The government is letting the train operating companies take the hit for delays and cancellations which were rife on the network over the last two days. They have to handle the passengers, try to find alternatives for them, and pay them compensation.
This was yet another case when the blame rests elsewhere. Their trains were working, their crews had turned up. The trains were held up by all signal lights going to red owing to signal failure. Signals and the power for them are firmly under the control of long nationalised Network Rail.
Network Rail can say the immediate cause was a ninety second power cut by the electricity supplier. They are meant to be able to handle that with stand by emergency power. That apparently failed.
I heard a nationalised rail apologist on the radio blame inadequate funding and staffing of Network Rail for the chaos. Network Rail was set up under a previous Labour government and has enjoyed two years of more generous Labour settlements under this government. Surely something as crucial as back up power for signals, central to safe running, should have been an affordable priority?
The nationalised railway needs to get more used to power cuts.With more renewables on the grid there will be more supply interruptions. Spain was a warning where general power cuts closed down the trains and took out the traffic lights, causing road chaos as well. Travellers do not want to spend hours in a stopped train, which could be even worse in a tunnel.If nationalisation is so wonderful why can’t it run a signalling system to keep the trains running?
August 8, 2026
Network Rail is a case in point and to my mind as a long term rail observer has become too comfortable as a non customer facing entity merely dictating to the train operating companies – which won’t change under toc state control.
Another thing, which most people will not know, is that much of the running control of the affected area had been centralised under something called the Manchester ROC (Rail Operations Centre). These ROC’s are taking over nationwide and put simply, too many eggs are being placed in one basket. This may, or may not have had something to do with the issue.
August 8, 2026
After my apprenticeship I spent my whole career either at sea or in the power industry. I both cases we had rigorous testing, both actual and simulation of critical equipment.
It is disgraceful that the standby generators didn’t kick in. The managers should be compelled to produce their testing protocols. If these don’t pass muster they should be sacked.
August 8, 2026
Normally UPS systems are routinely checked and ought to be part of Risk Assessments. Don’t Utilities / Government Depts etc maintain Risk Assessments and carry out the requirements?
The national shambles and international mockery continues unabated.
Will we ever reach classification as Third World or remain ridiculed?
August 8, 2026
You can actually have two UPS systems in series to play it more safely. So if the power fails to the first one it continues power to the second one from it’s batteries or generator and if the first one fails to feed power to the second one then the second one’s batteries cut in.
Belt and braces.
August 8, 2026
true…but you only do that if it really matters. Why would a control centre for a region of trains be deemed important? (sarc).
August 8, 2026
In the 1960s CDC guaranteed their computer to be 100% available AT ALL TIMES.
They did this by linking two, at each event one computer said to the other ‘did you get that’ and the second confirmed. If there was an event (a piece of data or an operation) with no question, the second computer reported the first as having gone down. A question and no answer – the first reported the second as being down.
Engineers on hand 24/7.
Why has Britain regressed to. The point where nobody even tries to keep the trains running? Because they get the money either way?
How about penalty clauses?
August 8, 2026
@Andrew Jones – The UK Parliament has a bigger is better mentality. Big means Parliament/Government can be seen to be in control, in command, that is Parliaments reflected glory.
As intimated by @SK yesterday this Parliament is in control and has responsibility for 603 Quangos spending ~£391 billion of our money yet ask who’s in charge and suddenly there is a ‘shrug of the shoulders’. Simply jobs for failed Politicos that can’t get real work elsewhere that seemingly get rewarded with great pay & perks because they have friend that equally denies responsibility and accountability
August 8, 2026
Agree
August 8, 2026
Whether nationalised or privatised they can get away with it. There should be penalties for failure starting at the top. Termination of employment or reduction in pay if the service fails to meet an acceptable, measurable level of service.
Governments should push this through. Instead the railways are allowed to get away with saying sorry all time and offering various excuses.
August 8, 2026
Surely these companies involved are managed by KPIs (key performance indicators).?
A Board or Senior Executives, even individuals, ought to be measured and paid according to standards met and penalised by failures.
August 8, 2026
MT,
I don’t know what happens in their annual appraisals but failure seems to be simply accepted. Look at all the NHS heads and Council chiefs who fail and just move on to similar roles elsewhere.
