CyclopsRock
Member
CHEEZMO;44700020 said:
Oh, please. The BNP without the racist and fascist overtones is basically a socialist workers party.
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UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.
- Thread starter Chinner
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Oh, please. The BNP without the racist and fascist overtones is basically a socialist workers party.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
I meant in regards to the Little Englander wankery.
CyclopsRock
Member
CHEEZMO;44740026 said:
I think that's pretty hard to justify based upon their policies or their actions in the European parliament, as opposed to a caricature. Do you have any examples of the kind of wankery to which you refer?
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
No because that would mean paying more than a few seconds attention to them and I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did that.
CyclopsRock
Member
Considering what just happened in Rotheram...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20490937
Bwaaaahahahahahahahahahaaaah. A choice quote:
BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAH.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20490937
Bwaaaahahahahahahahahahaaaah. A choice quote:
BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAH.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Mark Carney named as Governor of the Bank of England.
Massive shock around these parts, we were all gearing up for a no-change appointment like Paul Tucker.
Good decision as Carney overhauled Canada's banking sector and oversaw a worldwide downturn with no bank bailouts. Hopefully it means the government are preparing to wind up their stakes in the banks and Carney will oversee a regulatory change to ensure we don't end up in this situation again.
Massive shock around these parts, we were all gearing up for a no-change appointment like Paul Tucker.
Good decision as Carney overhauled Canada's banking sector and oversaw a worldwide downturn with no bank bailouts. Hopefully it means the government are preparing to wind up their stakes in the banks and Carney will oversee a regulatory change to ensure we don't end up in this situation again.
The thought of Michael Gove as Tory leader is just plain terrifying.
Luckily Downing Street have issued a statement which seems to kill of any chances of such a deal. This has led Farage to indulge in a bit of sabre-rattling on twitter, bless him.
On the whole Rotheram thing, I'm inclined to be massively cynical given the timing. This was only ever an emergency placement that was always intended to be temporary (which makes the fact that they were letting the kids call them 'mum' and 'dad' kinda gross), while a better suited family was found. Not worthy of all the outrage, as far as i can tell.
Oh and to anyone who thinks UKIP aren't mostly bastards, a candidate in the Croyden North by-election has said that adoption by gay couples is 'unhealthy' for the child.
CyclopsRock
Member
I like Gove, on the whole. The think the school reforms are brilliant.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
He's an odious, horrible little man. But there are elements of his education reforms that I like.
So, the Work Programme missed its main target, by quite a bit it seems.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20499836
So, a massive waste of time and money so far. Being on the Work Programme myself, I can't say I'm really surprised - it really is a glorified JobClub, extended to two years and given half the budget. Will things pick up as the next year drags along? Time will tell, it seems.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20499836
So, a massive waste of time and money so far. Being on the Work Programme myself, I can't say I'm really surprised - it really is a glorified JobClub, extended to two years and given half the budget. Will things pick up as the next year drags along? Time will tell, it seems.
I've always liked Gove myself, seems to be the best of the big hitters in the Conservative front bench for me.
Also, without knowing too much beyond what the article says, 3.5% is not too far off the estimated figures, which doesn't seem like a big failure to me, particularly considering the huge number of variables at play. Another year, perhaps, and a more accurate picture could be gained.
Also, without knowing too much beyond what the article says, 3.5% is not too far off the estimated figures, which doesn't seem like a big failure to me, particularly considering the huge number of variables at play. Another year, perhaps, and a more accurate picture could be gained.
Visualante2
Member
Target seems disingenuous. It was a baseline expectation, based on leaving the unemployed to their own devices to find a job. They couldn't have made this "target" any lower. Lot of misinformation and deception from government about these stats it seems. They took 14 months and called it a year. They're trying to use "break in claim" to measure success when in fact the most vulnerable members of our society are the ones being punished with sanctions up to 3 years as this break in claim. I read the other day 1 in 5 homeless people have been sanctioned, making them even more destitute.. and somehow these should be used as a measure of the success. The number of sanctions has risen year upon year. When you can't get people jobs, create reasons to get them off benefits or ship them into destined to fail self employed roles.
Whole programme is retrofitted as a punishment machine to get people off benefits in lieu of there being no jobs.
Shocking really that it took them this long to write letters to providers, reminding them of their contractual obligations. The government has had this data since inception and they wait for the release of it to take a hard line on private companies.
Well if you take the 12 months instead of 14 months (as above) it's 2.5%. imho it should be put on hold until the recession is over. Completely not fit for purpose given the labour market.
