Trains in this country are having a laugh aren't they!!

bomberesque wrote:

Porgy wrote:

bomberesque wrote:

and they'll probably want extra to carry your bike

not like the old days when you just said a cheery hello to the guard and he opened his van door with a smile, a tug of his forelock and a "can I help you with that youngster?", let me tell you. It's all that bloody Maggie thatcher's fault privatising everything like that british rail staff were *so* polite in the old days and the trains were much better value......

[/dementia]
.....hold on no they weren't

you're right, trains have been rubbish, expensive, slow and .... well ... just crap but they've been that way for decades.
[dementia]
I blame that Jimmy Saville myself ... etc etc

Before Thatcher privatised the Railways we were mid League in Europe, but since privatisation we've slipped into the relegation zone below Italy and Spain!!

I gave up using trains around 1993 / 94 once I realised that I couldn;t afford them (and despite only earning half what I do now I could afford to travel around the country on a weekly basis - now I can afford about one train trip a year - and own a car instead!) and any attempt to get a bike onboard would result in an argument with the staff and on one notable occasion - I was very nearly arrested (Midland Mainline - cocks!! - still owe me the price of a D lock)

anything between dementia tags I'm not responsible for

actually I was fairly sure that Railway privatisation was post Thatcher so looked it up

wikipedia - font of all knowledge wrote:

In Britain, Margaret Thatcher was replaced by John Major as leader of the Conservative Party at the end of 1990. The Thatcher administration had already sold off nearly all the former state-owned industries, apart from the national rail network. Although the previous Transport Secretary and arch-Thatcherite Cecil Parkinson had advocated some form of privately or semi-privately operated rail network, this was deemed 'a privatisation too far' by Thatcher herself

which surprised me to read, tbh

more on that here

seems John Major's govt thought up the idea but never thought he would have to actually *do* it then went and won the '92 election against the odds and was forced to. He wanted a 4 company split but after the Treasury put their oar in with a 7 way split proposal we ended up with.... 25 (politics eh? :roll: )

Labour then failed to keep their election promise to keep the railways in the public sector but instead went with the momentum and finished the whole deal off. I recall that Maggie thatcher said that New Labour was her greatest ever triumph; tories in red ties.

I seem to remember that the only reason Thatch rejected the idea was becasue it was likely to be unpopular around the time that she was already pretty unpopular, particularly because of the council tax. But the plans for privatisation started under thatch...and were (initally) rejected by Thatch. i think there were all sorts of technical difficulties at the time too with some of the other areas they wanted to privatise such as Nuclear Fuels, and the utilities, prisons, etc.

I'd forgotten they were privatised so late in the day - you're right it was between 92 and 97. They were already private when New Labour got in - and Labour refused to reverse the policy - although later they did take railtrack back - and some of the failing service providers as and when their contracts have come up for renewal.

London Underground was, however, privatised by New Labour, though they avoided using the P word.

Trouble is now that railways are so much dependent on private contractors for getting works done and services provided, it's going to be a long uphill struggle to get them back to where they were - and any money pumped in will just translate straight into private profit or inefficiencies.

When I left school in the mid 80s I could easily afford the 50p or so that would allow me to travel all around Plymouth - 70 or 80p took me up onto Dartmoor or to the coast.

Then after I came back to Plymouth for a short time three eyars later everything had changed - nearly £2 to get onto the city centre and back - a completely unreliable service in which two tiny buses from different companies would turn up at exactly the same time about once an hour!!

I understand things have improved a bit since then - however - the prices never went down again.