What a Way to Run a Railway!

Margaret Thatcher’s government privatised everything that moved, with the exception of the railways; this appears to have been a step too far even for Mrs Thatcher who didn’t much like trains. Her dislike of the railways manifested itself in the form of systematic financial starvation of the then nationalised British Rail. This had the effect of eventually making BR so shabby and inefficient that it paved the way for her successor John Major to complete the Conservative portfolio of privatisation by taking the railways out of public control.

And what a dog’s breakfast that was! We had Railtrack - a hotchpotch of companies running the tracks and signalling (which in turn sub-contracted out work to all and sundry with often disastrous results) - and an assortment of train operating companies to run trains as route franchises granted by the government, using rolling stock leased from yet more companies.

In the quarter century that has passed since this mishmash was set up a certain amount of rationalisation has taken place, notably by replacing Railtrack with Network Rail (an arm’s-length branch of the Department of Transport). Train operating companies have come and go; some are reasonable operators and some are truly dreadful. The National Audit Office has just reported to Government (January 2018) that Southern Trains, Thameslink, and Great Northern franchises are providing poor value for money.

Why not re-nationalise the railways?

The Labour Party has pledged to bring the railways back into public ownership, but predictably the Conservative privatisation die-hards ridicule the idea. It appears, however, to be quite a popular idea with the general public and long-suffering  train passengers.

I am waiting for these Conservative die-hards to come up with better arguments for their case than the tired old “Don’t people remember the bad old days of the British Rail curly sandwich?”. Oh please, give me a break! As it happens, I was a frequent user of the East Coast main line between York and London during the 1970s and 1980s, and what I do remember is excellent food on those trains; proper food, prepared and cooked in proper kitchens, and served by smartly-uniformed stewards at properly laid-out dining tables. Come to think of it the trains were usually on time, and they completed the journey from York to London in about 1 hour 55 minutes. (In the first few years of privatised train companies the same journey mysteriously slowed to about two and a half hours.)

Here’s another argument trotted out by the Conservatives: “Have people forgotten the decrepit rolling stock, the poor service, the bad time-keeping, the ever-increasing fares?” .. And your point is? .. This seems to me be a pretty accurate description of what we have NOW.

The first company to get the East Coast Main Line between London and Edinburgh and beyond was GNER (Great Northern Eastern Railway). They were, to be fair, a half-decent company that ran smart trains with friendly staff, and continued the practice of serving proper food. But in due course they couldn’t hack it financially and handed the keys back. The franchise then passed to National Express (up to that point just a long-distance bus company). After a new paint job on the trains, some new logos, and a few years’ service they also couldn’t balance the books and handed the keys back.

At this stage (2009) the Labour Government of Gordon Brown took the route back into public ownership and the trains were run by eastcoast.co.uk. Here is the significance of this move: after the inevitable new paint job and logo changes this line actually started producing a profit for the Treasury. The trains ran on time, they were fast, and they had a customer satisfaction rating of 91%.

This must have been so embarrassing for the subsequent Conservative-led Coalition Government: a State-run railway actually doing what it was meant to do, and making a profit into the bargain. Indeed it must have been so traumatic for the Conservative privateers that it wasn’t long before they put it out to franchise again, and this time it was snapped up by Virgin/Stagecoach. Another day, another paint job.

And now, once again, the latest franchise is in trouble. Virgin/Stagecoach paid the government £3.3 billion to run the franchise until 2023, and now they want to cut it short and also reduce their payments to the government. No doubt anxious to avoid the embarrassment of yet another company handing back the keys the Secretary of State for Transport has caved into the company’s wishes.

Other European nations appear to be able to run perfectly good publicly-owned railways, but British Conservatives are unwilling to see this, although – perversely – they appear to be quite sanguine about the fact that these other railways have a significant stake in our own train companies. For example, Grand Central Trains (also using the East Coast Main Line) are part of Deutsche Bahn’s international arm.

International subsidiaries of European State railways have a part interest in the following ..

Greater Anglia .. Dutch

London Overground .. German

Merseyrail  .. Dutch

Cross Country .. German

Southern .. French

Arriva Wales .. German

South Eastern .. French

Northern Rail .. Dutch

Docklands Light Railway .. Spanish & French

C2C .. Italian

Govia Thameslink .. French

Scotrail .. Dutch

Eurostar .. French & Belgian

The London Underground (a large network reaching far beyond the confines of Central London) is publicly owned and works well.

It seems that dogmatic Conservatives are dead set against State-owned railways unless they are foreign ones!

What a way to run a railway.

Re-nationalise, and let’s have a single (properly funded) national British railway system that we can be proud of, instead of this ridiculous kaleidoscope of companies which are constantly dropping in and out of franchises or pleading for government hand-outs and concessions.

