Railway Industrial Disputes Mk2

[baz962]

They are completely different jobs, in completely different industries. It is nonsensical to suggest that the pay should be similar just before they’re “public services”.

Why should doctors be paid more than nurses? Why should nurses be paid more than bin men?

Or MPs get so much , certainly considering they are mostly failing this country. Took their payrise too. Also although the farebox doesn't cover the cost hence the subsidies , the railway brings money into the economy and the NHS doesn't. Comparing apples to oranges as usual.

 

[DanBlanchflowe]

As a driver, I'd like more equality and fairness and have my pay matched with an MPs please. As neither MP, nor us thick drivers need any formal qualification or previous relevant experience.

See my reply on Job Evaluation which sees formal qualifications as only one of many many things for evaluation..
I think train driving is a valued public service.

 

[Wyrleybart]

A Registered NHS Nurse scale 5 starts on £25,655 after 3 years training & has to pay tuition fees & student loans.
A TPE train driver gets £58,000 3 years after starting paid for training.

You are comparing apples and oranges. A registered nurse scales starts at XXXX and a TPE driver gets XXX 3 years after starting. What is an untrained rookie TPE driver's salary ?. I will concede that perhaps the trainee driver needs to loan purchase their training with a commitment to their company until the loan is paid off, but ASLEF wouldn't agree to that.

 

[baz962]

We are lucky in Europe to consider a passenger service essential.
In some populous parts of Western nations, a passenger rail service has not been considered necessary for decades.
My daughter lives in Nashville. There is no passenger rail service to any other state. Only one suburban peak hour line.
Passenger services only just touch Tennessee which has nearly as big land area as England!!

But in America they fly everywhere. My son lives near Seattle. Everytime I'm over there I'm amazed at the amount of people for internal flights. Of course if you are going North to South or East coast to West , it's quite a distance. But many even fly from Seattle to Portland , which isn't so bad.

 

[43066]

Has you post ever been under scrutiny by your HR Department's Job Evaluation Team?
In mine they scored 12 different criteria to assess the post's 'worth'.

Job evaluation: considerations and risks booklet - Acas
https://www.acas.org.uk › sites › default › files › job...

PDF

Obviously in job evaluation a doctor would score higher than a nurse and a refuse disposal operative lower than a nurse.

I wonder which of the nurse or the train driver would score higher???????????????

I’m sure it has, yes. The first thing I see when I open that document is that it isn’t intended to be a method of deciding pay rates.

I’d suggest an individual train driver is more important to their employer than a junior nurse (one of many) is to theirs. A driver is required to move a train, and will carry hundreds or even thousands of passengers per day, with the risk of hundreds of pounds per minute in delay costs if they get things wrong, enormous cancellation fees if they don’t show up… etc.

It should be pretty obvious really - at least to those who don’t have some kind of strange chip on their shoulder about nurses pay…

Do I feel guilty that I earn a lot more than a nurse? Nope! Not in the slightest. Frankly it’s a stupid and irrelevant comparison and I’m thoroughly bored of discussing it.

 

[dk1]

Because they are both considered in Europe to be essential public services.
However the train driver is paid more than double the nurse.
Our taxes should not rise to pay the train driver more.
Instead the Chancellor should attempt to bring more equality and fairness to public sector pay.

A Registered NHS Nurse scale 5 starts on £25,655 after 3 years training & has to pay tuition fees & student loans.
A TPE train driver gets £58,000 3 years after starting paid for training.

What a very odd opinion. Just when you think you’ve heard it all.

 

[Annetts key]

The industry is being bankrolled by public money for a reason.

Yes, and the mainland U.K. railways have been subsidised for how many years now? Certainly longer than my lifetime so far.

If the government wants to help get more passengers to use the trains, you have to do something substantial to encourage more people to use them.

Doing nothing much other than a half baked slightly more flexible commuting ticket while stirring up trouble with the unions is not exactly a very good plan, is it?

