An op-ed on nationalising the railways, in the Guardian?
Well I never.
They essentially are nationalised now. They’re funded by the tax payer so there’s no real incentive to run a service.
The cuts to services are instructed from the government as they don’t want to pay out when passenger numbers are significantly reduced as they are in some BUT NOT ALL areas at the moment.
Yes because a Nationalised Railway under the Tories would be a roaring success just like all the other industries that were under direct Tory control were…
The railways are already nationalised.
The problem is they are nationalised by European nations who make the profits in the UK to subsidise their own country rail.
The primary issue with the British rail system is lack of capacity to operate a non-fragile service (I.e. the kind of service where a suicide on the line at 6am in Exeter isn’t still causing delays and cancellations at Birmingham New Street that afternoon).
Waving the magic wand of nationalisation is not going to solve that issue.
Lots of people do not realise how bad the railways were before privatisation old rolling stock, always late, run by the unions, trains always dirty and dusty need I go on
What is there to nationalise? The train operating companies have no assets themselves, so you could just let them go bust. The ROSCOs have the trains, so they would be expensive to nationalise. National Rail own all the fixed infrastructure, and they are already essentially under government control.
British Rail was not very good when it was a nationalised body.
Theres a lot on bollocks in the article, but there is a lot of bollocks in Network Rail. The biggest problem is the management are pretty incompetent. They would not survive in the real world and spend millions on justifying their positions. You have layers of management that dont do anything. They arent competitive, or cost aware, it doesnt matter its not their money and they dont get paid to be efficient. Ive seen projects with limited budget (£1.2m) to build a depot, that was shelved because the project team spent £300k on managing it before it even anything started.
I literally have dozens of examples where they pay £20k for a £2k job, or £100k for a £20k job, or £1m for a £50k job.
Some of this is internal incompetence, layers of management to sign off something that has been signed off by a competent person, some of it is contractors just charging what they like as they are the only contractor on the books to do the work. There are also far too many people who are basically incompetent, get very well paid, do next to fuck all. Ive seen incredibly dodgy practices numerous times, not necessarily by NR but by contractors with NR well aware. I’m aware (no evidence but very reliable source) of a person dealing drugs from a company vehicle and not being disciplined because he had info on management and would grass them up.
I used to see programmes on benefit cheats robbing the government of and extra £50 a week to feed their kids and looked at people in NR who in my opinion were stealing 6 figure salaries and providing absolutely nothing for it.
Cant prove any of this, not going to go into details, could be making it up. What ive seen isnt going to cost the country billions but a significant amount of money.
Conversely working on the railway, opening new lines etc, is incredibly complicated, difficult, expensive, and time consuming, far beyond what you could imagine. Some of the people who work on the railway are incredibly knowledgeable, dedicated and intelligent, and the railway genuinely wouldnt cope without them.
But jeez there are some idiots getting paid serious money and not doing anything for it.
The major ones definitely need to be the open accses ones do offer a bit of choice if any of them are available for your journey
Former British Rail / Network SouthEast / WAGN Railway worker here (2986 – 2001). Started on the footplate running freight jobs as a second man, but when Driver Only Operations started in 1988 I moved to the clerical side. Worked in ticket offices in and around London (Kings Cross, St. Pancras, Kings Cross Thameslink, West Hampstead Thameslink, Hatfield, Stevenage, Letchworth, Baldock, Royston). Went from clerical grade CO2 to supervisor grade R/S B before emigrating to the States to marry my American girlfriend.
So anyway. Privatisation.
Every single fucking week on the job, I would have some Sloane Ranger Yuppie come up and complain about the price of tickets. This was back when a Zone 1 Underground single (and by association a single from Kings Cross Thameslink to, say, London Bridge) was 80p or 90p. When I started working further outside of London, it increased.