©Lionel Beck

January 2018

Another Mad Year - 2011

I had high hopes for 2011. I thought it was going to be unique. There’d never been a year called ‘2011’ before and the chances of their being another year called ‘2011’ seemed remote. Then I remembered I had high hopes at the beginning of every year and decided to be more rational in the future.

Anyway, this is how it panned out, in no particular order (as they say on the “X-Factor”).

Our Dear Leader, “Call me Dave” Cameron, decided that the National Health Service should be turned upside down, handing financial control to consortia of local GPs. None of this was in the Conservative or Liberal Democrat manifestos, but when were political manifestos ever worth more than a row of beans?

There was so much hostility from the professionals that the Government went away for another think. I think they are still thinking.

I hope they remember that basis of the NHS is that everybody, regardless of income, is entitled to receive hospital acquired infections free at the point of use.

The British Government (a Coalition of the Unwilling) held a referendum on changing the voting system. The Liberal Democrats had been pushing hard for this, and I supported it, being a life-long critic of the undemocratic “first past the post” system (which only works democratically if you have no more than two candidates). Anyway, the “Yes” Campaigners ran such an abysmal show, talking complete rubbish that the country voted for the status quo (which is Latin for rock music).

Some Arab nations protesting and fighting their way towards some kind of democracy, whilst a couple of European nations went in the opposite direction by being coerced into forming governments led by unelected technocrats.

Libya’s deranged Colonel Gaddafi

began losing control of his country after 40 years of dictatorship and farting in public. There was a major uprising in Benghazi (where the people were fed up with the stink) and the curly-headed madman used his Air Force to quell the uprising, declaring he would hunt down his own people like rats. Things were beginning to look so serious that the UN and NATO got involved, resulting in a NATO-controlled No-Fly Zone over the country, to thwart Gaddafi’s murderous activities. In a rare and relatively short display of successful military action involving no “boots on the ground” the Colonel was eventually defeated, meeting an undignified end being hauled out of sewer and shot.

As the flies began to congregate around his corpse I wondered about the efficiency of the no-fly zone.

A British comedian wondered why the self-styled Dictator only gave himself the rank of Colonel, putting himself no higher than someone qualified to sell fried chicken in a bucket.

Tunisia held its first democratic election in history and there was a 90% turnout. Imagine achieving that in Britain!

President Assad

(Arsehead?) of Syria got into a similar game to Gadaffi, slaughtering thousands of his own people who had the bare-faced cheek to protest against his repressive regime, but no sign of the Western Powers intervening in this case.

By the end of year it was reckoned that his forces had killed 5,000 and arrested 15,000 of his people, prompting calls for him to be brought before the International Court for crimes against humanity.

Then there was the “Eurozone” crisis. This was a crisis within a crisis. We already a worldwide economic crisis caused by a poorly regulated banking system either going berserk with other people’s money, or conducting fraudulent operations, or both. Within the European Union, countries like Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain reaped the whirlwind of their profligacy; Greece, in particular, was on the verge of collapse and required gigantic bale-outs from the rest of the “Eurozone”.

(Beware Greeks requiring gifts!)

American special forces located the whereabouts of Osama Bin Liner

(residing comfortably in Pakistan). They stormed the premises and killed him, thus ending a man-hunt that started after the tragic attack on the World Trade Centre.

Dave the Toff attended a special European Summit meeting in Brussels called to reach an agreement on rules to be followed to save the Euro. This currency had been doomed from its inception because it was set up without considering the political necessity to make participating countries function virtually as a single State for it work, and certain countries (Greece in particular) should never have been allowed to join, but the books were cooked (and the Greeks are not particularly noteworthy for their cooking). The UK had wisely decided to stay out of it. (Sterling work.)

Nevertheless, anything happening in the 17 countries using the Euro affects the UK’s trade with Europe and so it was necessary (along with nine other countries still using their own currency) to attend this Summit.

Instead of negotiating a deal protecting Britain’s interests, Cameron just refused to be party to the agreement signed by all the other 26 countries and took his bat and ball home to the rousing cheers of the Conservative Party’s rabid right-wing Europe-hating back-benchers. He was publicly criticised by his Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister and several others.

Cameron now has one foot on the jetty and other on the boat that is departing. We can only hope he’s good at doing the splits, but in any case there’s still bound to be a big splash!

America’s motley collection of Republican circus clowns called the Tea Party drove their political bus into the presidential circus ring and the doors fell off in time-honoured fashion accompanied by the hooting and honking of mad ideas, political amnesia, suspect intelligence, and sexual scandals.

