Northern cancellations getting worse

[Bikeman78]

I genuinely thought about putting “…ooh, I know, we could paint them all blue and call it British Rail” in the Forum Catchphrases thread

There was no chance of the current Government giving you the “Proper Railwayman” model of BR that you’ve talked about in the past

Look at how schools/ hospitals/ libraries/ prisons/ infrastructure etc has been since 2010 and tell me what you honestly expected Nationalisation under the current government to be like?

Because the “arms length” model seems like Railway FanFiction to me

(And even in the supposed “glory days” of BR, the government must have interfered quite a lot since they seem to get blamed for all of the negative things that happened in that era, the “rationalisation” of junctions, the line closures, the service cuts, the “Two for Three” replacement of rolling stock, station closures each year, the “replacing loco hauled trains by two coach 155s and then chopping those 155s in half to make do with 153s”… all these “bad” things get attributed to the wicked Government whilst BR takes the praise for all of the good things)

What's your solution then? How many private companies would want anything to do with the railway at the moment? As you say, there's no incentive to try and run a half decent service.

 

[tbtc]

I don't really see your point.

No one called for this pigs ear form of railway management except for this Government, who seemingly threw it together to undertake cuts.

People on this forum who prefer an element of public accountability generally suggest a model of governance with that suggestion.

You clearly don't agree with the way this government is managing the railway, yet I don't recall hearing you criticise the government for any of this. If anything, you seem to be egging them on to more cuts. You seem to be more interested in making pointed remarks about people on this forum.

Many people on here have spent the past dozen years complaining about privatisation and demanding Nationalisation instead

Some of these people are now feigning surprise that putting the railway in the hands of the government responsible for over a decade of austerity has somehow created a “pigs ear” of a railway

There was no chance of a “Proper Railwayman” model of the railway, it was either the “Status Quo” or handing control to the government of the day

If you don’t like this lot being in charge of everything then what did you think Nationalisation would mean? That the people responsible for the problems in healthcare/ education/ immigration etc would somehow turn out to be brilliant at managing the railway despite everything else? That the micro-managing politicians obsessed with targets and savings would just trust everything to a “Proper Railwayman” and leave them alone for five years to invest billions of pounds?

What's your solution then? How many private companies would want anything to do with the railway at the moment? As you say, there's no incentive to try and run a half decent service.

There’s no perfect model but I think that there was a lot to be said for how things were in the 2010s:

- roughly fifteen to twenty franchises set up for roughly seven years so that the Civil Service can cope with three bidding processes each year

- seven years being long enough to justify the costs involved (you’re going to need new uniforms and to repaint stations every few years anyhow) and make investment in new trains etc worthwhile without things going “stale” over a longer period

- franchises to include commitments for ongoing improvements and guarantees about minimum standards/ services etc

- give the likes of Branson some freedom to improve things, because as well as “Proper Railwaymen” we also need some “Proper Salesmen” to appeal to members of the public (Branson isn’t popular on here but his PR stunts etc cut through to ordinary people in ways that civil servants don’t)

That kind of model seemed to deliver continued passenger growth, TOCs managed things like industrial relations a lot better than the government does, we knew that franchise commitments would be delivered (given financial penalties etc)… whereas these days there’s no guarantee of how things will look in a couple of months time

There used to be incentives to improve things (e.g. firths would compete for franchises by offering the best deal for taxpayers, TOCs would rather agree to above-inflation pay rises than miss out on weeks of income during a strike), but now there’s no incentive for anyone, and partners are losing out

 

[Confused52]

The relevance to Northern services being worse is their performance of paying staff but not running a service on the shoulder days because they get all their costs paid anyway and have no incentive to serve customers. That is a direct consequence of the commercial arrangements which are inherent in the GBR network white paper which is effectively nationalisation. It exemplifies why an alternative was needed and still is. Northern are showing the future .. and it is hopeless.

 

[jayah]

I think this is more of a problem for the so-called privatisation right now or future GBR. TOCs don't have the motivation to mitigate lost or being audited for service they can run but decided not to.
I mean, it is still possible TOCs in fact are unable to run the service due to shortage of station staff or signallers, we don't know. We need a non-segmented entity to know the big picture, while franchise based non risk-bearing privatisation has made this near impossible.

It caused by nationalisation not privatisation.

Do NHS managers lose their jobs over trolley waits? Do council CEOs lose their pensions because of inadequate social care provision? The government is already half of the economy and still these people claim the only barrier to quality is they aren't paid enough and their budgets are too small.

There is no incentive for anyone to do more than they can get away with, while feathering their nests in the process.

 

[MCSHF007]

It caused by nationalisation not privatisation.

Do NHS managers lose their jobs over trolley waits? Do council CEOs lose their pensions because of inadequate social care provision? The government is already half of the economy and still these people claim the only barrier to quality is they aren't paid enough and their budgets are too small.