I would be told, repeatedly, that I would be smiling on the other side of my face when it all got privatised. Oh yes, there would be twice the number of trains with seat-served drinks in standard class and it would be half the price. Grown men would say this. Grown men with grey hair and very expensive cars in the car park and company-paid Annual Season Tickets which included all six zones of London and a built-in Network Card would say this. Just wait until their Tory utopia happened, I was told. They actually believed the shit they were saying. They actually thought reality would bend to their catchphrases. I was told that when it was all private, the trains would run on time in the autumn. They actually believed leaves on the line was some excuse and not an actual physical reality of leaves being ground to a slippery paste under tons of metal rail wheels.
Those people were fools. They still are. After decades of being promised the Moon on a stick and getting nothing, it’s like an abusive relationship at this point. They were promised so much love and they keep getting nothing out of the relationship, but they keep going back for the abuse and more empty promises.
So if you see an old Tory and they still talk about some industry and how it would all be unicorns and rainbows at half the price with double the service if they got their micromanaging paws on it, just remember: they did this to the railway and they’ll do it to every aspect of your life if you don’t actively stop them. They’ll sell off everything not screwed down and sell it back to you at an inflated price.
It’s not just the railway. I got cards from my family, just as I have done every Christmas, and I send them cards from here in the colonies. A stamp to send a card from the US to the UK cost $1.30 each, around 96p at current conversion rates. It’s £1.70 for my family to return the favour. Welcome to your privately owned utopia, and if it’s getting a bit pricy be sure to thank an older conservative.
It’s always time to nationalise the railways…
..and everything else, no compensation. Take it all back.
The problem isn’t the TOC’s; it’s the chronic under investment. Commuter trains that (at least pre-pandemic) packed to the gills, and half empty the rest of the time. Travelling any great distance is slower than by car. Get to the town or city you want – great – now you have to get where you’re going by cab, because the local bus service is terrible. The whole of public transport service needs a massive overhaul. Sacking off the TOCs and calling it reform is nothing
If they were nationalised, they’d have been left to die like tfl has. Keeping them nominally private guarantees continued government support.
14 comments
An op-ed on nationalising the railways, in the Guardian?
Well I never.
They essentially are nationalised now. They’re funded by the tax payer so there’s no real incentive to run a service.
The cuts to services are instructed from the government as they don’t want to pay out when passenger numbers are significantly reduced as they are in some BUT NOT ALL areas at the moment.
Yes because a Nationalised Railway under the Tories would be a roaring success just like all the other industries that were under direct Tory control were…
The railways are already nationalised.
The problem is they are nationalised by European nations who make the profits in the UK to subsidise their own country rail.
The primary issue with the British rail system is lack of capacity to operate a non-fragile service (I.e. the kind of service where a suicide on the line at 6am in Exeter isn’t still causing delays and cancellations at Birmingham New Street that afternoon).
Waving the magic wand of nationalisation is not going to solve that issue.
Lots of people do not realise how bad the railways were before privatisation old rolling stock, always late, run by the unions, trains always dirty and dusty need I go on
What is there to nationalise? The train operating companies have no assets themselves, so you could just let them go bust. The ROSCOs have the trains, so they would be expensive to nationalise. National Rail own all the fixed infrastructure, and they are already essentially under government control.
British Rail was not very good when it was a nationalised body.
Theres a lot on bollocks in the article, but there is a lot of bollocks in Network Rail. The biggest problem is the management are pretty incompetent. They would not survive in the real world and spend millions on justifying their positions. You have layers of management that dont do anything. They arent competitive, or cost aware, it doesnt matter its not their money and they dont get paid to be efficient. Ive seen projects with limited budget (£1.2m) to build a depot, that was shelved because the project team spent £300k on managing it before it even anything started.
I literally have dozens of examples where they pay £20k for a £2k job, or £100k for a £20k job, or £1m for a £50k job.
