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Why is there now an obsession with re-nationalisation?

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LNW-GW Joint

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But they keep saying, that the cuts are now over, due to us coming out of the eu, but are they?. I keep hearing this on the news.

The cuts were for 10 years ending in 2020, where there will be a new spending review.
The spending review will be able to take Brexit changes into account (assuming we have a deal of some sort by then).
But anyone expecting the government coffers to magically open is deluding themselves.
We still haven't achieved the savings expected from 2010.
Any tactical benefit from Brexit will go on the increased costs of borders and our own new regulatory regime.

Against that, the £50 billion for NR in CP6 is nothing short of miraculous.
The much maligned Mr Failing Grayling managed to get that through the Treasury somehow.
 
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underbank

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Could it have been built with asbestos in it? If so, then they might have been acting more responsibly than any private owner would: It would have been left to decay or "go on fire," contaminating the local environment and making it a lot more difficult and expensive to dispose of.

No sign of that. I work opposite it so watched what was going on. All the work seemed to be very superficial, nothing structural, never any "asbestos removal" firm vans, no "wrapping" of the building. Just the usual plumbers, electricians, decorators, etc. That's why it puzzled everyone in the village just how they managed to spend £300k on it.
 

AndrewE

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But they keep saying, that the cuts are now over, due to us coming out of the eu, but are they?. I keep hearing this on the news.
I don't think they are saying that, in fact I think local authorities (who, apart from the NHS and the railways, probably provide most of the services we need) are only half way through their progressive funding cuts. You aint seen nothin' yet!
 

underbank

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The idea was that the various public sector quangos etc would use up some of their reserves until the funding taps were turned on again. Unfortunately, a lot have refused to do that and just cut their services unnecessarily - arguably just for political point scoring.
 

backontrack

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While I was watching Question Time last night the Labour MP John Mann was going on about bringing the railways back into public ownership and last week Alan Johnson on BBC This Week was going on about the same thing which is odd because I don't recall them pushing for it when their party was in power for 13 years...I know part of it is down to Jeremy Corbyn but even now Labour MPs to the right of the party are calling for the railways to be brought back into public ownership. This is a stark contrast from 10/15 years ago when it was mostly only people like Bob Crowe calling for re-nationalisation.

Something that's easily forgotten is that railway renationalisation is essentially a flagship Labour policy, and always has been except for those thirteen years in power. Blair promised to look at it in the run-up to 1997; whether he actually wanted it to happen is another matter, but rail renationalisation is a policy that gains public support very easily - especially among grassroots Labour members - and so is an easy one to mention when you're in opposition, whether you intend to actually renationalise or not (Corbyn obviously does). Blair appearing to support rail renationalisation was probably a factor in where some of those votes in 1997 went. It is popular among the electorate and among Labour's key demographics, and, for me, it is vastly more incongruous to have a Labour party opposed to rail renationalisation than it is to have one opposed to it.

That's a simplified picture, though. Rail renationalisation probably waned in support with MPs fifteen years ago because there was less of a need to 'win' votes, per se - they were already in power, not scrabbling to get it - and because the domestic railway picture seemed a little rosier back then, when we had GNER and the like. The fragmentation of the network wasn't so obvious or so damaging, so there was seemingly less public demand for it; and that is then reflected by the MPs. You gain votes with a rail renationalisation policy; if you're Labour and you're already in power, none of your supporters last time round are going to switch to the Tories on the basis that you're not offering to renationalise the railways.
 

158756

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There are however cases where more local provision would appear to make sense yet it doesn't happen.

For instance the village of Hook in Hampshire probably had a population of 9,000 (and if it doesn't it soon will), with infant and junior schools with 4 form entry, yet the nearest secondary school is about 3 miles away.

Due to budget cuts Hampshire County Council are looking to cut the school buses:

https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2...-route-in-protest-of-plans-to-cut-school-bus/

However it wasn't that long ago that the secondary school was enlarged at a cost of £7.6 million. If that money was spent on a local school instead, although probably not quite enough to build a school big enough for everyone the extra savings from removing the school buses (circa £250,000 per year and rising) would have probably made up the shortfall with (say) 10 years.

However that would have left the old school with spare space, as Hook contributes 1/3 of the pupils on its role, which would have allowed it to provide 6th form education (currently most children within the borough travel outside of the borough for their sixth form education).

However, like most things there's little joined up thinking in government, which is why I'm not sure that nationalisation is necessarily going to be as good as some how it will be.

This is actually case where local provision doesn't necessarily make sense. Two schools means two sets of buildings to maintain, two lots of administrative staff etc. Small secondary schools (4 form entry is small for secondary) tend to struggle financially, particularly in the current funding environment, and often have a limited offer of subjects and extra curricular activities. Sixth forms likewise need a certain scale to be viable.

