Privatisation

verylonglegs

Notable how he chose to ignore the cost of trains bit as soon as people actually working on them corrected him. Makes you wonder what else he claims to be an authority on but is actually talking nonsense.

VTech

So are we saying that the reason for much cheaper flights is the cheaper overall costings of airplanes ?

d87francis

Nope.

Flights should be much more heavily taxed, as the externality that has been avoided in previous discussions is the level of pollution they create per passenger. Tax on flights has been kept too low due to the supposed globalisation of free trade. The same arguments which over exaggerate the effects of globalisation are used to defend low taxes on business as they are on flights, that business or tourism will go elsewhere.

To put it simply the rail networks should be re-nationalised and/or heavily subsidised, along with vast spending on public transport infrastructure which could provide lots of jobs and cut pollution. At the same time air travel should have massive taxes imposed on it. It's shocking that one can fly from London to Edinborough for less than half the price of a train ticket. I may be hard up but would feel very guilty for flying such a short distance.

Inter government lending is below inflation currently, we should borrow more and spend on public infrastructure/housing/health/education, you know those things that are some what essential to society; rather than p*ss money away to private corporations only for it to cost us more and employ less people. We need to fight the large corporations buying up public services such as Serco and G4s as well as the elite in power who push this change funded by corporate interest. They will ultimately only further damage society, public services should be run at a loss, they are not about making money and the only efficiency they bring is that of private profits for directors watching people lose jobs, welfare and services.

Garry H

d87francis wrote:

Nope.

Flights should be much more heavily taxed, as the externality that has been avoided in previous discussions is the level of pollution they create per passenger. Tax on flights has been kept too low due to the supposed globalisation of free trade. The same arguments which over exaggerate the effects of globalisation are used to defend low taxes on business as they are on flights, that business or tourism will go elsewhere.

To put it simply the rail networks should be re-nationalised and/or heavily subsidised, along with vast spending on public transport infrastructure which could provide lots of jobs and cut pollution. At the same time air travel should have massive taxes imposed on it. It's shocking that one can fly from London to Edinborough for less than half the price of a train ticket. I may be hard up but would feel very guilty for flying such a short distance.

Inter government lending is below inflation currently, we should borrow more and spend on public infrastructure/housing/health/education, you know those things that are some what essential to society; rather than p*ss money away to private corporations only for it to cost us more and employ less people. We need to fight the large corporations buying up public services such as Serco and G4s as well as the elite in power who push this change funded by corporate interest. They will ultimately only further damage society, public services should be run at a loss, they are not about making money and the only efficiency they bring is that of private profits for directors watching people lose jobs, welfare and services.

That doesn't answer his question though

VTech

It kinda does, in a way

I have to get flights at the last minute, if something needs fixing etc and time is at a premium I have no alternative.
I can fly anywhere in the world cheaper and more efficiently than driving, coach, train, bus or car.
I have to go back to New York next month and the cost of the ticket is £217+tax, given that fact I could never use any other method but of course what your referring too is where there is a moral choice and I guess I often take the easy option by using air.
In theory I could drive to Germany (I work a lot in Germany) or even get a train but when you add the cost, the time and the hassle I just cant condone it and so always get a plane which for as little as £84 return is the best option/bargain.
Its not right I grant you, but it is so easy.

AchillesLeftKnee

VTech wrote:

So are we saying that the reason for much cheaper flights is the cheaper overall costings of airplanes ?

IMHO it's actually an irrelevant comparison because there's only a relatively small subset of the services of each industry that can be compared, especially given that the majority of passenger rail journeys are short distance commutes. Rail infrastructure isn't cheap, but it does provide a lot of facilities that air can't. http://legacy.london.gov.uk/gla/publications/factsandfigures/dmag-briefing-2007-03.pdf Okay, you'll need to play Hunt the Numbers a bit, but based on said 2007 GLA document there were about 680,000 daily rail users who commuted into or within London. TOCs are focused on them, not competing with the airlines.