There was a story of how A4E was performing in an Olympic borough, the statistics may have been shot down but the council managed to find thousands of people jobs.. meanwhile the work programme in the area was failing. Payment by results doesn't work right now.
edit. Lest we forget how fraudulent the welfare to work industry was found to be in Australia. (40% of claims fraudulent or lacking required evidence). Government likes to act like they're so smart and know better. Meanwhile Ofsted and auditors don't have to inspect these places anymore.. instead clients do a "how's my teaching questionnaire" at the end of a session. Because that just gets in the way of their important work....
It's a failure because 3.5% of people would have gotten a job anyway without the work programme.
Seriously fucking hell, haven't used the train as much since a few bad experiences coupled with my rail card running out, but holy fuck at these prices. Last year or so I've visited Spain, Germany and France and I swear the prices were almost a third of what ours are.
Seriously, I'm whole heartedly backing labours plans to nationalise this shit whole company. Privatising this thing, like most things, has been terrible for us. Extortionate prices and terrible service to boot. Is there an e petition I can sign somewhere? We need to nip this at the bud before more fat cats profit off of us and it costs us even more money.
Bath to London return for £65 my ass (off peak and all). I've paid less than that to get to fucking other countries in Europe.
Seriously, I'm whole heartedly backing labours plans to nationalise this shit whole company. Privatising this thing, like most things, has been terrible for us. Extortionate prices and terrible service to boot. Is there an e petition I can sign somewhere? We need to nip this at the bud before more fat cats profit off of us and it costs us even more money.
Bath to London return for £65 my ass (off peak and all). I've paid less than that to get to fucking other countries in Europe.
Visualante2
Member
people in South East spend 16% of their salary commuting to London apparently. I'd like to see any country top that. Hard to feel sorry for them, judging the train a lot of them are bankers. My old man worked at Network Rail until he got laid off 6 months ago, they couldn't even give him a discount and they run the railway!
I don't disagree that the rail infrastructure and pricing in this country is poor compared to European counterparts, but nationalisation isn't the answer. British rail was awful by most accounts. It seems fashionable lately to just say "nationalise it!", when talking about key industries like rail, when it could easily turn out to be a complete disaster and worse that what we currently have.
The rail network needs more investment from everyone, the users, government, and operators. At the moment there is no incentive for the franchise operators to invest in the network. If the franchise agreements could be negotiated better from government to include shorter terms and a bigger contribution from operators to the infrastructure, then that would be better, but given how the government fucks up these agreements, that is unlikely to happen.
Passenger contributions have been rising and are set to continue. But it's reaching the point where it's more affordable to run a shitbox of a car than use an overcrowded train.
The South East sucks up way too much money and investment. I get the feeling that HS2 (even if it does actually happen) will be vastly over budget and out of date by the time it is finished.
I don't know how much government invests in the network, but I would assume that it's being cut by 10-20% like most departments. Rail is one of the few areas where increased spending is needed. Passenger numbers are increasing massively.
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Appropriately enough, I just got back from Ingeus, the guys running one of the WP schemes here in Liverpool, and me and my advisor had a chat about these figures. He tried to put a nicer gloss on it, using Sohois' argument at one point, and saying that overall it's "not that bad". Not wanting to prolong the meeting any longer than necessary, I just nodded and smiled.
Either way, now that I'm on Year Two of my WP, they've put me on what they call the "BreakThrough" programme (yeah, a programme within a programme - it's Bureaucracy Inception!), which basically means I only meet my advisor every two months instead of every other week, and the rest we do by phone and email. Sounds like cost-cutting to me. Hardly going to increase my employment prospects, I think, but as that bloke on today's 1 O'Clock News said, if you're unemployed longer than a year you're fucked anyway. Oh well.
Plus, Micheal Gove is a twit, and must never be allowed to wield real power.
Plus plus, Yay to Labour's plan to nationalize the trains, that's all that can save them right now. Our whole infrastructure needs digging up by the roots and rebuilding, imho.
Plus plus PLUS, @ Bo-Locks: I was alive during the days of British Rail, and believe me when I say that they were never this bad - never in a thousand years. You may just be too young to remember?
the fact that taking an electric mass transit vehicle which runs on two iron rails costs more than casing yourself in a ton of steel and igniting petrol to roll rubber tires down a concrete road is an affront to both economics and physics.
Jezbollah
Member
Where did you come in from to pay that?
I have to use trains to travel nationally - use TheTrainLine.com to get good deals.
(but yes, I agree with you re nationalisation. I have to think if privatisation had never happened then we would have a much better service generally that we have now)
Just to add to this, here was UKIP's Spokesman for Culture's comment:
The way he focused straight away on the image of 2 men kissing, rather than women kissing or any other aspect of a romantic relationship, shows how superficial and knee jerk his reasoning is. And people want him in government? I wouldn't leave him alone with children.