The unions represent those very same staff that during privatisation were told that they were the biggest asset to the (respective) company. And the very same staff that were praised as key workers, and thanked for keeping the railways running through the pandemic.

What exactly did the powers that be expect when staff were told there would be no pay rise and that there would be job cuts?

In the 1982 ASLEF dispute BR printed redundancy notices for the entire railway (ie shutting the railway).

I know of a crossing keepers box where Railtrack issued redundancy notices for all the staff that work there. It’s still open. And they are still recruiting staff when anyone leaves…

Involving the ROSCOs in the debate is a waste of time.

Notable that even Corbyn Labour knew they couldn't touch the leasing companies. They're untouchable. It's the way the system has been set up.

Untouchable? From the U.K. government? I’m sure that if Parliament wanted, a way round this could be found. It may be costly in the short term. But there would be a ‘workaround’ somehow.

…. or do an ever increasing number of the workforce simply see them as a means to an end, ie just a job?

Yes, nowadays most staff only see it as a job. This is different to how it was back on BR before privatisation. For infrastructure and maintenance staff, we were told, don’t use your initiative. The infrastructure does not belong to us anymore. Only work on something if you have been instructed to do so… So now many see the infrastructure as SEP (someone else’s problem).

And contractors care even less unless it’s in their contract.

But people have said that strikes were a last resort in the past and I think one such example occurred upon this thread. I wonder what the exact truth of the matter is. Do some rail unions regard strike action differently from other rail unions in that respect?

No, industrial action is the last resort. Strikes are one part of that. Unions (and the vast majority of union members) much prefer to have reasonable negotiations. Unfortunately, if the management/company won’t budge, that’s when unions move to take industrial action.

Keep in mind that the first discussions between Network Rail and the RMT started in late summer/early autumn last year. The company at first not being keen on informing the RMT what they wanted (though it quickly became clear that it would be cuts).

What some of us are saying is that the economy is in a right mess, and rail workers striking is just making things worse & will become increasingly unpopular as more strikes bite. And whilst some rail workers are still under the delusion that passengers will just keep coming back regardless, widespread disruption is going to slowly erode passenger dependence on the railways especially as the industry relies more & more heavily on a more volatile leisure market which will directly be affected by ticket price rises and inflation in general. You don't agree I know, but I firmly believe you are doing more harm than good engaging in this particular battle.

Are you a PCS member? Maybe you should go along to a trades council meeting as a guest.

Without getting into the rights and wrongs of each side, as I'm an Australian (suffice to say I dislike strikes, and fortunately have never experienced one when travelling overseas), one aspect of life in your nation(s) forming the UK and across the Channel in Europe is living and leisure costs seem quite to very high by my (perhaps incorrect) perception, yet many occupations appear to (as the median) earn far less than in my small population nation.

How on earth do people survive? (Do most in say England never have the money to travel overseas if by that one means 'beyond Spain on Mr O'Leary's conveyances')?

To be fair, the cost of property here makes a big difference. House price inflation is not currently making the news, but property prices have often increased far faster than general inflation. And the cost of renting is also not cheap. It was not such a big problem when interest rates were extremely low. But these are now starting to creep upwards.

Not helping is the increased prices of goods due to brexit. Plus the effects of worldwide market prices due to the disruption to goods and manufacturing due to COVID19. On top of that, the war in Ukraine has increased the price of fossil fuels like oil, gas and related products. Then there is inflation…

For sure the rush into new train fleets in 2016-18 period often to displace perfectly good fleets has burdened the industry with extra costs being added to the already high fixed cost base right at the wrong time with insufficient revenue to cover those costs. So we find the only variable that can be controlled being the workforce costs right at the time inflation has taken off.

