Labour: Let’s cull disabled people, let the poor starve, and increase trans suicides.
Also Labour: Guys I nationalised a small railway company, the leftists have got to be on my side now right?
I mean I’m certainly not complaining, but why is Labor doing commie shit like this?
Did you forget the /s
In a sense yeah. I didn’t expect such a leftwing move from Labor, since people on that part of the political spectrum tend to decry nationalization as commie shit that hinders the Invisible Hand of the Market™.
I’m lost now. Labour are economically left of centre (though arguably have been drifting more right) they’re all for nationalisation. It’s the conservatives (right of centre though moving further right recently and just a bit unhinged lately) that want everything privatised.
Labour are economically left of centre
Nope. I mean, the current Labor government’s whole deal has been austerity and cutting social services.
Oh I see. Yes, maybe they’ve realised that getting seen like that isn’t helping, especially as they’ve been doing a lot to do with workers rights which clearly is going unnoticed if you think their “whole deal” has been cutting essential services and austerity. (though I’d argue that it’s not essential for people like my dad who’s on a final salary pension of about £35k plus his state pension to receive winter fuel allowance)
It is a bit of an outwardly left-wing move from a centre-right party; I’m sure the other shoe will drop soon
As someone who uses that company Id like to know what the priorities are. Just maintaining the current service or actually improving it somehow?
I like nationalisation as a concept. I don’t like that currently it is still a concept as Labor has not made clear, concrete commitments for what it could mean.
I understand that ticket prices are unlikely to come down. It sucks but I hope they can at least commit to freezing prices for a while or something. I think nationalisation offers the opportunity to rework the ticketing system as a whole to have it be completely integrated. I hope this would mean you can just tap in and out of stations and have the lowest price automatically calculated like they are in some European countries (the Netherlands for example).
Unfortunately Labour hasn’t said anything clear about their plans other than “we want to make it better”. Hopefully we find out more in the Autumn.
A lot of the TOCs were already under national control. But the problem is with the system in general; its just broken. You cite ticket pricing as one insanity, but I also hate how poorly connected buses, and trains are. I wish we had a unified ticketing system so I could get a monthly pass to cover both train, and bus.
For example, I’m lucky I can get a direct bus to work. But if I didn’t, I’d have to get a bus to the train station, then to train to a town close to work, then another bus. Now I have to pay for a train season ticket (which costs an absolute fortune), and a monthly bus pass.
Or I could get a car. I’m very reluctant too but public transport is so broken in the UK that I often think it would be so much easier.
I wish we had a unified ticketing system so I could get a monthly pass to cover both train, and bus.
It’s not just the ticketing system.
Anecdotally, I needed to commute around 130 km from the Netherlands to Belgium for like half a year 3-4 days a week. The cheapest option (over buses, train, everything) was to rent a car each week from Avis. Eurostar, NS and SCNB should go to hell, how is me renting a car and fueling it less expensive than a train seat for the literal same route? In the Benelux?
And adding on top of that, the first train of the day has had a non-connection where the connecting train left 3 minutes earlier than the one taking me there, so that also limited how early could I get to where I needed to be.
On the other hand, I’ve reached the highest tier Booking discount tier in like 2 months so that’s nice.
how is me renting a car and fueling it less expensive than a train seat for the literal same route?
Car rental companies operate in a competitive market, as do gas stations. Competitive markets are pretty good at driving prices down.
Trains tend not to.
https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/business_economics/natural_monopolies.html/
Railways as a natural monopoly
Railways are often considered a typical example of a natural monopoly. The very high costs of laying track and building a network, as well as the costs of buying or leasing the trains, would prohibit, or deter, the entry of a competitor.
To society, the costs associated with building and running a rival network would be wasteful.
Unfortunately Labour hasn’t said anything clear about their plans other than “we want to make it better”
Blairites and vague platitudes in place of concrete policy, name a more iconic duo.
Hooray!
Now do water.
Absolutely this.
Themes water should have been allowed to go bust so the government could buy it back super cheap.
I’m glad at least it looks like the threat of them forcing them not to take bonuses will be making them voluntarily not take them. Plus the whole personal liability for pollution thing so that the execs can end up with prison time if they don’t get their act together.
Can someone explain to me why this is good?
