Re: the railways
 

£55 million and counting wasted its time for re-nationalise .. #FareFail: Commuters Against Rail Fare Rises ? Together for Transport

Re: the railways
 

Ya I bet your teeth are glad when your mouth goes to sleep, spewing out so much garbage daily, by the way you never did tell us your gainful mode of employment, we know your not a journalist, you can't spell of use the queens English very well so come on cmon lets now how you pay your hard earned pennies:D

Re: the railways
 

He probably works for a foreign company, something like that French one that is throwing the long term ill off sickness benefits and onto the dole even though they aren't fit to work and if they were, there are no jobs for them to do anyway.
He's working from the inside to show how little truth there is in the term 'we're all in this together'.
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...Dww3iQOAJ8ljag

Re: the railways
 

You know something, Jay, I've really missed you! :D

Re: the railways
 

Here you are cmon. (cut & pasted in true cmon style)

Bring Back British Rail | the collective voice of disgruntled rail passengers and disheartened train company employees, calling for a unified national rail network run for people not profit

http://www.bringbackbritishrail.org/...persticker.gif

Re: the railways
 

SNCF - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia just watched sky news and the french have double decker brand new clean trains.never knew i would say this but i think we should follow the French policy on rail transport.it brings in at least £20 billion after costs .this shows one the real reasons why this country has gone backwards.

Re: the railways
 

The idea in theory is a good un, In practice doubt if it would work, senior Politicians in this country i believe,are more corrupt these days, than when they decimated our railway system, n Beeching @ company were well corrupt back then.:rolleyes: so dream on.

Re: the railways
 

vote for the green party and it will come true;):D

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Like i said dream on.;)

Re: the railways
 

Perhaps we should take a moment to reflect on the golden age of rail when it was last in nationalised hands. 1979, a great year for many things (like flared trousers and Glam rock) but not so for rail. At that time the unions had brought the UK to a striking standstill and the country was by every measure bottom of Europe (below Greece and Portugal).

The problem with the UK rail system is not so much who owns it but the quality of people managing it. East Coast line was nationalised and is run by the government after the previous operator lost so much money they went bust. It has the worst record for punctuality of all the lines. There is no such thing as a profitable railway line in the UK - I believe that every single line (except maybe the Ribble Valley narrow gauge tourist track) loses money every year.

Privatisation cannot work for massively lossmaking industries - it just created a short term cash windfall for the government of the day that was subsequently squandered. Now that cash benefit is long gone we are left with the govt (read taxpayer) or rail users picking up the tab for both subsidy and loss, picking up the job of managing the line if the operator fails.

The Octopus system noted in the original article should have been rolled out 10 years ago when the technology became mainstream. Like unions......paper tickets, cash collectors, and signalmen are all legacy of a bygone age.

Crowding can be easily sorted by flexible time based pricing which the electronic cards system allows. Charge the card once and then just tap it at all the public transport points when you get on and off (system calculates distance traveled and charges accordingly). This can and should be integrated with bus transport, taxis and as here in Singapore even shopping.

To deal with overcrowding here they introduced FREE train travel on all weekday journeys ending by 7.30am, with compensating higher charges for people who want to travel peak time. Loads of people change behaviour for FREE travel - going to gym before work or going for breakfast in the city. Peak travel is thus also fine because half the country travels pre-7.30 so the carriages are less busy. Good for employers too as employees turn up earlier than they otherwise would.

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Can't agree more G. everywhere in the world seams to become more advanced than we are in a lot of departments, but we still hear those cherished words "my members won't stand for it" from some Union boffin on £140,000 a year, or in other words I'm not letting progress get in the way of my nice little earner:rolleyes:

the railways
 

You are a bit out of date with your pricing there Jay.

Take Arthur Scargill as a shining example of union leadership. Wasn't he awarded a 3 bedroom flat for life in the Barbican, London (his life and his wife's...). That's a £2m job perk - check out Rightmove.co.uk if you don't believe me. To rent that would cost £6,000 a month.

Of course he deserved it because he did such a fantastic job....... His predecessor and his wife got the same.

I wonder, did union leaders teach bankers?

Re: the railways
 

You could at least have used a smiley's after fantastic job,:rolleyes: I seem to remember the leader of the TUC at the time saying Arthur went into the strike with a big Union and a little house and came out the other side with a small union and a big house;)

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You should feel ashamed , you know very well that Jay can't think for himself, God alone knows why he joined UKIP but, there is no need to make him imagine he has his own opinion.

Re: the railways
 

your talking rubbish just before they privatized the railways they were in profit the tories spent billions of pounds raised by the railways in modernising the stock and railways.in fact some of eastern and other railways just painted over the British rail carriages and are still in use till this day.the eastern railway is nationalized now as the firm who run it failed.it has brought in £360 million for the taxpayer and spent 30 million for new stock.the same British Rail that received the lowest amount of subsidy in the whole of Europe but had more trains running at over 100MPH than any other country? And the same that delivered a profitable Intercity and NetworkSouthEast by 1994, without a pound needing to be paid out in performance-related season ticket pay-outs that year? And the same that achieved the highest-ever year of investment in recent decades for 1990/91 despite having a subsidy a fraction of what it is today? Do let us know why british rail was brought to a standstill when hadnt had a strike for ten years:confused::confused::confused::confused:A lot of people fail to understand that just before privatisation BR was one of the most efficient railways in the world. By 1990 it has managed to improve itself to such an extent it was possibly the most efficient in Europe, and had massively reduced the burden on both the taxpayer and its own finances.