That's the thing about the Greens - the excellence of their good ideas is surpassed only by the egregiousness of their bad ones, and for every "wow, I'd definitely vote for that" there is a "good grief, there's no way I'd vote for that".
That's similar to my view of the Tories.
They've previously said it's a good thing if people move around the country to find new jobs. I don't disagree with that. Some roles are only available in a limited number of areas, while some areas of the country have very few vacancies.
However, in their new manifesto they say they will make Housing Benefit will only be available to people over 21 (instead of 18.) So a 20 year old who relocated away from their immediate family for work and loses their job having paid 2 years of tax and NI, will be forced to move back home. Ridiculous!
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Makes no sense. If there is to be a public operator, which I'm not against, it should be a designated franchise that isn't tendered and is just used as a benchmarker against which the state could build knowledge and expertise with. A bit like East Coast could / should have been.
But what's East Coast comparable to? Nothing really. Once it has IEP then you could say West Coast and East Coast are fairly similar franchises. However, you can't say - Arriva why is Wales and Borders needing so much subsidy when East Coast is profitable?
Although I do think you perhaps have something. DfT can say to West Coast bidders we want you to invest £x million and you've got the potential to get back £x+y million in profits from the franchise if you do a good job. With Northern bidders that wouldn't work, so why not allow Rail North to be the operator, opposed to Rail North submitting franchise specifications to DfT for approval?