I also posted about the dreadful performance of the police force but that seems to have been deleted for some reason. Perhaps I am alone in thinking that real crime should be properly tackled and a Thought Police is both unnecessary and unacceptable.
August 8, 2026
the Thought Police are well staffed and gradually reaching life as under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet regime heavily promoted mass denunciation.
August 8, 2026
@Peter – they are all protected. Start making people responsible and it would trickle down to Parliament with its member having to own their own job and taking control and the responsibility that goes with it. We are infested with a ‘sit on hands’ take the money culture
August 8, 2026
IB,
Probably. Many MPs are from a soft background anyway. Few now did manual work or emerged from the school of hard knocks.
August 8, 2026
If those on the top were responsible for their mistakes, no one would be prepared to do the necessary jobs.
Imagine if whoever downgraded the risk for Simon Levy could be sued for incompetence. If public officials felt they were in legal hazard for their screw ups, that might lead to the public being safe and just wouldn’t do.
August 8, 2026
DA,
Cressida would not have liked that.
August 8, 2026
I worked for 44 years in Air Traffic Control. Everything was traceable, with written log books, recordings of telephone conversations, radar returns, watch lists… kept for a minimum of three months, daily. We were responsible, no questions, no excuses, it worked. Why is that not applicable for the railways, police, and even politicians, who seem to be out of contact with the real world and get away scot-free with ‘mistakes’.
August 8, 2026
Good morning My Lord,
It did seem odd to me that the state has pushed for more and more electrification. We know that renewables are unreliable if the wind doesn’t blow nor the sun shines. We’ve seen mile upon mile of an overhead caternary system installed around Tyford station. It seems folly to me for a whole host of reasons.
We see a push for electric cars, electric heating whilst, all the time, expanding unreliable sources of renewable energy.
I would have thought, if a fully electrified railway was desired, a SMR would have been a sensible choice.
August 8, 2026
The push for electrification makes little sense with current engineering vast grid investment will be needed (a grid circa 180 times more expensive) and if people all switch to heat pumps you will get a vast extra winter demand for electricity on cost days which will nearly all have to come from Imports, Gas or Bio. This grid and extra winter generation then wasted for the rest of the year.
Sadiq Khan interview in the Telegraph: My hard work as mayor will bring me Brownie points in heaven
I’m living proof of the London promise, Khan tells the Telegraph, as he rebukes Tory rhetoric on Islam and defends his record on crime
Now Lord Kahn (with his Trump in a nappy blimps) is surely an example of everything that is wrong, pathetic, misguided and even evil about most politics in the UK. An illustration that Burnham’s more power to local Mayors and politicians will be a total disaster. His record on crime is truly appalling.
August 8, 2026
LL : “The push for electrification makes little sense with current engineering vast grid investment will be needed (a grid circa 180 times more expensive) and if people all switch to heat pumps you will get a vast extra winter demand for electricity on cost days which will nearly all have to come from Imports, Gas or Bio. This grid and extra winter generation then wasted for the rest of the year.”
Correct. I have always thought that providing “green” gas (biogas/biomethane) and using the existing gas network and devices (boilers/hobs etc) was always the cheaper alternative and the biogas can be slowly increased to provide a smooth transition to being “green”. But of course, since CO2 does not control the planet’s temperature, the reason for Net Zero was never about reducing CO2 emissions but forcing through electrification which enables the total control of heating and transport through smart meters. And to impoverish through energy rationing as socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor.
August 8, 2026
Cold days (not cost days) though providing the extra power for those few very cold days will indeed need vast capital expenditure on grid, generating capacity and back up capacity. All this will be wasted for most of the rest of the year.
August 8, 2026
LL :
They know this and intend to “solve” it through rationing as the majority of current local grids can only handle 1-2 KW continuously per household. Hence the urgent need for smart meters. See Stephen Broderick’s written evidence EVD0062 to the BEIS Select Committee in 2018. Upgrading the local grids to cope will cost hundreds of £billions and be enormously disruptive.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/82722/pdf/
August 10, 2026
+1
August 8, 2026
Boris today in the Mail gets something right.
