Comments on: The statement on nationalised trains is running 12 hours late

By: Lola

Lola — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:37:11 +0000

If the NE SPV goes bust you do not need to nationalise it all. More likely it would be placed in adminsitration and the contract offered to other potential franchisees on current market terms. Someone would buy it, if the price and terms were commercial.

By: Bazman

Bazman — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:58:29 +0000

This is the perfect chance to have a real private railway run entirely for profit and without any government intervention or subsidies. Highest bidder wins and owns lock stock and barrel. We would then get the railway system everyone wants and the country deserves. After this successful experiment the same could be applied to energy and the roads. Let the markets decide employing and incetivising the finest business brains. Here’s the plan:

1. Sell off all assets. Ballast, scrap metal, wood, equipment. etc.

2. Sell all land.

3. Plunder all profitable routes. Millionaires at the front in private carriages. Peasants at the back in stainless steel carriages with a trough in the middle. The carriages in the middle will pay the going rate which is whatever the market will bear.
These companies have a railway to run and do not need any interference from the government in any way. Safety can be compromised as most people will stick their neck out to save a few bob.

Any objection to this plan is just intellectual clap-trap or no market actually exists. Which is closer to the truth. Dogma.

By: alan jutson

alan jutson — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:41:43 +0000

Lola

The problem with your suggestion is that its too simple, and the Government would not get the money to spend on its chosen subject.

Your proposal would mean more money for maintanace, so tracks would be better, so trains could ruin on time, and the train companies could charge lower fares as their overheads (lower rent/franchise fee) would be less.

Its a no brainer really, Gordo wants his cash, and thats an end to it.

Bit like Green Taxes, what is it spent on !!!!!!

Agree the way privaisation was completed was far too complicated to work effectively.

By: Stuart Fairney

Stuart Fairney — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:22:37 +0000

Yep, if Adonis is so sure he is going to make a profit he should have no problems putting up his personal assets to cover the ‘unlikely’ losses. He won’t of course, he will put up ours instead.

~Very bad.

By: Lola

Lola — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:44:24 +0000

Quite why the government charges a franchise fee defeats me. It’s just another stealth tax. How much better to let the operating companies rent the track at a higher rate from Network Rail. At lest the cash would go straight back into engineering. Better yet properly privatise the Railway and sell off trackwork and trains to one company. If you really must set them some pulic interest requirements and if these are uneconomic pay them to run the services.

Private capital built the network. What’s so impossible about returning the erstwhile private infrastructure to private capital?

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:19:05 +0000

Hold on, isn’t this what Bercow was going to change and let the House know first??

By: Matthew Reynolds

Matthew Reynolds — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:41:48 +0000

Does David Cameron still admire Lord Adonis after this fiasco ? The Conservative Leader has been full of praise for the newly appointed Transport Secretary after all. Seeing another Labour transport/nationalisation disaster must have shaken Cameron’s faith in his favourite former SDP member now running what some charitably call Brown’s transportation policy.

Do we really want Lord Adonis in a Cameron government when he has served up the kind of left-wing nonsense that appeals to the Prescotts of this world while affronting the intelligence of anyone who understands transport economics ?

If this is a brilliant Cabinet Minister then how do you define a dud one ?

By: alan jutson

alan jutson — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:54:40 +0000

The Essex Boys

You raise an excellent point.

What happens to all of the workers, do they transfer to the Public payroll, only then to be transfered again at a later date to another franchise.

If so who pays their wages.

Seems to me that National Express paid too much for the franchise in the first place, have just found this out and having lost 20 millionrather rapid are looking for out.

Assume not any significant penalty clauses, otherwise they may think twice.

Sadly from passengers comments (radio and TV) the service had improved out of all proportion since national Expess took over the Service.

Never was a great fan of privatising the railways with so many different train operators, and track management sytem operators.

If National Express was loosing 20 million in a few months running a good service, how can nationalisation for a few months (with all of the set up costs) produce a profit ?

By: Brian E.

Brian E. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:09:09 +0000

The whole affair sounds very much like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face!
So the government will run the railway and they “expect to make a profit”. So would National Express, but they also had to pay the franchise fee. Unless the government is so confident that they can make a profit which is at least equal to the franchise fee, they should have considered renegotiating the contract as a reduced fee is better than none at all. Once again it seems that the taxpayers will loose out, not so much because of National Express defaulting, but because the government has no idea of negotiating in a commercial environment.
What I also found annoying was the biassed BBC attitude in favour of the government in their news bulletins. National Express was clearly at fault for wanting to make a profit and not go bankrupt, which I thought was just typical of an organisation run in a non-commercial manner using tax-payers’ money.

By: nick

nick — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:56:37 +0000

Given that they signed a bad contract originally, they should have spent more time examining all the options to mitigate their losses

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If they signed a crap contract, they are going to have their arses sued for breaking it by nationalisation

Nick