There is no incentive for anyone to do more than they can get away with, while feathering their nests in the process.

I don't agree with all your posts but this one is spot on.

 

[RochdalePioneers]

There is no point arguing about the whys and wherefores of British Rail because it is dead and gone. Same with "nationalised" vs "privatised". No passenger services were ever "privatised" - as in sold like BT or British Gas - merely a fixed term exclusive operating license owned at all times by the state.

What we need is something different. Its called a StateCo. A commercial business. Owned by the state and operated on a commercial basis. It is set operating requirements based on customer service, can borrow money at state rates, but operates stand alone. Like DB. SNCF. NS. FR. The correct model is the one the Europeans use. It isn't remotely perfect, but its hugely better than we had now.

The British disease of the last 40 years has been the imposition of the spivocracy. We make everything really expensive AND crap in terms of service by allowing a spiv management competition layer intervene between cash going in and services coming out. Managing contracts and bureaucracy makes them a fortune. Meanwhile the service gets worse and the politicians bemoan the cost. Then take the party political donations from their spiv mates to continue the scam.

This isn't a moan about the private sector or enterprise - far from it. We need those things and the better franchises of the private operator era really were enterprising. But that needs to happen at a lower cost. Create RailCo to operate passenger services, let them borrow to invest, then they can go win spun out operations in France instead of the other way round.

 

[yorksrob]

The relevance to Northern services being worse is their performance of paying staff but not running a service on the shoulder days because they get all their costs paid anyway and have no incentive to serve customers. That is a direct consequence of the commercial arrangements which are inherent in the GBR network white paper which is effectively nationalisation. It exemplifies why an alternative was needed and still is. Northern are showing the future .. and it is hopeless.

If that's the case, then a change of tack is needed. If we are to have the private sector involved, it must provide value for money.

 

[43066]

their performance of paying staff but not running a service on the shoulder days because they get all their costs paid anyway and have no incentive to serve customers

Non striking staff on full time employment contracts are legally entitled to be paid their salaries, whether or not a service is run, whether that’s due to engineering or whatever. That position is no different to other sectors.

I don't agree with all your posts but this one is spot on.

Thinking nationalisation is any kind of solution is completely misguided.

 

[yorksrob]

It caused by nationalisation not privatisation.

Do NHS managers lose their jobs over trolley waits? Do council CEOs lose their pensions because of inadequate social care provision? The government is already half of the economy and still these people claim the only barrier to quality is they aren't paid enough and their budgets are too small.

There is no incentive for anyone to do more than they can get away with, while feathering their nests in the process.

Local authorities have had year on year budget cuts ever since David Cameron's austerity drive. This forced them to do more with less at first, but eventually ended up with them doing less with less.

As with "doing what you can get away with while feathering your own nest" this seems to be the motto for a lot of big business in my experience.

 

[jayah]

Thinking nationalisation is any kind of solution is completely misguided.

It isn't not the solution, it is the cause of many of the current problems.

The unions campaigned for nationalisation for years and are now struggling to grasp they are suddenly part of the public sector payroll in all but name.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It isn't not the solution, it is the cause of many of the current problems.

It depends what you mean by nationalisation. I don't think anyone advocates the current mess.

 

[Bikeman78]

Non striking staff on full time employment contracts are legally entitled to be paid their salaries, whether or not a service is run, whether that’s due to engineering or whatever. That position is no different to other sectors.

I think confused52 means not running trains when everyone is available to work. Northern didn't run much on the 24th or the 27th for example. Many routes had no service at all. They didn't even bother to inform all of their own staff. My mate booked on in the early hours of the 24th only to be told, nothing is running, you can go home.

 

[Mat17]

Nationalisation will never work unless all politicians in all parties back it and see the value of it. Not the cash/profit value, but the greater value to society.

So basically whilst ever there is a Tory party, it will never work. That said, it doesn't always work under Labour either.

Basically nationalisation doesn't work.

Privatisation doesn't really work either, but for different reasons... Shareholder profits being the core driving force to the detriment of the service provided more often than not.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Basically nationalisation doesn't work.

BR largely did work. It had disadvantages, but many of those were down to chronic underfunding - what it did on what money it got was world-beating.

 

[87electric]

Nationalisation will never work unless all politicians in all parties back it and see the value of it. Not the cash/profit value, but the greater value to society.

So basically whilst ever there is a Tory party, it will never work. That said, it doesn't always work under Labour either.

Basically nationalisation doesn't work.

Privatisation doesn't really work either, but for different reasons... Shareholder profits being the core driving force to the detriment of the service provided more often than not.

Nail on head. Cost of everything versus the greater value to society.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Non striking staff on full time employment contracts are legally entitled to be paid their salaries, whether or not a service is run, whether that’s due to engineering or whatever. That position is no different to other sectors.

