether from the market or from government, is arguably more important than whether it is spent in the optimal way.

If the private sector were investing significant sums then I'd agree. But they're not. TOC shareholders put very little money in. ROSCOs presumably make an investment up front in rolling stock but this is basically a licence to print money. The industry is bank-rolled by the taxpayer.

I'll say it again: passenger railways the world over do not make a commercial rate of return (maybe Japanese railways do, but that's exceptional). Government funding (and therefore control) is inevitable. The question then becomes how government funding and control are optimised. The current system is sub-optimal, to put it mildly.

 

[EM2]

I'll say it again: passenger railways the world over do not make a commercial rate of return (maybe Japanese railways do, but that's exceptional).

Even they have some Government funding.

 

[quantinghome]

I suppose the big problem at the moment with this debate is that both sides of it are being articulated very poorly by their proponents

On the one hand, the privatised rail industry is terrible at making a case for itself in the media. They keep pointing to things like passenger numbers and more services, thinking that people aren't bright enough to work out that this mostly would've happened regardless, or the infrastructure projects that are coming from the DfT rather than any TOC, or general comment about "how bad British Rail was". They neglect to use the actual strong evidence that they have in favour privatisation, like the transformation of Chiltern and c2c. They don't make the effort to fully explain how privatisation benefits passengers - they just use lazy, sloppy arguments and people see through it very quickly. They always have

On the other, even as someone broadly in favour of state-owned railways, the case Labour et al are making for nationalisation at the moment is incredibly reactionary. They're tapping into the sort of wider discontent people have always had about the railways - high fares, not enough capacity, poor punctuality - and saying how they would do things better if it was nationalised, without in any way explaining how they would go about doing this. The result of this is pundits on the left like Owen Jones sincerely arguing that a nationalised railway would be run more efficiently than the "wasteful" privatised railway, which makes absolutely no sense to anyone with the slightest understanding of how the industry works. It all makes me even more annoyed than privatisation to begin with - I hate to use the term, because it's unfair a lot of the time, but this argument is pure Magic Money Tree

This sort of populist rabble-rousing does nothing to benefit the genuine case to nationalise. In particular it's massively inflating expectations. As part of my role, I see a lot of comments from customers who seem to think that all the ills of the railway will be solved by nationalisation - that on the first day of BR Mark II, into the station will roll double-decker 125 mph trains with leather seats, free food and drink, and it'll all be for a £1 return from Glasgow to London - oh, and it'll be on time every day. And the thing is, it's all well and good Labour using that political capital now, but if they do get into a position where they can nationalise, we all know that it'll take 20 years and the rate of change will be barely noticeable. I wouldn't be surprised if in this scenario, people will end up just lurching back towards supporting re-privatisation again. Labour's making a huge rod for its own back

The biggest problem the industry has is that most of the talking and influencing is done by journalists and politicians who haven't the slightest clue what they're talking about. And the media's fine with this because all they want is hot takes anyway, rather than any kind of nuanced opinion. I'm sure that's always been the case but it's particularly stark now where we have two entrenched sides. I know there are people in the industry who could articulate a much better case for keeping the railways privatised than we're seeing, even though I don't agree with that. It's just that ironically the fragmented nature of the privatised railways means that no one seems to be taking a lead on communicating that effectively

What Labour need to do is build on what they have already proposed. It's all well and good saying how you're going to acquire the franchises - but you really have to emphasise that this will be a slow process. You also need to explain how this will be run. My fear is that the DfT won't want to concede direct control, which will leave it at the whims of politicians like the NHS and the education system, with dramatic change every time a different government takes over and no attempt at long-term planning. We could have a situation where Labour get into government, begin nationalising the franchises, then they lose the next election without completing the job, and the Tories call a halt to the process. What happens then? They have left so many questions unanswered - and that's before we get onto their other policies of state-owned rolling stock, infrastructure investment, electrification, stopping the spread of DOO...

It's true that Chiltern and C2C have been successful. However, at least for Chiltern this started before privatisation with Total Route Modernisation. Post-privatisation, former BR managers built on this work. But this needs to be balanced against the failures - particularly the West Coast Route Modernisation, which went massively overbudget due to the inability of a fragmented industry to undertake a multi-disciplinary project in an efficient manner.

I strongly recommend you buy the latest copy of RAIL magazine. It has a large section on Labour's analysis of the problems affecting the rail network. It's more thorough and realistic than you give them credit for - in particular it accepts that reintegration will take time. However, as they plan to reintegrate franchises once they expire, this gives a reasonable amount of time to transition.

 

[Tetchytyke]

He's literally saying a nationalised railway would run services more efficiently and make profit on lines that currently make a loss.

To an extent, though, the simplistic view is true.

Strip out the ROSCOs charging more than £100k/year rent for a *pacer*, and strip out the TOC's profit margin, and the marginal routes will suddenly make money. And the heavily loss-making routes will be less of a basket case.

BR of the 1980s achieved a lot with very little. These days it's the other way around: unprecedented levels of Government investment, yet no tangible improvements in most of the country.

Finally, what we call the funding is big part of the problem. Railways get "subsidy" but roads get "investment". The M1 isn't expected to deliver profits for shareholders.

 

[absolutelymilk]

BR of the 1980s achieved a lot with very little. These days it's the other way around: unprecedented levels of Government investment, yet no tangible improvements in most of the country.

You don't think we have more improvement work going on right now than in the 1980s??

 

[DarloRich]

You don't think we have more improvement work going on right now than in the 1980s??

You miss the point.