The 'N' word - Nationalise

[ainsworth74]

Some people have very short memories of the Tories between 1979 and 1997.

What, you mean remembering that they laid the ground work for the economic growth we enjoyed until 2008? Or that they managed to fix the economic ruin that was Britain after the 70s?

As for renationalization, Gordon Brown put the cost of renationalization at £22bn in 2004 so I think it would be fair to say that you could probably double that figure and still maybe not be at the cost it would be to renationalize the network today. For context £44bn would be around the same as all the money we spend on Defense in one year. Forget any arguments over the efficiency of a renationalized railway or how we'd fund it in the long term as the simple fact is we couldn't afford to renationalize it in the first place!

 

[jon0844]

It does matter what they've done before... I've no idea how old you are but have you lived under previous labour governments, ie: back in the 70s? Labour always leave the country in a right old mess. I doubt I'll ever vote for that inept hypocritical shower again in my lifetime, and it pains me considerably to admit that as a lifelong railwayman.

But they'll always be popular and win votes. The best thing Labour could do was sit out for a term, to allow the opposition to pick up the pieces. It has allowed Labour to sit back and attack EVERYTHING the coalition is doing and imply that it would have been business as usual if they'd remained in power. They must be so relieved they didn't win and have to actually make any cuts themselves.

Labour is like a loan company that will encourage you to borrow and spend money you don't have. You know it's dodgy to borrow it and try and convince yourself you'll be able to pay off the debt when you get some more money in the future, maybe from a bonus, pay increase, winning the Lottery..

However, when the money clears in your account - you're well chuffed. New car, holiday, brand new TV.. all the luxuries you could never afford. Thank you Labour! I can now live like those fat cats who were born with money, or actually went out and created a business and made money from that. Evil *******s.

Then the Tories are like the debt collector that turns up and says 'sorry mate, it's over'. You hate them. They spoil the fun.

Your hatred for them is huge, especially as they prefer to support those people who own big businesses (perhaps the people that employed you, but never quite paid you enough for you to live this amazing lifestyle your bank promised you could have). You know thing were bad before, but you long for a time when the bank will come back and offer you some more money.

And it repeats.

We might all see what Labour does, but people will invariably seem to be happier when they're in. What we all really want is all of the good times (the boom) without the bust. We want to live in ignorant bliss and hope that we'll be dead before we, personally, have to pay our dues. It's why we'll probably always continue to swap from one party to the other.

 

[tbtc]

The only people who want a nationalised railway are the vested interests - the Unions who hold the country to ransom at a whim. I know that £40K must be a struggle to live on but those of us who earn a quarter of that do as well as we can

I honestly don't think the Unions would want nationalisation.

They'll say that they do, of course, but privatisation has been brilliant for the Unions - they've been able to secure huge gains in wages from TOCs by playing one off against the other - and they know that if they strike it will hurt TOC profits, so there's an incentive for the TOC to cave in to demands (unlike BR who'd not be so easy to manipulate!).

Look at how BR moved to Driver Only Operation on lines, but no TOC has dared to introduce it since privatisation (other than a couple of short sections like Bathgate to Edinburgh, due to the extension of an existing DOO route).

Plus, a rational Nationalised railway would need many fewer staff - the inefficiencies of the current mess are perfect to allow Unions to maximise their members (and their members' £££).

 

[jon0844]

I pay over £250 a year to be a member of a union. That's quite significant and soon adds up. Unions do of course want more staff, thus more members.

And if people aren't convinced about joining a union (as many probably aren't these days, including loads of people I know in journalism that think paying what I do is madness) then I suppose you need a union to work hard to 'remind' potential members why it's important to join.

Best way to do that is to try and convince potential members that you need a union to protect their interests and that management is evil.

Thankfully, my union is nowhere near as militant.

 

[tbtc]

I pay over £250 a year to be a member of a union. That's quite significant and soon adds up. Unions do of course want more staff, thus more members.

And if people aren't convinced about joining a union (as many probably aren't these days, including loads of people I know in journalism that think paying what I do is madness) then I suppose you need a union to work hard to 'remind' potential members why it's important to join.