In the case of the States, the comparison's even less worth making because the big US railroads are actually highly efficient and successful private enterprises that play a major role in the US economy. After deregulation, they were sensibly relieved of any obligation to try and compete over long distances with air for passenger revenues, so they concentrated on freight which they do ridiculously well. Warren Buffett didn't buy BNSF because he wanted a train set to play with Okay, Amtrak's a farce, but given the distances involved it would make very little sense to throw huge quantities of taxpayers money at it in an attempt to compete with devices that manage to whizz along at 500mph and require very little infrastructure.

VTech

You raise very good points. The fact is, I live in the country and rarely need to use the train in the UK. If I lived in London it would be totally difficult. I know people who us helicopter as transport in and around London as they just can't use the train and there is no other option so for the masses, the train is key.
Having said that, there really is no need to charge the extortionate fees that they do. I avoid London due to the hassle of getting around.

AchillesLeftKnee

VTech wrote:

Having said that, there really is no need to charge the extortionate fees that they do. I avoid London due to the hassle of getting around.

It's all down to competition with other forms of transport as far as I* can see.

In a sense, rail doesn't actually have any competition across the overwhelming portion of it's network**. Even with current tax prices (as in the kind of tax you get some free petrol with), and even with the considerably cheaper fares available if booked early enough, driving works out very competitive on price door-to-door, and once you get two people in the car it's not even a contest. In terms of journey times, it's a no contest door-to-door, even for journeys to central Scotland. Add on to that the convenience of being able to travel as and when required and it's regularly the case that private transport is the sole option.

To pick on a regular journey of my own - south of Guildford to west of Cambridge, leaving Friday early evening (so, yes, that's Friday night on the M25) and returning Sunday (~130 miles each way). In the car, it takes between two and a half hours and four hours depending on traffic. Three hours up and two and a half back is the usual. Total petrol cost there and back is about forty quid. The public transport version one way involves two bus journeys (total of about 90 minutes on a good day, costs about a tenner), two train journeys (the cost of easily which exceed the total petrol cost, takes about two hours), a faff across London on the tube (20 mins), plus an indeterminate amount of waiting around for stuff to show up. The latter can be reduced by using taxis, but given that the cost of a taxi on the most delay-ridden leg (Guildford to home on the Sunday, a whopping seven miles) actually exceeds the one way petrol cost for the journey as a whole, to do so would clearly be batsh*t crazy. To make that journey competitive in terms of cost and time to the point where taking public transport would beat the car, the trains between Guildford and London and London and Cambridge would need to be replaced with instant teleporters, the station-to-door transport would need to be free, and the teleporter fare would need to be about half the rail fare.

In short, if one's not doing what the public transport system is designed to do (get people to work and back), and you don't live right next to a hub, public transport offers absolutely nothing when making mid and long distance journeys.

So why on earth would anyone of sound mind take the train for a non-commute?

To me anyway, it's simple. If one is unable to drive, or unwilling to drive, it's often the case that the choice comes down to taking the train or not travelling. In essence, rail is an absolute monopolist over quite a lot of it's network for a certain percentage of the traveling public, and this clearly gives them a ton of pricing power.

Commuting's a different conundrum altogether, and one that's far to big and issue to deal with here given that it actually boils down to determining the utility of attempting to cram employment into already overcrowded city centres. Whether we as a society are best served by trying to keep central London viable as a destination for businesses and workers in industries that don't actually need to be there is a bloody complex one, and I suspect the only rational answer is "I dunno, so let's not touch anything", hence the current situation for commuters in the south east.


* The missus travels around the UK as part of her sporting official (hobby, not job) duties. Consequently, planning long distance journeys within the UK from south Surrey (read as "relatively handy for Heathrow, Gatwick, and the London rail termini) is a regular event.