“The Cambridge academics who cynically used and abused Jason Arday for their own (misguided) selfish ends are the real racists here…”
Alas it was not while he was PM when he got the Covid net harm “vaccines” and lockdowns, the economy, net zero, HS2, criminal justice, borrowing levels, policing, the botched Brexit, red tape and almost everything else completely wrong.
Two brain Willetts on Any Question today. I would not want students to think that going to university and having a student loan would later restrict them from getting a mortgage.
Why not Mr Two Braims Willetts? As that is clearly the true position? And at least 75% of the degree are worth virtually nothing – Cambridge Degrees under Prof. Arday for example in Education or Sociology and do not think diversity appointments at Cambridge are restricted only to such iffy subjects.
August 8, 2026
Normally getting a mortgage required having a paid job. First things first!
August 8, 2026
Hear, hear.
August 8, 2026
Or large nuclear which could be rather better if they just got all the endless legal and political obstructions out of the way.
A catenary is the curve assumed by a flexible, uniform chain or cable hanging freely under its own weight from two fixed endpoints. Derived from the Latin word catēna (chain), it is often mistaken for a parabola, but it is mathematically described by the hyperbolic cosine function.
Rather more vulnerable to falling branches, vandalism, pick up issues and power cuts. Also to brave cable thieves in some places.
August 8, 2026
@Cliff.. – similar situation came up in recent days, a UK start-up in Ai Volta this week valued at £7.5 billion wanted to stay in the UK, but as we know success in the UK is frowned upon. Ai needs lots of power even if it was available, the UK Parliament has made it 4 times more costly than the UK’s World Competitors. So Volta for its ‘databank’ is having to go elsewhere this time it is looking like Norway
The UK Parliament just ‘hates’ enterprise, it seeks isolation from the World not participation
August 8, 2026
Few people realise that Railtrack is a Government run Organisation, so it is easy for them to blame the train operators as they are the ones who are customer facing.
Given the cost of electricity in the UK, why are the government still pushing for electrification everything.
Ah Yes, Net Zero !
August 8, 2026
Clearly you need back up power supplies that cut in faultlessly and you also need a back up signalling systems lest it is the signalling system that fails and surge protection so that a surge does not take the systems out.
Power cuts will certainly increase hugely as we follow the rip off unreliable renewables religion. They kill people.
On Monday, 28 April 2025, a major power blackout occurred across the Iberian Peninsula affecting mainland Portugal and peninsular Spain, where electric power was interrupted for about ten hours in most of the Peninsula and longer in some areas. The power cut caused severe difficulties in telecommunications, transportation systems, and essential sectors such as emergency services. At least seven people in Spain and one in Portugal probably died due to outage-related circumstances like candle fires or generator exhaust fumes. The total disconnected load was 31 GW.
August 8, 2026
Ll. Yes that surprises me there seemed to be an absence of UPS on the system. If it required high leads a couple if MG sets and a battery would be ample. I’m glad these cretins didn’t design the nuclear subs I served in.
August 8, 2026
When a rail signalling system fails the lights all go to red for obvious reasons so the system essentially comes to a standstill.
When I lived in London occasionally the power on all the road traffic light would fail and the lights all died. Once the drivers had caught on the lights were down the traffic then flowed far better than usual. This as most of the traffic lights had been installed to restrict the car flows. It is even worse now with all the bus, bike lanes, islands, LTNs, diversity bollards and the likes. They call this “investment” in the roads!
August 8, 2026
It all worked better until the Police turned up to ‘control’ traffic.
August 8, 2026
These things happen in the best run organisations. Temporary collapse of banking or telecoms or air traffic control is not unusual. Uninterruptible Power Supplies are very good but tiny system weaknesses mean they sometimes don’t start. You think all is good – you only find the defect when the lights go out. All computers run one microsecond from disaster.
If you want to apportion blame start with Parliament. Parliament sets up the regulators and defines their duties. From experience we all know Parliament’s instructions are always ‘Do very little, don’t cost any money and don’t shoulder any blame’.
So Milord, if you want to know where blame lies look around you and in the mirror.
August 8, 2026
I suspect the UPS systems aren’t checked regularly. Everyone hopes they will work when needed. If there is any risk they might not work, in a hospital no one is ever prepared to put them to the test.
August 8, 2026
they should be disconnected and tested in a ‘test’ environment.