Best way to do that is to try and convince potential members that you need a union to protect their interests and that management is evil.

Thankfully, my union is nowhere near as militant.

I think £250/ year is a lot of money to most people, but it's a bargain on the railways considering the improvements that Unions have got (in terms and conditions) and also the things that they have safeguarded (as I mentioned previously, DOO would have expanded if BR had their way, but private TOCs are too scared of Unions to try to implement it).

 

[Zoe]

What, you mean remembering that they laid the ground work for the economic growth we enjoyed until 2008? Or that they managed to fix the economic ruin that was Britain after the 70s?

The Tories were defeated back in 1997 in a landslide, some people have short memories of just how unpopular they were back then. The books may well have balanced but don't forget the state they left some public services like the NHS. Thatcher also sold off a lot of council housing resulting in some of the housing issues that still exist today. The Tories also privatized many public services and this resulted in the getting run for the benefit of shareholders rather than for the public. The Tories of course were also responsible for the mess of the Railways Act 1993.

 

[jon0844]

Privatising BT was a good decision.

Privatising the energy companies - I'm not sure about.

I can have a BT phone line, a cable line, a mobile with any number of operators; real competition. When it comes to electricity, gas or water - I have one cable and two pipes and no actual competition. All we've got now are middle men that buy at a trade price and find different ways to charge me, resulting in thousands of confusing tariffs.

British Rail - well, I clearly remember BR differently to a lot of people. It mostly worked, but I never particularly liked using the train (and back then, I recall trains really were slow and dirty a lot of the time). I can remember the lack of information at stations, staff that were rude (just as British Airways also gained a reputation for poor customer service until competition kicked them up the backside, such as Virgin Atlantic) and lots of bad things.

Who knows how things would be now if we didn't have private operators and the need to be more customer service focussed?

However, the sale of council houses by the Tories (possibly more statistically going to be rented by Labour voters) got a lot of people very rich and people who had a council property loved it. Early on there were huge discounts and few restrictions on selling them on for huge profit very quickly. Labour didn't do anything to stop this, or indeed almost anything to reverse what the Tories did. In 13 years, they could have done lots of things but didn't. I have no idea why.

Tony Blair knew the economy he inherited was doing well and didn't appear to have any plans to change it. Had that been the case, maybe New Labour would have succeeded. The problem was that at the same time, he was helping allow the banks to get more freedom (wouldn't you expect the Tories to do this sort of thing?), which started by giving the Bank of England more power. We all know where the lack of regulation got us in the end!

The Tories might have done the exact same thing of course.

 

[Zoe]

In 13 years, they could have done lots of things but didn't. I have no idea why.

As by the time they won in 1997 they had largely abandoned socialism and supported the free market more.

Who knows how things would be now if we didn't have private operators and the need to be more customer service focussed?

London Underground customer service has improved quite a bit and this didn't need privatization.

 

[YorkshireBear]

what the colaition is currently doing to the NHS is pretty bad id say and will very likely loose them the next election. My parents used to be tory but (mums a nurse) now she said she would never vote them in ever again after watching friends of hers (who are frontline staff) be made redundant by the pen pushers who sit in the back and protet their own.

 

[ainsworth74]

The Tories were defeated back in 1997 in a landslide, some people have short memories of just how unpopular they were back then.

Which doesn't change anything that I posted originally, sure they were unpopular but we have to look at why they were unpopular. In part would it be because they were beset by scandal after scandal with seemingly a cabinet minister resigning in disgrace every other week? Or would it be because John Major couldn't compete in anyway with Tony Blair when it comes to charisma? Or could it also be that Labour adopted similar political position to the Tories themselves (Tory lite)? Or how about people being ready for a change after 17/18 years of the same party in charge? So sure they were unpopular by 1997 but what about all the years before that? They managed to win three elections after their election in 1979 so they must have been doing something right...