With govt holding all the revenue risk currently I can't understand their approach here. What they should be doing is making a bold approach by offering staff say 5% then also dangling an incentive that makes it worth their while to accept revised working patterns to move the railway onto a 24/7 basis. The reason being is the fixed costs can only be covered by increasing revenue now and we know that opportunity now lies in leisure. So that means having a timetable at weekends designed to attract passengers and more importantly keep them coming back and telling friends family it was a good experience.

It will counterintuitive to DfT of course but it stands a better chance of dealing with the long term funding issues for the industry that the short term approach thats going on now. Sadly i suspect it will need the creation of GBR to allow any revised thinking to happen and there is a risk that will drift i get further modified with the changes almost inevitable at the heart of govt come September.

That BR rolling stock replacement programme of the 1980s/1990s was because they were allowed to (effectively) borrow to do it. From the mid 1980’s through to 1990, it was relatively easy to get Treasury approval, from 1990 much less so and from 1992, almost impossible.

The thought behind the ROSCO’s was to take financial risk away from the TOCs (and Government), especially when it came to funding overhauls and major component costs. By adopting an MEAV approach to asset value, it would make funding replacement stock that much easier.

In all of this, it largely succeeded but it did take a cost management lever away from the TOCs/Government, something the DfT hasn’t been too happy about. In some cases the ROSCOs have managed to make on a particular class, in others they have lost a packet on their estimates but their generous margins have seen them alright. In the latter case if the rolling stock had been on the TOCs books, the additional repair costs could have bankrupted them.

If, in an alternative universe, where BR had not been carved up into slices and privatised, would the rolling stock replacement have been a (more or less steady) rolling programme? Yes, the variable funding from government would have caused difficulties. But would the overall long term cost have been cheaper?
After all, normally government borrowing is the cheapest form of borrowing. Is it not?

 

[Shrop]

In the case of the railways the strikes are traditionally aimed at the passenger - and through the impact on the passenger to get leverage on the politicians and employers.

Therein lies a huge problem - inconvenience to passengers isn't really much of a concern to politicians. I can never forget the Thatcher comment that "Any man who still uses a bus to get to work by the age of 30 can consider himself a failure in life". Such was her incredible bias towards the private car and against public transport, and her dislike for railways wasn't far behind that for buses. Her first rail journey during her premiership was in Japan, and one of the things she hated most about what her Government invested in, was having to support the Channel Tunnel, once she was faced with a road tunnel being completely non-viable.

Bring this up to date and a great deal of Tory thinking isn't exactly enthusiastic about rail travel today, it's more a case of dealing with issues reluctantly (hence so little emphasis on rail investment in their election manifestos for many years) so it might be quite a big a mistake to think they'll care all that much if passengers have their journeys disrupted now. In which case, who are the strikes really hurting other than innocent passengers?

 

[Annetts key]

Because they are both considered in Europe to be essential public services.
However the train driver is paid more than double the nurse.
Our taxes should not rise to pay the train driver more.
Instead the Chancellor should attempt to bring more equality and fairness to public sector pay.

A Registered NHS Nurse scale 5 starts on £25,655 after 3 years training & has to pay tuition fees & student loans.
A TPE train driver gets £58,000 3 years after starting paid for training.

So maybe the nurses should leave the NHS and learn to use a shovel, a sledgehammer and how to lift 60ft rails for an annual salary of £26177. Oh, but that’s the grade that the company want to cut out. And then take on new staff on a lower rate of pay.

 

[SA91]

A Registered NHS Nurse scale 5 starts on £25,655 after 3 years training & has to pay tuition fees & student loans.

False. Nursing degree is a "practical" degree and hence no tuition fee paid for by the student. The course is free to study in UK.

 

[Elecman]

False. Nursing degree is a "practical" degree and hence no tuition fee paid for by the student. The course is free to study in UK.

It was Tuition Fees free until a few years ago but the Conservative government changed that to having to pay tuition fees

 

[Exscrew]

This threads getting daft again, all this talk of nurses, doctors and miners.

Let change it up, any decent predictions on what will happen next?