August 8, 2026
I think you will find that ‘Milord’ in the mirror is a font of solutions and indeed predicts disasters and how best to avoid them.
Is it you voting for any numpty the party machine says is sufficiently compromised to be completely controlled? Or are you a democrat who wants the British People to say who sits in Parliament?
August 8, 2026
The social repercussions of Public Sector failure are growing. Our roads and road management are deteriorating to the point of collapse. Our rail system is now a lottery. You buy a ticket and have every chance of spending time on a bus because of some issue on the line, or lack of workers turning up to operate the system.
The organisations put in place at huge public cost to oversea the utilities sold forty years ago have failed. Utilities particularly water are failing to maintain standards or even basic supply.
This catalogue of failure will carry on unless the Public Sector do what must be done and fire the useless individuals and managers responsible, A cull of the incompetent is needed without the usual comfy pension pay out most Public Sector failures expect to receive as a right.
The other aspect of Public Sector employment that needs to be examined is quality of candidates engaged in running our services along with their perceived duties.
A little more time doing the work and little less time spent on the Woke would be a start of the change needed.
August 8, 2026
Even James O’Brien admitted on his LBC radio show that he feels “like a mug” for publicly defending former Cambridge professor Jason Arday against accusations of plagiarism and fabricated credentials.
Hardly the first time James! You seem wrong headed on almost every single issue you ever discuss – yet you wrote a book “How To Be Right: … in a world gone wrong”
by James O’Brien (Author)
O’Brien was educated at the independent school Ampleforth College from which he was expelled for smoking cannabis. He later studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics (I assume this is even worse than the Oxford version of PPE.
August 8, 2026
LL
Do you keep a list of all PPE graduates throughout the land and perhaps abroad?
August 8, 2026
No, but a good list of them is on wiki – rather depressing reading. I suspect the problem is not the degree itself but the types of people drawn to such a degree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Oxford_people_with_PPE_degrees
Most are dire but I have found only about 10 relatively sensible ones so far including Julia Harley Brewer, Nigel Lawson, Tony Abbott, George Gardener, Anne Widecombe (she read classics first), Truss perhaps (now she has grown up a little since he LibDim days.)…
August 8, 2026
curious ‘bedtime’ reading !
August 8, 2026
Nobody is to blame this is the UK.
August 8, 2026
And if anyone is ever to blame it will invariably be people in the private sector. So for example at Grenfell it will not be the property owners who idiotically decided to clad the building (at vast expense) in unsuitable cladding and insulation to save virtually nothing on bills, nor the educated into stupidity senior fire officers who order people back to their deaths for hours after this was insane, nor the fire regulations nor the fire regulators and inspectors, not the firemen or women who failed to put the initial fire fully out… no it will be the suppliers of the cladding product (that the property owners selected and freely chose to use).
August 8, 2026
Would the truth ever come out? Nowadays the truth because of the ‘blame game’ is hard to come by. For all we know it could have been rationing at NESO as the recent whistle-blower intimated ‘there ain’t enough power to go around’. Our energy supplies are contingent on the political whims of the French Government, did Macron through a wobbly because he wasn’t getting his way?.
What isn’t acceptable that for major infrastructure projects there is no ‘back-up’. Look at the collapse of energy supplies at Heathrow this time last year.
These facilities are on the NESO grid, the point of having a grid is that redundancy is built in.
But then again what would the inexperienced, ineffectual numpties that inhabit the UK Parliament know about anything as long as they are personally squeaky clean is we are on election watch why should they care or try to comprehend
August 8, 2026
Whether rail, water or power, the problem in this country seems to be that we’ve gone down the path of having quasi monopolies and setting up regulators who don’t actually regulate. The principle was fine, and there are a group of people who know that this could work with the right degree of motivation and organisation behind it (rather like Brexit). At the same time, the establishment ethos is to be disorganised and really not to push competition rather than allowing monopolies just to act as monopolies, whether state run or otherwise. People getting a wage for running these things whether they work or not don’t really care.
August 8, 2026
I think your line about the train operating companies being expected to pay compensation is misleading.
The TOCs will pay the customers who claim but will claim more themselves from Network Rail. As the claims process for customers is so convoluted it is likely that not all will claim and the TOCs will make money out of this debacle
Privatised or Nationalised the service won’t improve until passengers are adequately compensated for poor service such that TOCs and Network Rail lose substantial money when passengers suffer.