** London to Edinburgh is one thing. London to Berwick on Tweed is a different kettle of fish. When looking at rail pricing vs flight pricing, it starts to make a lot more sense if you look at the differences in price between the door-to-door costs of getting to somewhere en route for the train that's not an air hub. Rail might not be cheaper hub to hub, but it slaughters air for hub-to-thing-that's-not-hub.

spen666

Of course Achillies left Knee is spot on - cars do not cost anything to buy or maintain, so the true cost of your car journey is merely the fuel you put in it.

Insurance/ MOT/ VEL etc all are paid for by the fairies and like maintenance, capital cost of purchase, depreciation etc are to be ignored.

AchillesLeftKnee

spen666 wrote:

Of course Achillies left Knee is spot on - cars do not cost anything to buy or maintain, so the true cost of your car journey is merely the fuel you put in it.

Insurance/ MOT/ VEL etc all are paid for by the fairies and like maintenance, capital cost of purchase, depreciation etc are to be ignored.

They were ignored for a reason. The reason being that the great majority of people already have cars, and already need them for other purposes. Consequently, the marginal cost of additional car journeys is minimal.

Or, to put it another way, I need my car for a variety of reason, not least of which is work (there are no public transport alternatives for me). I therefore already pay servicing costs, insurance, depreciation, and VED, so adding a couple of thousand miles a year doesn't really add much to them because all bar servicing are fixed, and the additional mileage is such that the effects on servicing costs are pretty trivial.

VTech

spen666 wrote:

Of course Achillies left Knee is spot on - cars do not cost anything to buy or maintain, so the true cost of your car journey is merely the fuel you put in it.

Insurance/ MOT/ VEL etc all are paid for by the fairies and like maintenance, capital cost of purchase, depreciation etc are to be ignored.

The problem is, when you buy a car the costs are upfront which in turn make the use of the vehicle far easier to justify as you really do only need to pay for fuel as all the other costs are there regardless.

EKIMIKE

Getting bogged down in the details again, aren't we.

AchillesLeftKnee

EKIMIKE wrote:

Getting bogged down in the details again, aren't we.

Can't argue with that

tiredofwhiners

verylonglegs wrote:

Notable how he chose to ignore the cost of trains bit as soon as people actually working on them corrected him. Makes you wonder what else he claims to be an authority on but is actually talking nonsense.

No, I have a real life which takes precedence over morons who blithely ignore that it is more expensive to go by train than air so no matter how much you may disagree with me, reality supports my view.

The simple fact is that the public sector costs too much in the Uk, is over-rewarded and underperforming and these are facts by any sensible measure. I have been involved heavily with rail system for the last 20 years and the financial side - not the views of 'staff' who know more about how the train runs, but actually know b*gger all about what things cost. I worked with Alstom for a few years and know what they bid, what was required and what was necessary for a modern, reliable train service. This is business which they won. Believe me or not but taking the 'advice' from train spotters who know exactly how to run a terrible railway service, costing way too much if you like but the plain old fact is that travelling by train is way too expensive in the Uk because the rolling stock costs too much, the signalling costs too much, the track maintenance and renewals cost too much and the staff are largely overpaid.

As to the public sector, there is no part of the public sector that offers value for money. Its people are overpaid, apart from nurses and military troops there is no part of the public sector which is held up as a shining example of anything except how not to do things. I support the fighting forces of the Uk strongly - its a pity they have a complete wate of space in DE&S responsible for procurement.

Say what you want about me, I am too old to care what people here might think they know. The facts are on my side - the public sector is cr*p and outperforms nothing, and trains are more expensive than flying because the public sector cannot do anything effectively. Its not about the effort people put in, its about the results they create and the results say they are pretty uniformly cr*p.

If you had the choice of using someone else to provide a service, most of the public sector would be out of a job

tiredofwhiners

mamba80 wrote:

TOW - you dont seem to have learnt a thing during this "discussion"
You go on about private enterprise - but then acknowledge the Gov had to bail out the banks - pension mis selling, libor, PPI, BG 600m profits, whilst elderly and many other families freeze, RBS 5billion losses BUT 600m bonus pool ? hardly private business at its best is it?