I can buy that they were deeply unpopular by 1997 (after all the facts support that position) but not that they were unpopular 1979 - 1997. Also lets qualify the 1997 result, it was a landslide in seat terms only not in terms of the popular vote of which they won about an average amount of (most victorious parties have won something around 40-49% of the vote in the last fifty years).

Anyway this has little to do with a thread on nationalization so we'd probably be best to wrap this up quickly or find another thread to continue this discussion in.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

As by the time they won in 1997 they had largely abandoned socialism and supported the free market more.

London Underground customer service has improved quite a bit and this didn't need privatization.

Not sure that they had ever really embraced socialism (in its truest sense)!

...but to get back to the debate on the 'N' word, I'm all for it, the selling off of public assets cheaply to financiers and speculators cannot be justified in my view, and believe it or not I don't have a problem paying my taxes to support public services (that comes with having spent 35 years as a professional in the NHS) - and I think that everyone else should do so too, including the very well off and corporations/big business.

I won't go on, because the arguments have been well rehearsed on this forum previously!

 

[ole man]

It wouldn't work to bring in all the construction work in house, which contractors would get taken in?.Would Nwr pay all the new staff(thousands) to sit doing nothing during the week when it's hard to get possessions these days?.

 

[Clip]

Imagine a Lab government that could say it could create jobs, improve transport infrastructure, increase manufacturing and re-nationalise something, all while saving money then they'd landslide the next election

Wasnt it John Prescott who said prior to Labour being elected as the government that in 10 years they would nationalise the railways?

Did he manage it?

 

[MattRobinson]

Hi all,

First post, hopefully of many.

I think the issue here is that we're looking at just the railways.

The Current Situation

When I was at 6th Form college, I worked out that the following train companies/ organisations were needed to get me there if I travelled on a 3 car class 144:

1. Network Rail to own the track
2. Northern Rail to operate the train
3. Porterbrook to own the DMS's
4. West Yorkshire PTE to own the MS's
5. NXEC (later East Coast) to own Wakefield Westgate Station
6. First TPE to own Huddersfield Station

This doesn't include servicing of trains, contractors or the owners of Northern- Serco and Nederlandse Spoorwegen. Fundamentally, Privatised rail systems are wasteful because each company has to own and maintain separate (costly) facilities and duplicate services.

Rail Accidents
One of the best ways to compare nationised and privatised railways is to look at a couple of rail accidents that happened. In 1952, 3 trains collided at Harrow in Britain's worst peacetime rail disaster. Because of the nationised railway system, 4 running lines were fixed and normal running was restored within 21 1/4 hours of the incident taking place.

Conversely, at Great Heck in 2004 where two trains hit a landrover, it took 10 days to restore running because a road crane had to be brought in and a road built for it.

Now, it may be said that this was because we'd got rid of all the rail cranes, and we'd not got emergency crews on standby at depots any more; and that would be correct. However, we have to consider why that is: the main reason is because privatised railway companies pretty much refused to get involved with re-railing exercises and equipment- it was, after all, their job to run the trains rather than putting them back on the track if they were to fall off.

What we should do
The posts above mine have all focussed on nationalising the railways as is, but I think we should increase the scope of the nationalisation to cover all transportation in this country.

First of all, let us consider passenger transport: we need to reduce the fares on the railways, increase the luxury and make trains run on time until we end up with a railway system which is a viable alternative to private cars.

Next, let us consider the rather underdiscussed freight transport: I think that this country (well, actually the whole continent, but we won't get ahead of ourselves here...) requires an integrated freight network. This can only be achieved with a single, nationalised, industry. All freight is to be packed in shipping containers and then driven to its nearest transshipment yard by lorry where it is offloaded and sent by train to the transshipment yard nearest to its destination. From there, it is sent by lorry to its destination. Large factories could have railway lines built to their loading areas, as per many old mills in the heyday of rail.

This has many benefits to the roads: there will be fewer accidents because the roads have fewer lorries on them; there will be less theft of goods in transit as goods that aren't moving will be in secure railway yards rather than in motorway service stations; and it will be more efficient as there would be one train that's the equivalent of many lorry loads.