 

[Novern Uproar]

What will happen next ? Well the offer of 75% discounted rail travel has won over a few employees. If NR up the pay offer to 6 - 7%, a deal could be done.

 

[JonathanH]

What will happen next ? Well the offer of 75% discounted rail travel has won over a few employees. If NR up the pay offer to 6 - 7%, a deal could be done.

Isn't the sticking point the stuff around modernisation and job cuts rather than the absolute 2022 pay increase, and the matter of the 2023 increase? 5% and something better in 2023 may be better than 6 - 7% in 2022 and a poor increase in 2023.

 

[Robertj21a]

The risk for the unions is that after two weeks of no railways a sizable chunk public basically just shrug and say 'so what?'.

At the same time the staff on strike lose 4% of their income.

I thought some comments
along those lines had been made earlier (many weeks ago) emphasising that just a few days upset won't change anything.
Surely, a 2-4 week strike is far more likely to generate a response from the management/Govt ? - they're not likely to be all that bothered otherwise.

 

[yorksrob]

Are you confident that such a two week all out strike would force a resolution, but what would then happen if the Government decided to play hard-ball over the matter?

Not at all unfortunately. I've just experienced the sapping effect on confidence that long drawn out disputes have.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Jul 2022 ==

The risk for the unions is that after two weeks of no railways a sizable chunk public basically just shrug and say 'so what?'.

At the same time the staff on strike lose 4% of their income.

It is a risk for them yes. Is it as great a risk to career prospects as a long term decline in the passenger business though.

A couple of solid weeks would hit hard at the time, but fade in the memory quickly amongst passengers once services are restored.

 

[Novern Uproar]

Isn't the sticking point the stuff around modernisation and job cuts rather than the absolute 2022 pay increase, and the matter of the 2023 increase? 5% and something better in 2023 may be better than 6 - 7% in 2022 and a poor increase in 2023.

Yes the job cuts are a thorny situation. However compulsory redundancies should be avoided as many staff would accept voluntary if offered. As for the 2023 increase, I personally prefer one year deals. Both sides from what I see and hear, are being a little economical with the truth in this dispute.

 

[yorksrob]

Yes the job cuts are a thorny situation. However compulsory redundancies should be avoided as many staff would accept voluntary if offered. As for the 2023 increase, I personally prefer one year deals. Both sides from what I see and hear, are being a little economical with the truth in this dispute.

The sensible thing would be to commit to no compulsory redundancies. Presumably the number of these in any plan would be so small as to be insignificant in any plan anyway, so worth ditching.

 

[whoosh]

Because they are both considered in Europe to be essential public services.
However the train driver is paid more than double the nurse.
Our taxes should not rise to pay the train driver more.
Instead the Chancellor should attempt to bring more equality and fairness to public sector pay.

A Registered NHS Nurse scale 5 starts on £25,655 after 3 years training & has to pay tuition fees & student loans.
A TPE train driver gets £58,000 3 years after starting paid for training.

Do you mean a nurse scale 5 starts on £25,655 basic, with enhancements to nights and weekends, and a TPE driver has a basic £58,000, with no unsocial hours enhancements at all, so as well as not comparing similar jobs and not comparing similar industries, you are also not measuring take home pay transparently?

Instead the Chancellor should attempt to bring more equality and fairness to public sector pay.

Well, whilst we've just mentioned enhancements (or lack of them) above, you will have noticed the Network Rail proposals to reduce time and a quarter night rate, and time and a half weekend rate, for maintenance staff down to time and a tenth for both.
Nurses enhancements next then?

 

[Bantamzen]

Well, since you have all the answers, what is your suggestion? Close the unprofitable parts of the system down? Rip up the tracks and make them into guided busways?

I'm pretty certain I have never suggested such a thing, but I'll try to answer your question as best as I can.