The losses of the public sector over preceding years dwarf this in comparison. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but the point you omit is that the private sector carries the cost of its mistakes. The public sector does not. The mistakes of the public sector problems result in even higher taxes to pay the same morons to put their own mistakes right.

Yes, the banks are being bailed out and they are repaying every penny with interest. They are not being given free money. As to RBS bonus's, who would take a job to turn a bank from loss into profit in a single year ? The private sector isn't that thick. Sometimes you have to pay a bonus to minimise loses - just imagine if HMRC were put in charge of RBS after sacking all the bankers. Do you imagine the situation would be better or worse? How much tax do the Banks pay and how much less would you have to spend on the public sector if they all went bankrupt ?

mamba80 wrote:

Union strikes of the 70s ? surely the withdrawl of labour is the ultimate in the free market? but you dont want that do you? what you do is cherry pick - selecting the best of the free market and highlighting that against some pretty poor work practices of the public sector.

The 1970's strikes were nothing to do with legitimate withdrawal of labour. I will always defend the right to strike, providing your ballot has strong, genuine majority support. Most 1970's strikes were exemplified by coachloads of pickets from unrelated industries turning up at other factories and intimidating staff. As soon as anonymous ballots were required, the number of strikes reduced as the intimidations and threats by unions was removed. People were able to express their democratic views without being victimised by union members or even by other unrelated unions. It because clear than people did not want to strike and only the old union laws had resulted in damaging strikes.

But the point is that the 1970's strikes were just about defying modernisation so the effect was to destroy their own industries. People who claim Thatcher destroyed manufacturing are simply wrong. The unions striking destroyed the companies that gave their members jobs by making them so uncompetitive that nobody would buy their goods. So their own actions destroyed their jobs - what a great union outcome. The German Unions have the right attitude - partnership for long term employment in line with market change - not the railing against reality ensuring the demise iof the employer which has been the mark of the UK Union movement.

I don't cherry pick, I've just given some examples. There are no parts of the public sector that are shining examples of anything. I don't hate civil servants personally - I just think they are overpaid, underperforming and would if given the choice, pay someone else competent to do their job, but sadly that isn't an option in our country.

mamba80 wrote:

As i said before, the public sector isnt allowed to compete on a level playing field, R/mail - they have to carry their rivals post at just about cost and have their prices fixed by ofcom, same with BT, they ve got to open up the infrastructure to rivals who dont have to maintain or upgrade it.

All of which they get paid the amount they agree with the regulator. They are not subsidising anyone esle but are getting a fair price. The simple reason that RM is in a state is that the unions, remember them ?, have fought off modernisation at every turn. They are the last non-automated mail sorting service in Europe. They fought against increased use of machines for decades and at the same time wanted their staff to be paid for a full days pay even if they are finished in half the time. I'm sure you know more about it than I but don't the unions demand that anyone working beyond their round time, but within the working day, gets overtime? This is why the RM is in difficulty - 1960's trade practices, overpaying for a standard days pay and a refusal to automate that which the rest of Europe did decades ago. If RM staff had joined the 21st century, then there would probably have been less demand to open up routes as they would have been marginally efficient.

So, if you think Royal Mail could work on a different playing field to compete fairly - what else would they do to improve service and please their customers if the other providers were excluded?

Sadly i think your only answer would be to charge more (because the public would have no alternative to pay), pay the staff more (for no good reason) and refuse to modernise and reduce the cost base (standard public sector approach). In other words, given a monopoly, RM would charge more' offer less and employ more people than necessary. And you wonder why people wanted the monopoly broken ? I seriously doubt an unrestricted RM would do anything positive for its customer base as its fought pretty hard against it for most of the last century.

mamba80 wrote:

Councils cant rise their prices ie rates - all they can do is cut services, leading to more pxssed of staff, worse service - private business just charge what the market can stand, so of course they make money and seem more efficient.