Any lorries that aren't containerised (such as foreign lorries, say) would have to be put on a train as is at the depot and the driver would travel in a carriage with the train to the depot nearest its destination.

Of course, with fewer lorries, there will be fewer jobs driving lorries; but the people who are displaced from lorry driving will be able to go into train driving, shunting, crane driving (for moving containers around the yards), etc.

Infrastructure
For freight transportation to work in the way I've just described, we would need new lines, widened lines, freight yards, etc. Many lines would be electrified (and hopefully use renewable energy). This, I grant you, would be expensive, but it would increase jobs accross the board, both building and maintenence.

To summarise, I'd like to point to the findings of a Parliamentary Select Committee as far back as 1839 who said that a railway was a 'Natural Monopoly'.

 

[Zoe]

Wasnt it John Prescott who said prior to Labour being elected as the government that in 10 years they would nationalise the railways?

Did he manage it?

It was not official Labour policy at the 1997 election regardless of what John Prescott wanted.

 

[jon0844]

He did have the 10 year rail plan. Can't remember how it worked out, or if anything planned actually happened.

Still, any party not in power can always say they'll fix everything. They just want the vote at the end of the day. Once in power, they can use PR spin to give all the excuses.

 

[WelshBluebird]

While I would like to see the railways back in state control, the reality is that privatisation has gone too far now. It would simply cost way too much to put the railways back into public hands.

So realistically, what I would like to see is a mix of more regulation, and deregulation. As stupid as that sounds, it makes sense. It is crazy that TOC's cannot get new stock in without permission from the DFT. But at the same time, it is important that companies are not allowed to strip all non profit making services to the bone and such, and there really needs to be more rules to force companies to work together (quite often this would not be needed as some companies are great at working together, sadly not all of them are that good).

 

[Zoe]

It is crazy that TOC's cannot get new stock in without permission from the DFT.

The issue here is that the ROSCOs are not going to order stock unless there is a guarantee that it will be used throughout its lifetime. Since franchises have a maximum length of 15 years (with extension by 50% in certain cicumstances) the TOCs are not in a position to offer this guarantee, only the DfT can.

 

[WestCoast]

I wouldn't support a renationalisation programme as I don't think it would necessarily bring about real benefits and I am sure that many on the railways would shudder at the thought of the DfT taking over everything tomorrow.

However, I would support the notion that the workings of the current franchising system should be reformed and that there is plenty of room for improvement across all sectors.

If a main aim of privastisation was direct competition on the rails, then that aspect has failed. There are relatively few journeys or routes where the consumer actually benefits from any limited direct competition that is provided. Competition is chiefly from the car for many trips, but also buses/coaches and air routes.

Therefore, it seems the competition is supposedly in the bidding process, but like Schnellzug says, the DfT is just choosing sealed bids based on promises and therefore not proven track records and past performances. Is this the right approach? I am not so sure.

I do wonder if we will see longer franchise terms and not more of these "caretaker" franchises like Greater Anglia, which I don't feel represent efficiency at all.

 

[Railsigns]

Privatisation has brought more lines, more services, modern rolling stock (to the South :roll and service expansions British Rail could not afford

Bullplop. Privatisation has brought nothing of the sort. All the above could have been had - at much reduced cost to taxpayers - without privatisation.

The only people who want a nationalised railway are the vested interests

Simply wanting a fair deal for passengers and taxpayers doesn't represent a vested interest. Privatisation has only succeeded in making the railway billions of pounds more expensive to run, year after year. Fifteen years on, it should be plainly obvious to everyone that it's not an efficient way to run a railway and is incapable of ever being so. It is those who defend privatisation that have the vested interests, i.e. rich shareholders and dogma-obsessed capitalists.


E-petition to re-nationalise the railways

 

[WestCoast]

And DB does, of course, have a lot of competition for tendered regional services and in the Freight sector.

Indeed, DB do have a surprisingly large amount of competition in the regional sector in their home market. It's an interesting system (used in quite a few European countries now) but in Germany it's the local state government (federal system) who put the contracts out to tender (they tend to be done on a service by service basis - there are TOCs with just one or two services) and that is gross tendering, where the state pays the TOC to operate the service only. Ticketing, revenue handling and further support/monitoring is generally handled more locally by the equivalent of PTE bodies.

