Should the railways be nationalised?

[Vocal Minority]

craigjm said:

Smollet said:

Before nationalisation were the rail companies running at a profit?

Yes but getting less and less because, of course, it was a different world and road haulage was only just getting going etc. Most of the profit was made on freight not passengers.

And the war left the infrastructure and the big four on their knees. It felt like nationalisation or complete collapse

[craigjm]

Vocal Minority said:

And the war left the infrastructure and the big four on their knees. It felt like nationalisation or complete collapse

Indeed. It is just a shame we didn't invest and move away from steam at that point like continental Europe did

[Stedman]

Blaming rail companies -that run in the SE- for overcrowding is a bit unfair (most of the time ). They're running at over capacity already! Last year saw record number of journeys made. The record stood back from the 20's IIRC which is when the rail network was 3 times the size. Nuts.

[Toaster]

craigjm said:

Smollet said:

Before nationalisation were the rail companies running at a profit?

Yes but getting less and less because, of course, it was a different world and road haulage was only just getting going etc. Most of the profit was made on freight not passengers.

These companies still are but unlike a nationalised rail service these are owned and managed by foreign companies owned by their governments!!, we can't seem to manage our own industries most of which have been sold off to overseas organisation.

9 Abellio Greater Anglia - £3.64m profit In 2012,
Abellio - the Dutch state rail operator’s international arm - made £3.64m on the Greater Anglia line. This flows back to the Netherlands

8 London Overground - £7.54m profit
London’s Overground network is run as a joint venture between the German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn and private company MTR. In 2012, it made £7.54m profit, which is shared between the two.

7 Merseyrail - £10.77m profit
This is a joint Serco-Abellio partnership. While Serco is a private company, Abellio is the Netherland’s state rail operator’s international arm. The Dutch state takes a share of profits - which totaled £10.77m in 2012.

6 Arriva CrossCountry - £12.9m profit
Arriva is the German state rail company’s international subsidiary. It wholly owns the CrossCountry franchise and made £12.9m profit in 2012.

5 Southern - £13.4m profit
Southern rail is a Kelios joint venture. Kelios is the French state’s international rail subsidiary and it owns 35% of the franchise. This is equivalent to a £5.68m share of the £13.4m 2012 profit.

4 Arriva Trains Wales - £13.6m profit
This line is run by Arriva - the international arm of Deutsche Bahn, the German train operator wholly owned by the German Federal government. Arriva Trains Wales made £13.6m profit in 2012.

3 Southeastern - £16m profit
The Southeastern line is 35% owned by Kelios, the French state rail operator’s international subsidiary. In 2012, the line’s £16m profit saw Kelios’ share at £5.6m - flowing straight to France.

2 Northern Rail - £33m profit
Northern is one of several Serco-Abellio joint ventures. While Serco is a private business, Abellio is wholly owned by Nederlandse Spoorwegan - the Dutch state’s railway operator. With a £33,033m profit in 2012, money flows from Northern coffers to fund Dutch public transport.

1 First TransPennine Express - £50m profit
While First Group is listed on the London Stock Exchange, it’s TransPennine partner Kelios is majority owned by the French state railway operator. Kelios takes around 45% of the profits, or £22.55m in 2012


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/18/foreign...

[KTF]

Convenient that they left off SWT which is run by Stagecoach Group.

[Europa1]

KTF said:

Convenient that they left off SWT which is run by Stagecoach Group.

And Virgin.

[craigjm]

Does it matter where the money goes as long as the service is clean, reliable, fast and convenient? they will be employing British workers at the end of the day not like they will be shipping in 1000s of dutch etc

[Esseesse]

craigjm said:

Does it matter where the money goes as long as the service is clean, reliable, fast and convenient? they will be employing British workers at the end of the day not like they will be shipping in 1000s of dutch etc

Does it contribute to making our balance of payments worse? I think it does...

[Derek Smith]

craigjm said:

Vocal Minority said:

And the war left the infrastructure and the big four on their knees. It felt like nationalisation or complete collapse

Indeed. It is just a shame we didn't invest and move away from steam at that point like continental Europe did

To be fair, we were broke after the war, really broke, not like now. There was an awful lot of investment required to ensure we could export out way out of our lack of money.

The options were electrification of the lines, and that would have been tremendously expensive, or diesel, the import of which was limited. There was petrol rationing up until 1950 and supply was hardly stable. Yet our country was built on coal.

If you take all the factors into consideration, steam was still the only option. We should not have invested so heavily in steam locomotives, although they were the best engines we ever built, but at the time it looked the most economical.