Well council tax has almost doubled over the last decade or so so only in the last three years have councils had their spending reined in. Council taxes have gone up every year for decades so suggesting that councils cannot do it is simply a lie - they have always done it arbitrarily, with no regard for efficiency and reality. And where has all this money gone - improved services (not much), new services (not many), paying the staff more to do the same job (yep, a lot) and paying pensions of workers (the majority). So for a decade of doubling of council taxes, the public sector has simply given itself pensions and salaries which its clients themselves can only dream of. If you don't like the service a private company provides, you can go elsewhere. If you don't like the price a company charges, then you can go elsewhere. When you don't like the council charge levels, you have to just put up with it so the piggies can keep their noses in the trough. New pay rise for councillors, put up the council tax. New pay rise for staff, put up the council tax. Higher pensions wanted, put up the council tax. And that has now stopped. Its very democratic to say that if you ant to charge folks more, you have to actually ask them first. Its not austerity when someone tells you to take your nose out of the feed bag for the fisrt time in decades.

mamba80 wrote:

Would nhs hospitals be in the financial state they r in IF they could charge what the Nuffield does?

Undoubtedly not, but then again, many staff would have been sacked for incompetence. Much of the administration would have been automated and many staff let go. Nuffield will have lot lessa dmin than the NHS and has a lot less claims against it for negligence. Professional standards would be higher - non-performing staff would be out instantly. Theatres would operate 24/7 and not when it suited the staff. Throughput of patients would be higher. People who pay for Nuffield (BUPA myself) get a good service and we pay for it. The problem with parts of the NHS is they want more money but don't want to offer anything of value in return.

mamba80 wrote:

Many if not all of the problems in the public sector have been bought about by bring in private sector practices whilst ham stringing how they can do business.

The NHS was in a mess long before anyone thought about privatisation of anything.

mamba80 wrote:

Take the privatisation of waste collection by Cornwall CC - missed collections, more recycle ending up in landfil and more expensive to run, at the same time the workers have lost their already meager pensions, meaning that we ll be paying them in benefits after they retire.

So what you're saying is that a PUBLIC sector council let a clearly deficient contract, allowing the supplier to get away with this and the PUBLIC sector managers are so incompetent as to allow the situation to still continue ? So when is the civil servant in the Cornwall CC office who let this contract going to be sacked ? He/she probably wasn't - they are probably still there, sucking on the public purse. Thats a great example of why the public sector isn't accountable so thanks for that. If the employer had been a private sector company they would have written a better contract, and sacked the supplier if they didn't perform. And not asked the public for more money to put right their own mistake - which by your example, is what the CC will do in effect.

When ever I hear ' meagre pensions' or 'its not gold plated because its on £5,000 a year' I like to remind them that they have actually only paid enough into their pension to pay out about 25% of that and the 75% balance is being provided by low paid taxpayers in the private sector. Not millionaires,, not billionaires but ordinary folks are paying higher taxes to give public sector workers pensions which they have simply not paid enough to earn, and the sooner this stops and everyone pays for their own pensions, the better the Uk will be.

I would not however suggest removing any accrued rights off anyone - just get the piggies snouts out from this point onwards.

EKIMIKE

If this whole debate is forever going to be divided into those who want to sh1t on the public sector and those who want to sh1t on the private sector then where will we end up?

Just because you work for or had a positive experience with one doesn't mean you have to hate, discredit and attack the other. Honestly, some heads need to come out of @rses. There's a lot more to this than one prevailing over the other. Yet that is the overwhelming context persistently given to this debate.

You may as well argue over whether the colour blue is better than red.