Sorry hello pardon what? You think the answer to an already extortionately priced network is for us to pump MORE money and investment in to it? How about fuck that till they lower their costs substantially and actually give me at least half decent value for money. The idea of pumping more money in to something that continually gives you less is just a terrible proposition.
Nationalisation is key because at least then profits can be reduced to lower fares for the end user and subsidised in place of better pricing and services. I'm not paying a dime more so a near monopoly can give more of its £2bn annual profits to private interests and shareholders whilst continually charging us more. Bring it back so we can tame this beast and return it to being beneficial to the wider public again. It's no wonder the European countries that have government run or nationalised rail networks have options that are far superior to ours whilst costing substantially less too.
Completely agree. It should have never been privatised. Can't really see how it could get much worse than it already is. Stupendous prices and lacklustre service. Number of times I've had to pay £50 or so on fares only to be greeted with intense delays and trains absolutely full to the brim where you're forced to stand in sardine can like circumstances is just silly.
Don't care if the nationalised version would have had the same woes, at least it wouldn't have cost the price of a cheap holiday each time for the embarrassment.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
I guess you guys aren't old enough to remember just how appalling the railways were before privatisation. Dreadful experience, clapped-out rolling stock, mucky, unpleasant stations, awful service.
Might have been better if they'd never been nationalised in the first place.
Put that down more to poor management. With £2bn in profits per annum currently and rising, there's really no excuse for the current situation. I'd rather a worse service plus cheap fares than a poor service with immensely excessive fares. It's like the NHS, I don't really care if it's not a paramount service because it's paid for by our taxes and otherwise quite cheap compared to other alternatives around the world and nationally. You want a better service with stupid pricing, go private. The option is there. But a subsidised less profit orientated nationalised alternative should always remain imo.
I said that contributions to the rail network need to be increased from passengers, government and operators, as well as fundamentally reforming the way franchises are handled. Whether you like it or not, passenger contributions to the rail network have been increasing in recent years with above inflation price rises, and that is set to continue. So then it is down to the treasury and the operators to increase their funding.
I agree with you when you say "near monopoly" since that is effectively what franchise operators are. They have fixed terms (normally on a long term basis like around 15 years in the case of the WCML) with no competition and contribute very little to the general infrastructure of the route which they operate. This is not good.
So the answer (imo) is to increase the competition in the network, which is difficult. Ways to do this would be to shorten the franchise lengths, and force the operators to contribute to the maintaining and upgrading of the infrastructure of the routes which they operate, in the form of a dividend, for example.
But the answer isn't renationalisation. I'm too young to remember, but British Rail was awful by most accounts, worse than what we have now. It seems to be in vogue to just say "Nationalise it!", when talking about key industries like rail. Nationalisation was disastrous in many other cases too, like telecoms, British Leyland etc, and car making in Britain is currently undergoing something of a renaissance with a large backing from private industry.
And you aren't allowed to simply brush off the deficiencies of nationalised industries that either failed or were crap, by saying they were "poorly managed", and then advocate renationalising the rail industry while ruling out reform of the current system. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Wow, Channel 4 News putting the boot in re: Welfare to Work. "Worse than doing nothing", they say their figures indicate. 2.3% LTUs getting employment for 6+ months through WP in 12 months - ouch.
They also opened with a mickey-take of the famous Thatcher-era poster that declared that "The Work Programme Isn't Working". Oooooh, get her.
@ Bo-Locks: If you aren't old enough to remember what BR was like, why do you continue to complain about it? Suspicious...
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Now it's Sir Cyril Smith fiddling kiddies in the 70's as well. CPS had a file and everything, but the top coppers of the time stymied any prosecution. Christ.
They also opened with a mickey-take of the famous Thatcher-era poster that declared that "The Work Programme Isn't Working". Oooooh, get her.
I am old enough to remember it, Phi, and while (some of) the rolling stock seems to have improved, it's come at the cost of unaffordable (and ever-increasing) ticket prices. It's the same with the utilities - yeah, the branding's improved, but prices have skyrocketed way beyond its worth. God help us if the NHS follows the same path as all the other national institutions the Tories flogged off for purely ideological reasons.
@ Bo-Locks: If you aren't old enough to remember what BR was like, why do you continue to complain about it? Suspicious...
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Now it's Sir Cyril Smith fiddling kiddies in the 70's as well. CPS had a file and everything, but the top coppers of the time stymied any prosecution. Christ.
Not all climate scientists believe in climate change so why should all political parties?
I'm confused, do you want the government to subsidise the train prices whilst improving the network?