Firstly the franchise system which is clearly broken needs bringing to an end where it still exists. Instead I feel a system where DafT contract out the routes, frequencies, and most of all ticket prices to private bidders, and they in turn make an effort to stand up to said contracts. That way private investment can still be used in terms of things like rolling stock, hiring & firing of staff, whilst being held to account when the service is not up to scratch.

Shock horror: the whole thing would collapse without government subsidy. Much like the NHS really. That hasn’t stopped GPs hitting £100k average earnings without actually bothering to physically see patients “because Covid”. I’d like a piece of that public-sector-pie, please.

Well I have some really, really bad news for you. The vast majority of the public sector doesn't get a piece of that pie either. I guess if you wanted to do so all you need to do is create your own TOC, procure rolling stock, get pathing for routes etc, etc.

Look I am no fan of how the GP system works, but they are not public sector. They are private businesses contracted by the NHS.

Potato, pothado. Call it what you like. The crux of my argument is simply this: I’d like not to suffer a diminution in my standard of living and will do whatever it takes to prevent that.

Good to hear, so I assume this will include heading out to the Ukraine to end the Russian's attempt to invade, and perhaps convince the Chinese to get back to normal and resume their normal trade. Oh and while you are at it, perhaps nip back in time and undo all the covid based restrictions that has cost this country alone in the region of half a trillion quid.

The point here is that your industry does not exist in some sandbox, especially when the government paid to keep you guys working trains instead of sending you home, and imposing potential cuts in income of 20% or more.

You’re a supposed trade union member and a rep. Can I ask, what are you doing for your members in this regard? Has it occurred to you that, if your union had had the cojones to take action historically, you wouldn’t be 25% worse off than you were ten years ago? I think you realise that, deep down. That’s why you’re so triggered by the more belligerent (and effective) approach of the railway unions.

Former rep actually. For the record I quit my post shortly after the CPSA & NUCAPS merged as I saw that we were moving towards a union where the top table, and those aspiring to get to the top table were far more interested in political point scoring than looking after their members.

As for the ineffectiveness of my union, well you are completely right they are as much use nationally as a bag of dead badgers. And this is because of the reasons above. From when I first joined back in 1987 the union constantly engaged in battle after battle with the government of the time until such point that what I would describe as "member fatigue" set in. You see my union, or at least a big part of it doesn't have the luxury of well above average pay to soften the blow of industrial action. Indeed for as long as they could, the CPSA would endeavour to pay strike pay because the majority of members simply couldn't afford to take more than a day or two off in any given period. And that I am afraid to tell you is the reality for many, many people. So instead of slagging people off for not simply downing tools, perhaps you might want to consider why the might not be able to in the first place.

It may surprise you to learn that I’m *not* sorry that I’m used to reasonable pay rises. I fully expect that situation to continue.

Strangely enough I am not surprised. However so long as your industry leans more and more on public finances then you expectations may not be met.

Perhaps you should email Mick Lynch and Mick Whelan your thoughts? Could it be that the trade unions that have served the employees of the railway for over one hundred years understand the industry, and the political lie of the land, a little better then you?

I think you are vastly overstating the importance of the rail unions in today's political environment.

The interests of passengers don’t factor into the decision to take strike action - as a supposed union member it’s utterly disingenuous of you to imply that they should.

Why is it disingenuous? You do understand that without passengers many in your industry would no longer be required right? Now of course the entire travelling public are not going to abandon rail travel overnight, however even today travelling to York and back it was obvious that fatigue is starting to creep into passenger attitudes. Cancellations, packed out trains, bloated prices & strikes were all conversation topics on what is a relatively short journey. People are rapidly tiring of a rail industry that on face value seems unwilling or unable to provide even a reduced service.

I have said previously in other threads that sometimes as a union representative you have to learn to read the room. Its a valuable skill that I took from my time as a rep, and now apply in my role in developer project work. Understanding what the consequences of how you approach a situation, along with the mindset of the people you are working with and how they might react is key in reaching amicable solutions.

