Politics Thread!

[pogo]

Except if you book months in advance. Which suits some people very well, but most of us not at all.

It doesn’t have to be months in advance, just in advance. You can get heavily discounted fares even the day before provided you can get the ticket (e.g. from a machine at a station with one). As well as saving money you get a seat. You lose flexibility but that’s inevitable as the rail company is selling you a particular seat on a particular train which would otherwise not be full.

As for the “got shittier” it really hasn’t. You can’t be that old if you don’t remember the uncomfortable, grim, inefficient services that British Rail used to run. Stations were similarly unpleasant and unfriendly places. Food was poor or non-existent, both on trains and at stations. It was universally despised and became a national joke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_sandwich

It has been transformed since privatisation, with massive new investment, primarily in things that impact customers. And people have noticed and are returning to or taking up rail travel in their millions.

[tufty]

incomes have risen while motoring costs have steadily fallen.

Indeed they have. And rail prices have steadily risen.

As for 71% I just checked here which reports a rise of 71.2% for long distance fares over eleven years.

The report I saw was published in 2014 covering 2004-2014, and I think you'll find my post included the magical phrase "For long distances". But hey. Nitpicking, right?

The average real increase is only 18.6%, again over 11 years, but that does not include any adjustment for rising incomes.

Incorrect, fucknuts. The "real terms increase 2004-2015" in that document is *exactly* that, the price rise allowing for rising incomes. You'll notice that the long distance entry in that table is 22.7%, not the headline 71.2%. And all of this is skewed massively by the inclusion of season tickets in the data set, which, although they rise above the RPI, have been rising slower than non-season ticket fares.

[gumboot]

If the commuter-hour route between London and Cambridge was any worse in the past, then that implies that people must have been clinging to the outside of the carriages.

If London had anywhere to put cars while you weren't using them then the cost of taking a train would make no sense at all.

[(o)(o)]

The economic liberals (i.e, those who think those who have money should be free to spend it however they like, i.e. Tories) want to sell it all off.

FTFY

Well true but I think neoliberalism is much more than that.

In govt - dogmatic policies combining propaganda and corruption to reinforce hierarchies of power.

There are many angles to come at this it's not just a "right" issue.. though of course some Tories are prone toward filthy behaviour as the ideology is centred around narcissism and 'the self' instead of a well functioning society.

This peer reviewed paper is quite interesting!

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0025995

[pogo]

incomes have risen while motoring costs have steadily fallen.

Indeed they have. And rail prices have steadily risen.

As for 71% I just checked here which reports a rise of 71.2% for long distance fares over eleven years.

The report I saw was published in 2014 covering 2004-2014, and I think you'll find my post included the magical phrase "For long distances". But hey. Nitpicking, right?

Sorry, missed that. Highlighting long distance fares is fairly arbitrary, but whichever you choose over 11 years prices rose by 22.7%, or 18.6%, in real terms. Hardly a massive rise, less than 2% a year, about in line with GDP growth in normal times. It would be nice if railways kept getting cheaper in real terms but that would be hard on rail workers.

The thing is though despite fare rises demand keeps growing. Companies must be doing a lot to justify the higher fares. This puts pressure on capacity limited commuter services but has been broadly beneficial elsewhere, making trains fuller, letting companies put on more or longer (as in more carriages) services, helping support marginal services and even encouraging firms to put on new services. Since privatisation for example an entirely new service has been created from Sunderland and Bradford to London.

[merman]

Today's fine for Network Rail proves how daft the current system is.

Not only have prices gone up, but passenger subsidies have increased. So the taxpayer is losing out twice - the rail companies stash their profit offshore to avoid paying tax, and the Treasury has to pay out to keep non-profitable services running.

The East Coast mainline was running at a profit while in public control, and its subsidy had dropped to 5p per passenger mile. Under Virgin Stagecoach's new contract they get 53p per passenger mile.

[pogo]

Well yes, it is very hard for the government to regulate part of it through fines, as they just end up being recycled back into govt. finances. A strong argument for privatisation as I imagine you have no problem with the government imposing large fines on private firms that fuck up.

As for the subsidy it’s falling.

Rail subsidies fall 40% in five years

Not surprising as fare rises largely cover costs, so the large increases in passenger numbers should mean less subsidy per passenger. It’s hard to break it down per franchise as it does vary widely by agreement, but the overall subsidy had come down significantly.

But I have no problem with rail being subsidised. Whether bus or rail, public transport makes much more efficient use of the space it uses, so is better for congestion, for the environment, for quality of life in cities or anywhere people live near transport.

[F-ZeroOne]

Some of the "alternative" parties have rather confused rail policies. The Greens wanted to make rail travel free for young people, IIRC, without actually stating where they would get the additional capacity to cope with the sudden influx in passenger numbers that would cause, and the little music video skit they did suggests that they're anti-High Speed 2 but again, don't really seem to state how they will address the issues HS2 is planned to solve.

UKIP jumped on the anti-HS2 bandwagon (after previously proposing three new high speed rail lines), but rather like their plan to ban people with "life-threatening diseases" from entering the country, if one one were to ask "Okay, then what?" I would be amazed if you got an answer other than "Err... ".

[(o)(o)]

Well yes, it is very hard for the government to regulate part of it through fines, as they just end up being recycled back into govt. finances. A strong argument for privatisation as I imagine you have no problem with the government imposing large fines on private firms that fuck up.

Fines ??

The No,1 reason a majority of Tories want railways renationalised is so they are accountable to the taxpayer not shareholders.