A little delusional don't you think?
...really? After the recent storms on the American East Coast, which were enough to convince the formerly-skeptical Governor of New Jersey to change his mind on who should be his President, or more recently, the floods in our own little island home? Are you really going to try to argue this?
If you're not foolish enough to believe that, then why are UKIP?
Bo-Locks is actually right on this one. What will lead to much more reliable service and cheaper fares is not nationalisation (which will take many years, will drive up costs due to legal fees etc and might not work out anyway) is investment in electrification. The Liverpool-Manchester line was all set to be electrified this year yet for some reason the Tories decided it would be a better idea to turn Manchester Victoria into a mega railway nexus. It just beggars belief that a well supported program could be dropped suddenly like a rock the year before it's construction start date in favour of a ludicrously expensive program to redirect trains to the North part of Manchester CC. If I was running for PM, a programme for national electrification would be in my manifesto, not some blue skies BS like renationalisation.
Its peoples choice what they believe. And at no point did I ever mention not believing in climate change and iam not arguing anything purely stating the fact that if not all scientist in the area subscribe to climate change so its reasonable to believe that not all politicians will either.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
They are electrifying the Great Western route to Wales. It will allow faster and more frequent services with higher capacity carriages.
Are you sure that the Manchester to Liverpool line isn't being electrified? From what I have read they just delayed it to 2016 to install newer tech that would allow for more capacity and faster trains.
Has there never been storms and floods before?
A tiny fringe minority. The consensus for its existence is overwhelming. Also UKIP would halt all research into global warming. They're nutjobs.
This doesn't even make any sense. And I haven't personally complained about British Rail in this thread, I was making natural comparisons to the current model and talking about how it is remembered *in general*.
If someone advocates nationalising the rail industry then it is only logical to refer to the state of the industry when is was nationalised, no? And there is no evidence to suggest that it was better then than it is now.
I used Manchester Victoria a lot when I was commuting into central Manchester. It's arguably the worst station in the country (I think it was voted as such at what point). Truly awful place.
Electrification is still going ahead. I don't know why it was delayed, but it is definitely still going ahead. I find it baffling that the Manchester-Liverpool line was not electrified long before now. Two majore cities 30 miles apart, and the first commuter railway in the world. If that route was not prime for electrification, then I don't know what was.
One thing I touched upon was how the South East consumes investment that is long overdue in other parts of the country. Northern Rail for instance was scheduled to receive new trains (the current ones are horrendous), but instead Thameslink will now receive the new units and the old Thameslink units will be transferred to Northern Rail. That typifies the state of the rail industry. Not enough money and the South East sucks it all up.
So when the government make statements like "investing £9bn" in rail, they're not telling us that the majority of that money comes from increasing passenger fares and that the majority of the money will go to completing 2 projects that are already well underway (Thameslink and Crossrail).
The problem with the industry is that the franchise agreements are poorly negotiated, passengers are being forced to contribute more and more, government is unable/unwilling to splash the money around, and the South East sucks up most of the money. Nationalisation would not solve those problems.
CyclopsRock
Member
Is it Climate Change that they 'deny', or is it government programmes to counter it/central investment in green technology/'internalising externality' taxes on petrol etc that they oppose? Because there's obviously a huge difference between the two.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
From Wiki (yeah yeah): UKIP is sceptical of anthropogenic global warming, and suggests instead that the current warming is similar to that of previous geological cycles, and calls for further evidence provided by a Royal Commission before it will accept that it is manmade.
CyclopsRock
Member
Also, re the South East, transport infrastructure is not a linear thing. It really does get more complicated the more people there are in a smaller space. Serving 8 million people in Greater London is always going to cost more than double somewhere serving 4 million people, short of a great geographical reason. I think it's easy to blame the South East "sucking up" the money, but as has been pointed out, a lot of people (many of whom will earn decent money) spend a huge amount just getting to work. That's not an ideal situation at all, because for those that don't earn decent money, they're basically fucked. Money should go where it's needed. If it's needed more outside of the South East, so be it - but I don't think the fact that the SE currently gets a disproportionate amount of investment alone is enough reason to suggest it should be curtailed. Maybe it just needs it?
Yes, clearly delusional, whilst much of the rest of the developed world manages it just fine. Think your pro private stance has left you a tad jaded? If your intent is to make less profit (less or no shareholders or private interests to have to cater to), it's entirely possible to lower costs and use some of the (albeit lessened) revenue to still improve services.
CyclopsRock
Member
Possible, yes. But it's not often that industries that everyone thinks are working great get nationalised.