I was initially uncertain about the wisdom of strike action but my view has shifted, in no small part due to the anti union and anti staff views I’ve seen expressed on this very forum. I will be voting for strike action, in the strongest possible terms, just as soon as I’m balloted.

Your view has shifted because some people have questioned the wisdom of industrial action in the current climate on these forums? If that is the case, then I feel you do not have the right motives I'm sorry to say.

I’m not feeling remotely sorry for myself. When I’m at work I’m there to drink tea and drive trains, not to win popularity contests. Threads like this reveal just how much some railway enthusiasts despise the staff who operate the railway they claim to adore.

Actually you kind of are in a popularity contest. You see if your TOC loses popularity, then less money goes into it, and the more pressure there might be from your bosses to reverse that situation. Like it or not, your job is to deliver a service to the punters first, then have your tea when you are able to.

The economy may well be in a mess. I didn’t ask for that and I don’t intend to be made worse off as a result.

May well be in a mess? You are kidding right? Its a disaster zone, and getting worse by the day.

Gee, thanks for the advice.

That’s your view. My view is that I would rather burn this entire industry to the ground than allow myself and my colleagues to be done over in the way the civil service has been.

Be careful what you wish for, as you just may get it. I kind of get the impression that you believe that your industry is bullet proof, that it could not possibly be decimated the way the civil service has been over the years. Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, but unless your wages / benefits / pensions are fully funded & approved by the private sector & making money for investors, with no intervention from HM Government, then get ready for a nasty surprise.....

I finally agree with the overall sentiment of this forum. We should close the railway down! Not really. What will .*actually* happen is that things will carry on largely as they are, and we will get a half way sensible pay offer.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. You can mark my words, old son.

Sorry, but they won't. And that is the centre of the problem for you as I see it. You somehow believe that your industry will just chug on the way it always has, but it won't.

This country is a God awful, miserable, small minded place at times, isn’t it? I suppose that’s why pubs were invented here!

Indeed, full of grumpy gits who refuse to move on from the time when people were grumpy gits....

 

[Islineclear3_1]

Norwich station at 09:45 this morning shows exactly why weekends are targeted for industrial action. Concourse heaving already with queues at AMT, Starbucks, Costa , Subway, Coop & Smith's. Trains departing F&S.

Same with Brighton early this morning,; I was there until 10am and the TL trains from London were rammed solid. God help those pax on 30th July; I've had to rearrange my trip on that day

 

[Fokx]

What will happen next ? Well the offer of 75% discounted rail travel has won over a few employees. If NR up the pay offer to 6 - 7%, a deal could be done.

Not at all, the RMT is working as a solid unit at the moment.

You’ve then also got the TOC pay offers, and issues surrounding station staffing and DOO.

 

[JonathanH]

As for the 2023 increase, I personally prefer one year deals.

Clearly one issue with that is the possibility of industrial action next year.

Not at all, the RMT is working as a solid unit at the moment.

You’ve then also got the TOC pay offers, and issues surrounding station staffing and DOO.

Indeed, it might appear that the RMT would want to accept consistent deals for all of its staff rather than having one group settle before the rest. Strikes by guards are more effective if there are other grades striking on the same day.

 

[whoosh]

The industry since privatised has largely had good IR and yet as soon as govt gets involved again we find confrontation writ large now across the entire industry workforce. At least with the franchise model the owners had to manage the risk from industrial disputes as that went straight to the bottom line and their profit line hence you could say that TOC railway staff got a reasonable deal until govt interfered.

Funnily enough, the railway with the worst looking and most frequent industrial relations problems to my eyes, is London Underground.

Publicly owned means politically interfered with it seems.

 

[Clarence Yard]

If, in an alternative universe, where BR had not been carved up into slices and privatised, would the rolling stock replacement have been a (more or less steady) rolling programme? Yes, the variable funding from government would have caused difficulties. But would the overall long term cost have been cheaper?
After all, normally government borrowing is the cheapest form of borrowing. Is it not?