Some of this is internal incompetence, layers of management to sign off something that has been signed off by a competent person, some of it is contractors just charging what they like as they are the only contractor on the books to do the work. There are also far too many people who are basically incompetent, get very well paid, do next to fuck all. Ive seen incredibly dodgy practices numerous times, not necessarily by NR but by contractors with NR well aware. I’m aware (no evidence but very reliable source) of a person dealing drugs from a company vehicle and not being disciplined because he had info on management and would grass them up.
I used to see programmes on benefit cheats robbing the government of and extra £50 a week to feed their kids and looked at people in NR who in my opinion were stealing 6 figure salaries and providing absolutely nothing for it.
Cant prove any of this, not going to go into details, could be making it up. What ive seen isnt going to cost the country billions but a significant amount of money.
Conversely working on the railway, opening new lines etc, is incredibly complicated, difficult, expensive, and time consuming, far beyond what you could imagine. Some of the people who work on the railway are incredibly knowledgeable, dedicated and intelligent, and the railway genuinely wouldnt cope without them.
But jeez there are some idiots getting paid serious money and not doing anything for it.
The major ones definitely need to be the open accses ones do offer a bit of choice if any of them are available for your journey
Former British Rail / Network SouthEast / WAGN Railway worker here (2986 – 2001). Started on the footplate running freight jobs as a second man, but when Driver Only Operations started in 1988 I moved to the clerical side. Worked in ticket offices in and around London (Kings Cross, St. Pancras, Kings Cross Thameslink, West Hampstead Thameslink, Hatfield, Stevenage, Letchworth, Baldock, Royston). Went from clerical grade CO2 to supervisor grade R/S B before emigrating to the States to marry my American girlfriend.
So anyway. Privatisation.
Every single fucking week on the job, I would have some Sloane Ranger Yuppie come up and complain about the price of tickets. This was back when a Zone 1 Underground single (and by association a single from Kings Cross Thameslink to, say, London Bridge) was 80p or 90p. When I started working further outside of London, it increased.
I would be told, repeatedly, that I would be smiling on the other side of my face when it all got privatised. Oh yes, there would be twice the number of trains with seat-served drinks in standard class and it would be half the price. Grown men would say this. Grown men with grey hair and very expensive cars in the car park and company-paid Annual Season Tickets which included all six zones of London and a built-in Network Card would say this. Just wait until their Tory utopia happened, I was told. They actually believed the shit they were saying. They actually thought reality would bend to their catchphrases. I was told that when it was all private, the trains would run on time in the autumn. They actually believed leaves on the line was some excuse and not an actual physical reality of leaves being ground to a slippery paste under tons of metal rail wheels.
Those people were fools. They still are. After decades of being promised the Moon on a stick and getting nothing, it’s like an abusive relationship at this point. They were promised so much love and they keep getting nothing out of the relationship, but they keep going back for the abuse and more empty promises.
So if you see an old Tory and they still talk about some industry and how it would all be unicorns and rainbows at half the price with double the service if they got their micromanaging paws on it, just remember: they did this to the railway and they’ll do it to every aspect of your life if you don’t actively stop them. They’ll sell off everything not screwed down and sell it back to you at an inflated price.
It’s not just the railway. I got cards from my family, just as I have done every Christmas, and I send them cards from here in the colonies. A stamp to send a card from the US to the UK cost $1.30 each, around 96p at current conversion rates. It’s £1.70 for my family to return the favour. Welcome to your privately owned utopia, and if it’s getting a bit pricy be sure to thank an older conservative.
It’s always time to nationalise the railways…
..and everything else, no compensation. Take it all back.
The problem isn’t the TOC’s; it’s the chronic under investment. Commuter trains that (at least pre-pandemic) packed to the gills, and half empty the rest of the time. Travelling any great distance is slower than by car. Get to the town or city you want – great – now you have to get where you’re going by cab, because the local bus service is terrible. The whole of public transport service needs a massive overhaul. Sacking off the TOCs and calling it reform is nothing
If they were nationalised, they’d have been left to die like tfl has. Keeping them nominally private guarantees continued government support.