Reply The fact that the train companies pay the compensation disguises from many the fact that it was nationalised Network Rail that caused the problems.
August 8, 2026
Indeed hardly worth the effort of claiming but when I have then (on three occasions) I was never paid out even though the claims were quite correct and valid. They said it did not match their records!
I have now finally managed to link my Oyster card to my over 60 railcard which saves me 1/3 of the cost on tubes and trains in the Oyster region – most people do not seem to even know you can do this.
Might (perhaps) be easier to claim it back with the full Oyster Card records.
August 8, 2026
The only option that would bring the cost of failures back home to roost would be to pay the claimants from the pension funds of the operating agency that has failed.
While the tax payers are picking up the cost of incompetence, the failure merchants will simply sail on doing as little as possible and look forward to their fat pensions.
We need to make them feel the price of their failures.
August 8, 2026
It does but my point about adequate and punitive co sensation improving the service still stands.
August 8, 2026
@Reply – who pays? The operator, the management, the taxpayer?
August 8, 2026
Mr Burnham must be very pleased at the chaos: an early success for his determination to get us back to the 1970s!
August 8, 2026
Well, I’d say it was those that controlled the purse strings, investment and management – ultimately it will be down to our failing government.
The same failing government that simply acquires more infrastructure under state management then cannot pay for the upkeep, never mind growth or improvements. The same socialists stuck in the past fighting old battles they still cannot win – that’s why they are so unwilling to postulate sensibly for the future. They can’t even keep today in order.
Of course minister’s heads should roll for this – everyone of them that has allowed our vital infrastructure to decay , and when they use net-0 as the excuse for their treachery and failures, when they repeat the same old mantra we’ve been hearing for more than 50 years we should all wake up and know that successive governments have deliberately failed the people of this country because of nothing less than ideology and deceit.
August 8, 2026
@Steve Bullion – it is strange all those elements that require money to be taken from the Taxpayer by Law, by Parliament suddenly has no on accountable or responsibility. How many times do the rest of us spend our hard earned money for a product or service for when it doesn’t materialise we do and say nothing? Do we just shrug our shoulders? That’s the UK Parliament’s attitude, we may empower and pay them to act on our behalf but do the care about the ‘minions’ those whose money it belonged too.
As @SK intimated yesterday this Parliament is in control and has responsibility for spending £391 billion of our money yet not one of them will take responsibility for outcome or return.
August 8, 2026
This government nor the last, could ever blame renewable energy or the policy of net-zero …that would bring down the pack of cards
August 8, 2026
It appears that the cause was a 90 second power cut. Why was there no backup or why did it fail? Why, given the enormous importance of a continuous power supply, was there not a second backup? Will no-one be called to account and sacked? If not, I would not be surprised if the power cut was not in fact a Nudge Unit exercise to begin to get the public used to chaotically intermittent renewable electricity.
August 8, 2026
Why did it take 24hrs to reset a 90 second power cut ….something doesn’t end up
August 8, 2026
four billion quid per year the British state pays in student loans to non UK students, more than half of which never gets paid back.
but dont worry after years of allowing uncontrolled immigration the Conservatives are going to stop social housing going to non Brits, a thoroughly well worked out policy.
what a shambles.
August 8, 2026
+1
August 8, 2026
Spain was a real warning with officially 11 dead.
August 8, 2026
Correct
August 8, 2026
Spain is a real warning on more than one issue- or should I call it Andelucia?
August 9, 2026
The nationalised Network Rail control centre clearly failed to ensure its backup generation and batteries were effective and fully operational – clearly their responsibility, and at a cost that far exceeds the cost of a properly working, maintained and tested system. Their governance ad management and the ORR have questions to answer.
However, we should also be asking SPENW why there was a blackout covering the Ardwick and Harpurhey areas of Manchester which gave rise to the problems. Perhaps it originated at a National Grid substation, but it seems most likely that there was a failure at their Droylsden 132kV substation feeding those areas. What failed? Is equipment being replaced? Was it overdue? What is the risk of a repeat meanwhile? See the Heathrow blackout.
Had the lights gone out during a match at the Etihad stadium nearby you can be sure more questions would be asked.