Ultimately, the problem with railway franchises is the lack of competition. It is competition that fuels the efficiency of the private sector - it's why mobile phone service in the UK is such an incredible success, because it's a platform upon which it's very easy to compete. Trains don't offer that, so I'm sympathetic to the idea of nationalisation. However, I think there are ways of incentivising success even without direct competition, namely through well thought out contracts - something the government is woefully poor at, I admit. The problem is that the rail companies have 10 years or more to basically rape the railway all they want, line their pockets and the users have little recourse in the form of alternatives *. If the government can arrange contracts such that they are run privately but have a strict set of realistic goals to attain, with punishing fines if they fail, I think you could gain some off the efficiency of the private sector without the burden on the taxpayer, and the usual dismal failure of corporations unconcerned with efficiency.
* As has been mentioned, it's not strictly true to say that railways have no competition - there are no many journeys that can only be conducted by train. The more expensive and less enjoyable train journeys become, the less relatively expensive and more enjoyable the alternatives become. Even if cars remain more expensive, they also offer benefits (ie no strict schedule, often better speed, get from door to door etc) which may offer better value for money even if they aren't cheaper. And the gulf between these different methods of transport is rarely so huge that the train companies could, even if they weren't restricted by the government to 3% on top of inflation, not really increase their prices to insano levels. This isn't like the water supply, where you either pay it or you get dysentry. There are alternatives, and if the trains keep getting as bad as a lot of people seem to think they are, train passenger numbers will go down. As it stands, they're going up, and fast.
Visualante2
Member
Lots of other countries do well by nationalisation. We need to be less fucking insular about British Rail and look to the Japanese and the Danish more.
CyclopsRock
Member
I don't think you can necessarily expect to be able to just pick up policies from others countries and dump them into ours. There are some huge differences between all countries, and we have the somewhat unfortunate history of being the first to do a lot of things. The reason why the London Underground cannot - except for very occasional exceptions - run 24 hours a day (unlike, say, the NY Metro) is because it was built at a time when it never really occured to anyone that that might be a useful thing, and the cost of building a second set of track the entire length of the network so as to facilitate work on the primary track at night would have been prohibitively expensive due to the crude albeit advanced for the time tunnel boring methods. Likewise, much of our rail infrastructure is horribly old, but you can't just relay it all whilst so many people rely on it. You'd end up having to run parallel tracks which would be very expensive, mess up a lot of private land and countryside, fuck up villages etc etc.
Then you have countries like, as you mentioned, Denmark and Japan, where their rail systems are excellent but their geography and weather makes long-distance car journeys harder than in the UK. You have counties like Germany and France who have great rail systems but they have roughly the same population spread over double the distance - the further the disntace, the greater the advantages of rail.
This isn't to say we can't or shouldn't learn a lot from other systems that work much better than our own does, plainly. I think we should just be careful not to try and transplant systems from one country to another and expect it to work just as well.
Visualante2
Member
People want to use the railway (as indicated by rising numbers of people commuting into cities for work), and find it to be incredibly poor value for money. I hate to simplify things but we should be encouraging people to use public transport irrespective of the points you make or the challenges that the railway faces.
I think you don't give the planners of yesteryears credit. They saw trends and thought ahead as best they could. Things like the green bands are examples of that. The thing that really plagues our network is not that it's too old it's that short term politics and private industry want to milk it dry.
I think you don't give the planners of yesteryears credit. They saw trends and thought ahead as best they could. Things like the green bands are examples of that. The thing that really plagues our network is not that it's too old it's that short term politics and private industry want to milk it dry.
IDS thinks it's going swimmingly of course. They designed it so it would be as easy as possible to prove it is a success, and thus usher in the privatisation of the Job Centre and they can't even manage that.Mirror said:
CyclopsRock
Member
You have to appreciate that this rather sounds like "We should pump money into trains, whatever the cost". Ignoring the practicalities of a situation is a good way, I believe, to end up with white elephants.
Visualante2
Member
We're putting the money in however you look at it. Most of the money the government gets from franchising the railway out is given back to franchisees through bailouts. And then the rail users are footing the bill for "investment" year upon year at a higher rate than inflation when their wages are going backwards. Privatise the profit and socialise the risk...
CyclopsRock
Member
Yeah, they do, they socialise it so that the people that don't use them pay for those that do to get a better service. I don't think it's really easy to justify that as being fairer, even if it is more utilitarian. But presumably you want more funding than what's going in right now - ie, the cost of receipts, if the franchise payment contras the bailouts they get. The whole point, I believe, is that you think the current level of investment is insufficient.
My point above was that your above justification more or less encourages spending more irrespective of the practicalities, not because of them. With an outlook like this, what is your metric for success? Spend more until... ?