PS There are also loads of really interesting, well reasoned contributions, don't get me wrong. But there are a few who are trying to shout loudest, as always...

markos1963

tiredofwhiners wrote:

The simple fact is that the public sector costs too much in the Uk, is over-rewarded and underperforming and these are facts by any sensible measure. I have been involved heavily with rail system for the last 20 years and the financial side - not the views of 'staff' who know more about how the train runs, but actually know b*gger all about what things cost. I worked with Alstom for a few years and know what they bid, what was required and what was necessary for a modern, reliable train service. This is business which they won. Believe me or not but taking the 'advice' from train spotters who know exactly how to run a terrible railway service, costing way too much if you like but the plain old fact is that travelling by train is way too expensive in the Uk because the rolling stock costs too much, the signalling costs too much, the track maintenance and renewals cost too much and the staff are largely overpaid.

Well that's a turn up because you have just argued the fact that the privatised railway is less efficient and more expensive than the old nationalised one! Or have you forgotten that the railways have been privatised for more than fifteen years! That's why the trains are so expensive, to pay for Alstroms profits and shareholders. The same with private contractors maintaining the railway, they make their profits as well on the backs of the paying public.
As for calling a train driver a 'spotter' who knows bugger all then I best come round and insert a brake stick where the sun don't shine.

mamba80

EKIMIKE wrote:

If this whole debate is forever going to be divided into those who want to sh1t on the public sector and those who want to sh1t on the private sector then where will we end up?

Just because you work for or had a positive experience with one doesn't mean you have to hate, discredit and attack the other. Honestly, some heads need to come out of @rses. There's a lot more to this than one prevailing over the other. Yet that is the overwhelming context persistently given to this debate.

You may as well argue over whether the colour blue is better than red.

PS There are also loads of really interesting, well reasoned contributions, don't get me wrong. But there are a few who are trying to shout loudest, as always...

what is your point?

its called a difference of opinion, like all internet debates they are all basically pointless as none of us here have any influence and i doubt any G/Ministers are reading our musings.

Red is course better than Blue.........

pliptrot

tiredofwhiners wrote:

I don't cherry pick, I've just given some examples

Cherry picking is all you've done, and opinions are not examples. Any discussion about political ideologies like this tends to bring out extremists with their dogmatic views. It's never that simple, and the arguments that one approach is the work of the devil and the other that provides champagne and roses for all are plain daft. Railways? When BR was nationalised it could have provided a completely free service had it received the same subsidy as SNCF. Now private, the UK railways receive huge subsidies, are the most expensive in the world and are not very good. Compared with DB, subsidy levels are similar, service is far worse, and fares are much, much higher. Privatisation? Not a good thing.

EKIMIKE

mamba80 wrote:

what is your point?

Well I know this is the internetz 'n all that - but the point stands for wider society.

My point is: Where do we get if it's one polemic against another polemic? & Isolated personal experience (call it cherry picking if you want) is not valid reasoning.

Anyway, ignore, please.

AchillesLeftKnee

EKIMIKE wrote:

My point is: Where do we get if it's one polemic against another polemic?

Precisely.

Trotting out the standard "It used to be nationalised therefore it should be state owned, because it just should" and "The state runs it and shouldn't because the state shouldn't run anything" stuff doesn't actually get anywhere. Combine this with the absolutely dire state of our terribly tribal political system and we end up, erm, in the mess we're in at the moment. "If my team are doing it, it must be right" is the perfect recipe for the total lack of political accountability we have at the moment.

Still, it's all good comedy either way, as listening to ardent Tories complain about their rail commute into London (well, you voted for it!) and Labour for Life types moaning about the banks (well, you voted for it.. and in this case, did so three times!) is pure entertainment, albeit of the rather depressing variety.

EKIMIKE

Amen to the above.

Basically it ends up going where U.S. politics is at the moment. They actually have to invent terrible scenario's (Fiscal Cliff, Sequestration) and put an arbitrary date on it creating a virtual political time bomb just so that both sides will, for a short while, have to talk sensibly with each other and get something done.

Absolute joke.