Some similar logic to how health services tend to become more and more centralised, corner shops have lost out to supermarkets etc. All these things are possible because most of the population takes for granted that travel is easy and cheap. Making car travel more difficult or expensive will never win at the ballot box, and people want rail fares to be cheap and simple too.
 

The Ham

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This is actually case where local provision doesn't necessarily make sense. Two schools means two sets of buildings to maintain, two lots of administrative staff etc. Small secondary schools (4 form entry is small for secondary) tend to struggle financially, particularly in the current funding environment, and often have a limited offer of subjects and extra curricular activities. Sixth forms likewise need a certain scale to be viable.

Some similar logic to how health services tend to become more and more centralised, corner shops have lost out to supermarkets etc. All these things are possible because most of the population takes for granted that travel is easy and cheap. Making car travel more difficult or expensive will never win at the ballot box, and people want rail fares to be cheap and simple too.

The two schools would be close enough to each other that they could be one school split over two sites (so you have the same governors, Senior Leadership Team, administration staff, etc.).

Likewise the total school size is 1,300 pupils and so a sixth form could be viable. However as I said there's little provision in the district (population of 94,000) and Hook in the local plan is due to nearly double in size in the next 10 years to circa 16,000 meaning a 7 form entry secondary school could be required.

The amount of buildings would be fairly similar however you had it, and as pointed out above would likely to happen fairly soon anyway.

Yes there's some savings by having it as one big site, but given the £250,000 a year in transport costs (plus whatever that costs in terms of administration) the savings from it being one site would have to be quite significant. However as pointed out with population growth those costs are likely to rise quite quickly over the next few years.
 

jon0844

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Sorry I don't agree, there are some politicians who are hell bent on recklessly destroying a good nationalised railway that could of worked even better if looked after and ran properly. Those services I mentioned where a success the politicians of the time who had the axe didn't care... That's the answer...

Isn't that the problem with nationalisation? Come an election, or a change of people in various departments, and priorities change. As the economy changes, funding changes.

On paper, running the railway as a public service and accepting the need to fund it properly sounds great. As long as you don't encourage people to just milk the money (it may not make a profit as such, but there will still be plenty of money going to pay managers who may or may not do much) then all is good.

I've always felt that if the economy tanked, the first thing to suffer cuts would be the railway before the police, education, health, justice etc.

That's why I have strong reservations over the idea that nationalisation would solve everything.. especially when Network Rail is such a great example of a state-run business.

I do wonder if a parcels service could work today, given the boom in home shopping. But who would pay for it? Amazon? They'd pay peanuts. Courier firms? Probably cheaper to just pay someone 30p a drop, or whatever they get, to drive a van they have to pay their own maintenance/insurance/fuel on.
 

HH

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I do wonder if a parcels service could work today, given the boom in home shopping. But who would pay for it? Amazon? They'd pay peanuts. Courier firms? Probably cheaper to just pay someone 30p a drop, or whatever they get, to drive a van they have to pay their own maintenance/insurance/fuel on.
Back when the service was set up, every train had a guards van; there was plenty of room for packages. Where would you put the parcels on a modern train, which has been maximised for passenger carrying capacity?

Also rail ran over all the country. There are no huge swathes of the country that do not have a nearby station.
 

AndrewE

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I do wonder if a parcels service could work today, given the boom in home shopping. But who would pay for it? Amazon? They'd pay peanuts. Courier firms? Probably cheaper to just pay someone 30p a drop, or whatever they get, to drive a van they have to pay their own maintenance/insurance/fuel on.
See this thread https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/possible-non-passenger-use-of-class-769s.176973/ Somewhere there is a comment that lack of rolling stock was inhibiting the development of parcels by rail, and it was being pursued because of congestion, shortage of HGV drivers and something else too.
 

yorksrob

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Something that's easily forgotten is that railway renationalisation is essentially a flagship Labour policy, and always has been except for those thirteen years in power. Blair promised to look at it in the run-up to 1997; whether he actually wanted it to happen is another matter, but rail renationalisation is a policy that gains public support very easily - especially among grassroots Labour members - and so is an easy one to mention when you're in opposition, whether you intend to actually renationalise or not (Corbyn obviously does). Blair appearing to support rail renationalisation was probably a factor in where some of those votes in 1997 went. It is popular among the electorate and among Labour's key demographics, and, for me, it is vastly more incongruous to have a Labour party opposed to rail renationalisation than it is to have one opposed to it.