I had a brief e-mail correspondence with one of these guys and he wrote me long essayson the American Constitution, and the evils of Government. He said the Minimum Wage was a disaster and American healthcare was “the best in the world, and anyone can get access to it” (!) Free-market capitalism was the only way forward. He told me that if he met anyone who “wanted to be

controlled by government” he would “send him to England” and perhaps I would like to “send him anyone I knew who loves freedom”.

One of America’s right-wing backwoodsmen came back into the fray on behalf of the Tea Party Movement: Newt Gingrich. Imagine having an American President with a weird name!

In Italy, Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi raised the tone of political debate by declaring the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to be an “unfuckable lard bucket”.

Japan suffered a horrific tsunami with huge loss of life and fatal damage to a nuclear power plant causing radiation leaks. This reopened the question in Britain of whether we should be building new nuclear power stations to secure our future power supplies. Meanwhile we continued to suffer from the installation of wind turbines – one of the biggest confidence tricks perpetrated on a gullible population (and government). There were now so many of these ineffectual eye-sores blighting the British countryside that if we could run them as propellers we could probably fly the country across the Atlantic.

What wondrous things are wind turbines!

When it’s freezing cold and we all need extra power, we can be without wind for days on end whilst they generate diddly squat. On other days when the wind blows hard they shut the damned things down to avoid damage. In one memorable instance a turbine was working so hard it caught fire. It’s hard to think of anything good to say about them unless you are a rich land owner getting even richer by allowing dozens of the things to sit on your land.

In Britain the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The same thing happened in America but to an even worse extent.

Cambridge lost the Oxford v Cambridge University Boat Race by about 3 lengths – more bad news (unless you happen to be an Oxford supporter).

During the summer London and several other major cities in the UK were treated to an unprecedented outbreak of rioting and looting, sparked off by the Police in London shooting and killing a young man. Businesses were ruined, the Police were ineffectual, and there were many instances of outrageous behaviour. Eventually there were thousands of arrests and cases heard in courts operating all night. Severe sentences were handed out. It was notable that these scenes were not repeated in Scotland or Wales, thus reinforcing my view that the English are in many ways a defective race of people.

Trade Unions objecting to austerity measures that were going to affect their pensions combined and called a one-day strike near the end of the year. That demure and sensitive soul, Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear fame) declared on TV that the strikers should all be taken out and shot in front of their families.

Clarkson also took the opportunity this year of letting us know that people who jumped in front of trains to kill themselves were being very selfish holding up everyone else on the train. The train driver should be replaced and the train re-started, leaving the foxes and crows to deal with whatever bits of the body still remained scattered about the track. Clarkson’s mouth is so big he can get both feet into it, and with a bit of effort (and luck for the rest of us?) might even be able to swallow himself.

Another vile dictator died: Kim Jong-il of North Korea. We watched thousands of North Koreans wailing and gnashing their teeth at this tragedy that had overcome them, demonstrating the degree to which they had all been

brainwashed, or coerced, or both. No doubt this man (who appeared to one of the select few in North Korea who got enough to eat) arranged for his headstone to be engraved, “I told you I was –il”. He was replaced by his son (also well-fed).

Once again we saw that Communism turns its own philosophy upside down and produces an elite dynasty of all-powerful dictators. “Power to the people”? .. bollocks!

Talking of political philosophies, we have now firmly established (except in the eyes of Cuba, North Korea and China) that Communism doesn’t work. We appear also to have firmly established that Capitalism doesn’t work either. What 2012 needs is a new “–ism” that does work. Nobody’s come up with any useful ideas yet.

Britain celebrated the Christmas spirit by having a fatal stabbing in Oxford Street, a knife attack in the same area on the same day, and a fatal shooting in Manchester.

In conclusion, 2011 has been much like any other year in recent times, and 2012 will probably continue much in the same vein.

In other words, plus ça change plus c'est la même chose – which is French for Isn’t this where we came in?

Happy New Year to my six readers.

Jeremy Paxman meets his Match

Jeremy Paxman, scourge of the Political Animal Kingdom, was reduced to laughter last night when he interviewed Boris Johnson at the Conservative Party Conference. Paxman, with his usual dogged persistence was trying to get a straight answer out of "Bo-Jo" on the proposed new European Constitution set out in the Lisbon Treaty, and whether a Conservative Government would still give us a Referendum on the matter even if it was ratified by the two countries (Poland and the Czech Republic) still remaining in the ratification process. It was noted that Ireland had now said YES in their recent referendum. (Our Labour Government had already ratified the Treaty without the referendum that they had promised us).

When pressed, Boris came up with the line that he was ".. only the Mayor of London - merely a toe-nail on the body politic". At this point Paxman gave up the unequal struggle.

Trains getting better!