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cu ... sation.pdf

[pogo]

Again opinion polls that ask voters their opinion on a variety of policies without including the consequences and costs are meaningless. Rail renationlisation would have a number of consequences. Immediately the cost of buying back all the franchises. Rail is a much bigger business now so it would be much more expensive then when privatised. It’s not like they can just let the franchises expire and take them over, or wait for them to go broke as ECML did. The government would need trains and rolling stock, places to park them and work on them, which would all need to be bought. Staff would have to be transferred – I think unions would insist on this.

Longer term though there would be the problem that state run businesses had, and that British Rail had in spades before it was privatised. Poor management, lack of concern for customers, too much concern for the interests of managers and workers. Looking on WP there’s an even better graph showing the impact of privatisation compared to under British Rail. We don’t really want to go back to how it was before privatisation.

[(o)(o)]

Again opinion polls that ask voters their opinion on a variety of policies without including the consequences and costs are meaningless. Rail renationlisation would have a number of consequences. Immediately the ...

WTF has this bollocks got to do with accountability ??

You said "Isn't private sector great because fines".

Polls show people don't want fines they want public accountability via renationalisation.

This started with you saying Corbyn's ideas are from a 'past age'.

Polls show the ideas are current.

[pogo]

His views are dated as he holds the same views as when he became an MP back in the 1980s. But the world has moved on since then. e.g. from the NS:

The beauty of Jeremy is his authenticity – he isn’t pretending to be anything other than what he is – a 1980s leftwing politician with a deep sense of moral purpose. But this isn’t the 1980s. And as attractive as it might seem – we can’t simply rerun the 1945 Labour government.

(why 1945? As that’s the last time a truly radical Labour government was elected. Attempts to win elections since from the radical left have failed)

Corbyn’s consistency contrasts markedly with the other candidates, especially the supposed front runner:

In July 2014, he called for an end to NHS privatisation. In Janaury 2015, he warned that the coalition was pursuing "a toxic mixture of cuts and privatisation". Labour supporters may have been confused about what the party stood for under Ed Miliband - but one thing they were clear on was that Andy Burnham was opposed to NHS privatisation.

There was only one problem with this. Only one NHS hospital, Hinchingbrooke, has ever been handed over to a private provider, which then ran it for a profit (as good a definition of "NHS privatisation" as any). The process that led to this arrangement began in July 2009. The health secretary at the time was one Andy Burnham.

The man who in opposition has made his name opposing NHS privatisation is the only health secretary ever to privatise an NHS hospital.
...
His entire leadership campaign has been built on the assumption that nobody will bother to Google what he was up to in 2009.
...
He talks endlessly about not being from inside the Westminster Bubble. But since he's a Cambridge graduate who became a parliamentary researcher at the age of 24, this just looks like code for "I have a northern accent". Time and again, Burnham’s actions are those of a man who assumes the rest of us are fools.

[F-ZeroOne]

Consider the following "opinions" - literally, for years, people (especially media news opinion columns) have been saying that they want better railways like they have in other countries.

Labour proposes HS2 and the Tories run with it. They are giving people what they said they wanted - a high speed railway like they have in other countries.

And pretty much the entire media decides that isn't actually what they wanted. I still don't know what they wanted - as far as I can tell, it was some kind of magic railway which required no infrastructure, no money spent on it, and no environmental impact. There is only one place in the world where theres a railway like that, and its on the island of Sodor.

[pogo]

Yes, HS2 is going to be transformative in the way no other transport project has since the Channel Tunnel, which was started over 25 years ago. Crossrail? It will make commutes from some directions a bit more bearable, but at the same time it will just push the commuter belt further out, pushing up house prices in more remote parts of Essex and Berkshire. HS1? It was only so significant as train services in Kent were so poor before, and is not that much faster than services like the ECML.

Right now train is the best way to get to London for many: faster than road or air (once travel to airports it taken into account), direct and often inexpensive. But it’s severely capacity constrained and the distances are such that you still spend hours travelling from any Northern city. Roads are congested, while there are only a few flights from each city. HS2 will change this completely, not only adding lots of new capacity but reducing travel times so much that it opens up many new options for travellers, for day trips, business trips, even commutes.

[VNVObit]

Yes, HS2 is going to be transformative in the way no other transport project has since the Channel Tunnel, which was started over 25 years ago.

20 minutes less to Birmingham is hardly transformative especially given how people are more productive on trains than they were in the past. This has undermined the economic argument for HS2 - At least the channel tunnel created a new link to Europe

Crossrail? It will make commutes from some directions a bit more bearable, but at the same time it will just push the commuter belt further out, pushing up house prices in more remote parts of Essex and Berkshire.

Actually large parts of west London which are currently served by trains to paddington (I use Ealing broadway and it's a busy interchange between mainline rail and the tube)

Right now train is the best way to get to London for many: faster than road or air (once travel to airports it taken into account), direct and often inexpensive. But it’s severely capacity constrained and the distances are such that you still spend hours travelling from any Northern city. Roads are congested, while there are only a few flights from each city. HS2 will change this completely, not only adding lots of new capacity but reducing travel times so much that it opens up many new options for travellers, for day trips, business trips, even commutes.

For business there's always telecommuting (though having carried out an annual appraisal via videoconferencing I would strongly suggest it's not a complete substitute)

Long distances I would always look at flying as an alternative, not just from a cost perspective but from a time one too. Often works out cheaper/quicker than some of the intercity services. I found it quicker to commute to my parents in Dublin than visit my team based in Norfolk (they were on the mainline so trains were available)

Barcelona has crept into the commuter belt too
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10 ... 56587.html