An appealing system to many, but it requires state support financially and operationally every step of the way - something which current and previous UK governments have being trying to move away from.

 

[WelshBluebird]

The issue here is that the ROSCOs are not going to order stock unless there is a guarantee that it will be used throughout its lifetime. Since franchises have a maximum length of 15 years (with extension by 50% in certain cicumstances) the TOCs are not in a position to offer this guarantee, only the DfT can.

And to me, that is part of the problem.
Especially currently where much of the rolling stock was fully paid for by the tax payer under BR>
It is crazy that the public are now having to pay for the same rolling stock a second time (through fares and government subsidy) just because they have been passed off to the ROSCOs.

 

[PR1Berske]

Bullplop. Privatisation has brought nothing of the sort. All the above could have been had - at much reduced cost to taxpayers - without privatisation.



Simply wanting a fair deal for passengers and taxpayers doesn't represent a vested interest. Privatisation has only succeeded in making the railway billions of pounds more expensive to run, year after year. Fifteen years on, it should be plainly obvious to everyone that it's not an efficient way to run a railway and is incapable of ever being so. It is those who defend privatisation that have the vested interests, i.e. rich shareholders and dogma-obsessed capitalists.


E-petition to re-nationalise the railways

Oh please put the red flag away, nobody is interested.

There's a great post earlier in this thread which shoots down the argument stone dead. Were the railways nationalised, our already massive debt will be made much worse, spooking the markets and credit agencies. We would lose all economic credibility. No other country in Europe is considering putting their railways under state control; we most certainly shouldn't.

 

[Railsigns]

No other country in Europe is considering putting their railways under state control

Mainly because they weren't daft enough to privatise them in the first place.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Oh please put the red flag away, nobody is interested.

There's a great post earlier in this thread which shoots down the argument stone dead. Were the railways nationalised, our already massive debt will be made much worse, spooking the markets and credit agencies. We would lose all economic credibility. No other country in Europe is considering putting their railways under state control; we most certainly shouldn't.

As I said earlier, I accept that nationalisation is not really possible anymore.
But I have to ask - why would our massive debt increase?
Nationalising the ToC's does not need to involve spending anything. Just bring the franchises back under state control as they run out. No need to pay anything.

 

[Greenback]

I would also be interested in knowing how our massive debts would increase. The only way I can see this happening is if the costs of running a nationalised railway were significantly higher than what the network costs now.

Being as the evidence points to the railways being a lot more expensive now than they were under BR, this seems unlikely.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Oh please put the red flag away, nobody is interested.

There's a great post earlier in this thread which shoots down the argument stone dead. Were the railways nationalised, our already massive debt will be made much worse, spooking the markets and credit agencies. We would lose all economic credibility. No other country in Europe is considering putting their railways under state control; we most certainly shouldn't.

Well, I would suggest that the current economic system has failed massively , do you not think that economic credibility has been lost already? It has hardly been successful recently...oh, I forgot - except for the very rich!

 

[ainsworth74]

Well, I would suggest that the current economic system has failed massively , do you not think that economic credibility has been lost already? It has hardly been successful recently...oh, I forgot - except for the very rich!

And the alternative is?

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

And the alternative is?

How long have you got? I don't have a problem aiming for a fairer society where the poorer sections of said society don't have to constantly be the fall guys every time the system goes belly up whilst the well off - and I mean the very well off - not the people on 40k as mentioned earlier - continue to rake it in.
However, I am a realist and I know the revolution isn't round the corner (tho' I did used to think that when I was younger!) One is supposed to become more right-wing as one gets older, opposite with me, I'm afraid....

 

[WelshBluebird]

And the alternative is?

To be fair, I don't think you need to come up with any alternatives to realise the current system isn't really working. The richest of the rich getting ever larger bonuses, lazy idiots living on the tax paid by the rest of us, those who genuinely do need help and support not getting it because of spending cuts etc etc.