Of course it is but management are unable to make use of such staff who are now left sitting around in mess rooms on striking days which isn't helping the industry or its passengers. At least in the case of the miners as long as they had requisite safety resources in places they went down below and got on with mining. I wonder if these were franchises still where they could see a definite trend of locations having sufficient staff they would have attempted to run more services. With the NRCs they just send the bill in for expenditure and DfT pay it just worsening the gap between income and expenditure and potentially driving even more economies being demanded.,

 

[Carlisle]

BR largely did work. It had disadvantages, but many of those were down to chronic underfunding - what it did on what money it got was world-beating.

Totally agree & visited Austria & Switzerland many times where state rail systems appear to work well

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

BR largely did work. It had disadvantages, but many of those were down to chronic underfunding - what it did on what money it got was world-beating.

Absolutely but as soon as NR had the money it managed to squander it and just accept that too many projects overran cost and time was the norm.

 

[yorksrob]

Absolutely but as soon as NR had the money it managed to squander it and just accept that too many projects overran cost and time was the norm.

It's the sort of thing that would likely be improved with the gathering of expertise by something like - perhaps a rolling electrification programme.

Even Mrs Thatcher's government managed to enable something close-ish in the 1980's, so it's not impossible.

 

[jayah]

BR largely did work. It had disadvantages, but many of those were down to chronic underfunding - what it did on what money it got was world-beating.

The pay was dismally low, as was investment. There was plenty of industrial strife too. I think the rose tinted spectacles may have come out.

BR had to compete with the NHS for pay and funding. What did help was help was fact the union demands on redundancy were not quite so ludicrous as they are today. BR could and did shed labour to change working practices and improve productivity in a way that the current union leaders treat as an existential threat.

As with "doing what you can get away with while feathering your own nest" this seems to be the motto for a lot of big business in my experience.

Real businesses in the productive economy with competition will soon hit the wall if they try this.

If someone can do it better, you won't be doing it.

What does this...


have to do with this?

If you don't work for the customer, you aren't working for the customer.

The striking employees working for the railway don't expect to lose their jobs as a result of the damage they are going out of their way to cause. That speaks volumes.

What would happen if drivers at a privately run FOC went on strike? Their customers will find alternatives and they will be signing on in short order.

 

[Jamesrob637]

Let's see how many services get cancelled on Monday "due to a short-notice change to the timetable".

 

[175001]

Apparently, Monday is looking well.....

Plenty of uncovered jobs at my depot though...

 

[gazzaa2]

Apparently, Monday is looking well.....

Plenty of uncovered jobs at my depot though...

Is overtime back? You'd imagine staff will want to make up for lost revenue this month ahead of more strikes down the line and potential overtime ban.

 

[CE142]

Is overtime back? You'd imagine staff will want to make up for lost revenue this month ahead of more strikes down the line and potential overtime ban.

There is no overtime ban as such now, but as Goodwill is on the floor as you can imagine due to the way the Government is treating us, not many Staff are wanting to work any overtime.

 

[gazzaa2]

There is no overtime ban as such now, but as Goodwill is on the floor as you can imagine due to the way the Government is treating us, not many Staff are wanting to work any overtime.

I can imagine they wouldn't want to, but with cost-of-living crisis, regular strike days and no sign of a pay increase they must need the money.

I don't expect my trains to run until it's all resolved (as they weren't during the last round of industrial unrest through 2018 and around that time) and will stick with the bus. I don't expect a resolution until a change of government at this rate.

 

[TUC]

What's your solution then? How many private companies would want anything to do with the railway at the moment? As you say, there's no incentive to try and run a half decent service.

About as little incentive as the publicly owned TOCs have

 

[43066]

About as little incentive as the publicly owned TOCs have

To be precise about things the TOCs remain as privately owned, publicly traded, companies (or subsidiaries thereof). They aren’t owned by the government in the way Network Rail is, for example. They’re heavily controlled by the government via the NRCs, but that’s not the same thing as ownership.

 

[TUC]

To be precise about things the TOCs remain as privately owned, publicly traded, companies (or subsidiaries thereof). They aren’t owned by the government in the way Network Rail is, for example. They’re heavily controlled by the government via the NRCs, but that’s not the same thing as ownership.

TOCs such as Northern and LNER aren't privately owned and are very much public sector.

 

[43066]

TOCs such as Northern and LNER aren't privately owned and are very much public sector.

Only the OLR ones.

The majority are still as described, however there’s little practical difference, given the NRCs.

 

[TUC]

Only the OLR ones.

The majority are still as described, however there’s little practical difference, given the NRCs.

But that's my point. If being in the public sector made any difference, why is a TOC like Northern every bit as dismal in its abilities as when it was privatrly owned?