That's a simplified picture, though. Rail renationalisation probably waned in support with MPs fifteen years ago because there was less of a need to 'win' votes, per se - they were already in power, not scrabbling to get it - and because the domestic railway picture seemed a little rosier back then, when we had GNER and the like. The fragmentation of the network wasn't so obvious or so damaging, so there was seemingly less public demand for it; and that is then reflected by the MPs. You gain votes with a rail renationalisation policy; if you're Labour and you're already in power, none of your supporters last time round are going to switch to the Tories on the basis that you're not offering to renationalise the railways.

'New' Labour were astonishingly rubbish in terms of the railway. They had well over ten years of passenger growth and all we got to show for it were Ministerial blandishments about trains 'carting around fresh air'.

Nationalisation or no Nationalisation, it's hard to see how Corbyn could be any worse for the railway than the Blair years.
 

Meerkat

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it's hard to see how Corbyn could be any worse for the railway than the Blair years.

Well the cynic/Tory would suggest that the railways would be run for the benefit of the workers who fund his party, with the leverage that strikes are really damaging for Labour rather than almost being a badge of honour for some Tories.
 

yorksrob

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Well the cynic/Tory would suggest that the railways would be run for the benefit of the workers who fund his party, with the leverage that strikes are really damaging for Labour rather than almost being a badge of honour for some Tories.

In terms of poor industrial relations, its hard to see how Corbyn could do any worse than the current lot.
 

Meerkat

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In terms of poor industrial relations, its hard to see how Corbyn could do any worse than the current lot

Missing the point a bit.
Tory Governments don’t mind strikes so much. Is the issue worth striking over if you risk the government being prepared to outspend and outlast you (as they appear to be trying on Northern)?
Strikes are really damaging politically for Labour governments so unions will be more willing to go there knowing the government are more likely to cave in.
 

yorksrob

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Missing the point a bit.
Tory Governments don’t mind strikes so much. Is the issue worth striking over if you risk the government being prepared to outspend and outlast you (as they appear to be trying on Northern)?
Strikes are really damaging politically for Labour governments so unions will be more willing to go there knowing the government are more likely to cave in.

I'm for whatever is likely to get the trains running.

At the moment, that's not the Tories.
 

Meerkat

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Theory is that if they ‘win’ this one then the Tories will have the trains running better and more efficiently in the future. (I accept that many won’t agree with that hence ‘theory’ rather than trying to start an argument)
 

yorksrob

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Theory is that if they ‘win’ this one then the Tories will have the trains running better and more efficiently in the future. (I accept that many won’t agree with that hence ‘theory’ rather than trying to start an argument)

Trains don't run on "Theory".
 

R G NOW.

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If the railways were renationalised, would it be expensive to revert back? I don't think the general travelling public want, what we had before though under British Rail. It would need to be properly thought out, otherwise I feel we would get a lot more waste, than we have with the present TOC'S. I would suggest, if we had the railways nationalised again, can we have 3 setups. English trains. welsh trains and Scotish trains, all with a set colour scheme and with the country flags on.

I E. If for example a train was based at canton depot in Cardiff it would have welsh colours, and if it ran from Cardiff central to Portsmouth harbour would be welsh colours.
If from Portsmouth early in the morning to Cardiff, would be English, that would mean people and railway staff would know, which section of a nationalised railways owns which rolling stock.

We would have 3 regions then, in a sense.
 
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ac6000cw

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I've always felt that if the economy tanked, the first thing to suffer cuts would be the railway before the police, education, health, justice etc

Yes - and it did happen with BR on occasion i.e. Treasury just says there is no money for investments in rolling stock and infrastructure - other than for already committed contracts with outside suppliers - you'll have to make do with what money you can generate internally from the business.

And healthcare, education, defence, police etc are more important than railways because they affect/provide services to everyone, whereas railways are just another (minority) transport provider, which many people don't use on a day-to-day basis.
 

quantinghome

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If the railways were renationalised, would it be expensive to revert back?

The railways are mostly nationalised already. The only substantial private ownership is the rolling stock. The infrastructure is nationalised. The operations are franchised with the government micromanaging to an extent unheard of under British Rail. It's a really inefficient, ineffective set up. Nationalisation would cost nothing more than the current set up. The government would simply let franchises reach the end of their term, and could then purchase new rolling stock direct rather than lease from the rolling stock companies.

As for funding, the railways are already dependent on a large government subsidy. Provided the same 5 year funding formula is adhered to I don't see why a fully nationalised railway is at any more risk from government cuts than the current railway is. There's plenty of evidence of government cuts under the franchised system - just look at the cut backs to electrification and delayed investment in infrastructure (Piccadilly P15/16, transpennine upgrade).
 

quantinghome

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And healthcare, education, defence, police etc are more important than railways because they affect/provide services to everyone, whereas railways are just another (minority) transport provider, which many people don't use on a day-to-day basis.