No, the steady rolling stock programme was already in trouble in 1990 and, as a M&EE finance (& former technical) man deeply involved in this at the time, I am convinced that we would have had to make rolling stock last longer if BR had carried on than it actually did in the privatised world. Getting Treasury funding would have been a real issue - even in the 1980’s we were having to renew on a less than 1 for 1 basis and that was in a time of relative plenty!

One of the things that the nationalised industries used to get angry about is that they had to borrow from the Treasury rather than have the option to go to the private markets. At various times it was cheaper to get outside finance - something that tends to get forgotten as people tend to assume the Treasury was always the cheapest option. Not so.

The market for financing stock can be very competitive and it is fairly embarrassing for the DfT that OG’s seem to get better deals for leasing than they can!

 

[Exscrew]

Not at all, the RMT is working as a solid unit at the moment.

You’ve then also got the TOC pay offers, and issues surrounding station staffing and DOO.

Id be surprised if a deal is struck with NR staff that the RMT would expect them to strike for the TOCs

 

[JonathanH]

Id be surprised if a deal is struck with NR staff that the RMT would expect them to strike for the TOCs

It would appear that the RMT can just keep on rejecting offers from NR without putting them to its members and calling more strikes until it gets something it is happy with for TOCs as well.

 

[Exscrew]

It would appear that the RMT can just keep on rejecting offers from NR without putting them to its members and calling more strikes until it gets something it is happy with for TOCs as well.

Im not sure (may be wrong) that they can do that as NR staff are in action against NR and to be striking to support another action would be classed as secondary action?
Im not stating this as fact more of a musing

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Jul 2022 ==

Im not sure (may be wrong) that they can do that as NR staff are in action against NR and to be striking to support another action would be classed as secondary action?
Im not stating this as fact more of a musing

Also noticed I've used the word action way to many times then. Should of tried harder at school lol

 

[yorksrob]

No, the steady rolling stock programme was already in trouble in 1990 and, as a M&EE finance (& former technical) man deeply involved in this at the time, I am convinced that we would have had to make rolling stock last longer if BR had carried on than it actually did in the privatised world. Getting Treasury funding would have been a real issue - even in the 1980’s we were having to renew on a less than 1 for 1 basis and that was in a time of relative plenty!

One of the things that the nationalised industries used to get angry about is that they had to borrow from the Treasury rather than have the option to go to the private markets. At various times it was cheaper to get outside finance - something that tends to get forgotten as people tend to assume the Treasury was always the cheapest option. Not so.

The market for financing stock can be very competitive and it is fairly embarrassing for the DfT that OG’s seem to get better deals for leasing than they can!

Well, our slammers were made to last longer (although I personally regard that as a benefit of privatisation.

We're out 158's so much worse than following stock l

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Therein lies a huge problem - inconvenience to passengers isn't really much of a concern to politicians. I can never forget the Thatcher comment that "Any man who still uses a bus to get to work by the age of 30 can consider himself a failure in life". Such was her incredible bias towards the private car and against public transport, and her dislike for railways wasn't far behind that for buses. Her first rail journey during her premiership was in Japan, and one of the things she hated most about what her Government invested in, was having to support the Channel Tunnel, once she was faced with a road tunnel being completely non-viable.

ECML electrification and modernisation was authorised along with numerous Southern extensions and voluminous amounts of new rolling stock so despite her antipathy towards the industry it wasn't abandoned. Oh and not forgetting she was against privatising it.

Bring this up to date and a great deal of Tory thinking isn't exactly enthusiastic about rail travel today, it's more a case of dealing with issues reluctantly (hence so little emphasis on rail investment in their election manifestos for many years) so it might be quite a big a mistake to think they'll care all that much if passengers have their journeys disrupted now. In which case, who are the strikes really hurting other than innocent passengers?

You could actually say we are living in a paradox when they are so supportive of HS2 and IRP yet the existing network is just drifting along