We spent a few days in London the other day, and were pleasantly surprised to find that not only was our train from York to London running on time, but every surburban train we caught in London departed and arrived exactly on schedule. Our six-year year old grandson enjoyed riding on the London Underground ("The Tube") and was quite disappointed when he saw daylight again.

Our train back from London Kings Cross to York was non-stop and did the journey in 105 minutes, i.e., an average speed of 114 mph. A Scottish businessman was sitting on a seat behind me conducting a prolonged conversation on his cellphone; he started the call immediately we left Kings Cross, which was a stupid thing to do because there are at least five longish tunnels as you leave London on the East Coast main line, so his conversation was constantly interspersed with "Can you hear me? .. can you hear me?" followed by long pauses, only to be repeated again at the next tunnel.

Anyway, as a result of our recent travels I should like to thank and congratulate National Express Trains and South West Trains on their efficient and pleasant service.

G20 .. "Anglo-Saxons" versus The Rest?

Well, the great and the good, the bad and ugly, are all gathered in London today for the G20 summit that's intended to put the world to rights.

President Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Merkel of Germany have formed an unholy alliance against those they see as the Anglo-Saxon originators of all the world's financial troubles, i.e., the USA and the UK.

They want more regulation rather than more spending boosts. I am tempted to agree with them. It is hard to avoid the fact that the present troubles did arise from the lightly regulated, laissez-faire kind of capitalism espoused principally by the United States and the United Kingdom. I am inclined to agree that we need more, not less, regulation; and as for delivering financial stimulus we are already up to our ears in hock for generations without borrowing even more to spend our way out of the crisis. We need to expose and close down all these tax havens as well.

Naturally the gathering has encouraged the appearance of thousands of protestors in London, some of which managed to break the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland and gain entry to smash up a few computers. Since we own most of the RBS these days, I suppose these guys were pretty much breaking into their own premises!

There have been anti-war protesters, anti-globalisation protesters, anti-capitalism protesters, anti-nuclear arms protesters, environmental protesters, socialist worker protesters, trade union protesters, communist protesters, anarchist protesters, and for all I know anti-protest protesters. Apart from the break in to the RBS these huge gatherings have been largely peaceful and handled quite well by the Police. (Update 20th April .. there have since been 90 complaints to the Police Complaints Commission about some Police Officers hiding their identity numbers, and physically assaulting protesters, allegededly causing one death.) City of London bank workers who took it upon themselves to wave fistfuls of £10 notes to the assembled crowds probably cannot be described as the world's greatest practitioners of tact and diplomacy!

I wish the G20 gathering well in their endeavours.

Am in the right Country?

Last weekend I visited my sister in the south-west London suburbs, travelling from North Yorkshire. I used trains and buses for the entire weekend. A couple of years ago I was ranting and raving about the chaotic state of our (privatised) railways, but now I have to acknowledge that things appear to be improving.

On the Saturday, my 08:10 First Trans-Pennine Express (Scarborough/Manchester) arrived in Malton Station at precisely 08:10 and deposited me in York Station bang on time, allowing me ten minutes before catching the 08:45 Grand Central Trains service (Sunderland/London Kings Cross) which arrived and departed at the scheduled times.

One hour and fifty minutes later I was in London (Kings Cross) and within ten minutes was sitting on a bus that got me across London in 25 minutes to Waterloo Station for my third train - South-West Trains service to Hampton Court. 

I got on the train at midday, and it was scheduled to depart at 12:06. I sat on the train gazing out of the window at the digital time display on the platform and as soon as the clock switched 

from 12:05:59 to 12:06:00 the train pulled out. By this time I was having to check that I was in the right Country because all the signs were that I was on the Swiss Railway system!

I arrived at Hampton Court Station on time. After checking into my hotel, I walked back to the station to catch one of two buses that would deliver me almost to my sister's door. At no time did I have to wait longer than 10 minutes for a bus.

The pleasure of all this well-timed public transport was enhanced by the paltry sum of money it cost me. By booking in advance on line, using my Senior Railcard, and taking advantage of a Grand Central Trains half-price offer for December, then travelling on London buses using my Senior Citizens free bus pass, I was able to complete the 230-mile journey from North Yorkshire to south-west London for the princely sum of £22.

I returned on Sunday for another £22, again without a hitch - up to a point .. Sod's Law came into play, and engineering works on the East Coast main line resulted in my train to York being delayed by half an hour. This meant I missed a (free) bus ride home and had to resort to a taxi that cost me the same amount of money that I had just spent for the whole of the weekend's train fares. Every silver lining has a cloud.

But, hats off to First, Grand Central, South-west Trains, and Transport for London for providing me with an enjoyable trouble-free weekend away at affordable prices.