Rail transport has doubled as a percentage of total passenger distance since the mid-1990s, so it's a more significant issue to more people now than it was previously. And although it's only 10% of total passenger distance, that's a rather unfair percentage as it includes journeys for which rail is never going to be an option. Once you isolate the types of journey where rail is viable (mostly commuting and long distance), it becomes a vital component. London and increasingly other city regions are dependent on rail for commuting. The question really is, if you're NOT going to invest in rail, what transport mode are you going to invest in instead?
 

underbank

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The government would simply let franchises reach the end of their term, and could then purchase new rolling stock direct rather than lease from the rolling stock companies.

But that would increase the national debt! The whole point of the privatisations, PFI deals for hospitals & schools, etc., has been to reduce the national debt, i.e. get the debt "off balance sheet". That's been achieved by all these "pretend" privatisations which have ended up costing the country more, but that's OK, because it doesn't show up in the annual deficit/debt figures. Just smoke and mirrors!
 

ac6000cw

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The question really is, if you're NOT going to invest in rail, what transport mode are you going to invest in instead?

The rational and logical mode - the one that provides the best value for money in relation to the problem you are trying to solve, taking into account the return-on-investment timescale you think is sensible. Why would you want to do anything else with public investment funds?
 

R G NOW.

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The railways are mostly nationalised already. The only substantial private ownership is the rolling stock. The infrastructure is nationalised.

I did not know this? Thanks for that post. So it is just the likes of cross country or gwr, that are private or franchised. In my post above I did mention having 3 nationalised concerns in each country of the uk, with their own colours and feel this would make sense.

And would we see the return of red star parcels.

and would love to see, what Corbyn would do, if he gets into office?.
 
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underbank

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and would love to see, what Corbyn would do, if he gets into office?.

Yes, I'd love to see some proper plans from Corbyn rather than just glib promises. He has no credibility at all until he produces some actual detailed plans as to how he'd see a nationalised rail industry, how it would be funded, what would actually improve, etc. Until he puts some meat on the bones, it's just hot air.
 

quantinghome

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But that would increase the national debt! The whole point of the privatisations, PFI deals for hospitals & schools, etc., has been to reduce the national debt, i.e. get the debt "off balance sheet". That's been achieved by all these "pretend" privatisations which have ended up costing the country more, but that's OK, because it doesn't show up in the annual deficit/debt figures. Just smoke and mirrors!

I suppose that a nationalised railway company could lease trains from a third party if it really wanted to. But as you say, this sort of thing is often just a smoke and mirrors exercise.
 

jon0844

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Yes, I'd love to see some proper plans from Corbyn rather than just glib promises. He has no credibility at all until he produces some actual detailed plans as to how he'd see a nationalised rail industry, how it would be funded, what would actually improve, etc. Until he puts some meat on the bones, it's just hot air.

Story of his career. Such a shame that we're now at a point where both Labour and Conservatives have become so extreme, and we're talking about a new party in the middle with members from left and right.

(Whether this ever gains traction I do not know, but we're completely buggered as things stand today).
 

quantinghome

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Yes, I'd love to see some proper plans from Corbyn rather than just glib promises. He has no credibility at all until he produces some actual detailed plans as to how he'd see a nationalised rail industry, how it would be funded, what would actually improve, etc. Until he puts some meat on the bones, it's just hot air.

I agree that there does need to be a plan; nationalisation is a means to an end, not an end in itself. How the railways end up being structured is critical to getting nationalisation right.

We're a self-selecting bunch on this forum and a detailed plan would be of limited interest to most people. So given the limited appeal of such detail I'm afraid we're going to have to look for it rather than wait for the main news outlets to splash a headline. Fortunately, Labour have been looking at this for a while and information on it is reasonably easy to find. Dr Ian Taylor is the guy they've had working on it. The following links give an indication of what would happen:

https://www.railmagazine.com/news/rail-features/exclusive

https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...-s-renationalisation-plans-look-nothing-1970s

https://www.transportforqualityofli...ebuilding_Rail_Final_Report_print_version.pdf (from 2012 but gives an indication of Ian Taylor's thinking)
 

Modron

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I think that there is currently a cultural obsession with the past, and the belief that things were somehow better back then.

In music, for example, there are bands like Greta Van Fleet who are harking back to the days of 70s Led Zeppelin and Queen and capitalising on younger people turning off from conventional music and instead listening to Queen, Boston, Foreigner, Led Zeppelin etc.

People think that undoing the past 20/30 years will somehow make the UK great again, but alas it is not that simple and would we be better off with our Railways being owned and run by HM Government? Could there not be a 50/50 deal whereby the TOC's get to keep their company names on their services, but HM Government has a greater say about things such as fare rises to prospective new routes?
 
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