[craigjm]

Esseesse said:

Does it contribute to making our balance of payments worse? I think it does...

Only if we don't provide anything of equal value to someone else. Im not against foreign ownership as long as the service is great and at the moment it isnt

[Esseesse]

craigjm said:

Esseesse said:

Does it contribute to making our balance of payments worse? I think it does...

Only if we don't provide anything of equal value to someone else. Im not against foreign ownership as long as the service is great and at the moment it isnt

If it does it does regardless of what we do or don't provide.

[Toaster]

craigjm said:

Esseesse said:

Does it contribute to making our balance of payments worse? I think it does...

Only if we don't provide anything of equal value to someone else. Im not against foreign ownership as long as the service is great and at the moment it isnt

Craig not sure if you are right there, most of our industries are now owned by Foreign companies just look at Essex and Northumbrian water http://www.ckh.com.hk/en/about/chairman.php its owned by the Chinese just like MG http://blog.caranddriver.com/inside-the-new-chines... its not just the service industries its also high tech industries such as ARM Holdings being sold to SoftBank

The illusion is capitalism is the greatest thing yet GB Inc management seem incapable of being dominant in this market place and all the countries silver has been up for sale.

[craigjm]

Esseesse said:

craigjm said:

Esseesse said:

Does it contribute to making our balance of payments worse? I think it does...

Only if we don't provide anything of equal value to someone else. Im not against foreign ownership as long as the service is great and at the moment it isnt

If it does it does regardless of what we do or don't provide.

It would only make our balance of payments worse if we were exporting say £100m in profits from the railways to Holland and bringing nothing back. If we bring in £100m of trade from somewhere else because we have sold a service or technology to Germany say then the balance of payments is zero no? (A simplistic example but you get my drift)

[rs1952]

Esseesse said:

craigjm said:

Esseesse said:

Does it contribute to making our balance of payments worse? I think it does...

Only if we don't provide anything of equal value to someone else. Im not against foreign ownership as long as the service is great and at the moment it isnt

If it does it does regardless of what we do or don't provide.

It was not stated whether the figures produced by Huffington Post were gross or net profit. If gross then there is tax going to the Exchequer out of the headline figure. If it is gross then the figure will also include shareholder dividends.

But all this is a bit of a non-argument anyway. Many companies operate internationally and nobody generally bats an eyelid. We buy oil from the middle east, computers from the USA, tomatoes from Israel, examples ad infinitum. But somehow, because railways are involved, international trade suddenly becomes a bad thing.

Don't forget also that the franchises are tendered. Wholly British-owned companies are fully entitled to bid for them. If they can't put a convincing bid together then its a bit rich to try to blame the Dutch and the Germans.

[Welshbeef]

Is it because JC wants to give all the rail staff a payrise with the profits instead? Is that the grand plan and assume higher productivity?



Labour did similar with the NHS massive pay rises then guess what unaffordable NHS / all the should have gone into a split for payrise and then investment in kit medicines




How about the PFIs he wants to renationalise them - fine but they will have to buy those companies out of crippling contracts. We're talking vast billions to do so.

[hidetheelephants]

Welshbeef said:

BR Railways was shocking.
Needed vast investment which the govt couldn't provide or was one of the easiest things to cut.

Miraculously that huge investment materialised in the 4-5 years running up to privatisation, and it actually got better proportionately with the extra investment; who'd have thunk it?

Smollet said:

Before nationalisation were the rail companies running at a profit?

Sort of, but they were running rails and rolling stock utterly knackered from 7 years of running flat out with next to no maintenance and the Luftwaffe remodelling random bits; the government was on the hook for the repair bill but buying off the shareholders and nationalisation was deemed cheaper.

craigjm said:

Vocal Minority said:

And the war left the infrastructure and the big four on their knees. It felt like nationalisation or complete collapse

Indeed. It is just a shame we didn't invest and move away from steam at that point like continental Europe did

When all you have is a hammer, etc; we had a lot of capacity set up for building steam locos and no experience building diesel traction and not much building electrics, and a loco fleet that was worn out.

[Welshbeef]

hidetheelephants said:

Welshbeef said:

BR Railways was shocking.
Needed vast investment which the govt couldn't provide or was one of the easiest things to cut.

Miraculously that huge investment materialised in the 4-5 years running up to privatisation, and it actually got better proportionately with the extra investment; who'd have thunk it?

Smollet said:

Before nationalisation were the rail companies running at a profit?

Sort of, but they were running rails and rolling stock utterly knackered from 7 years of running flat out with next to no maintenance and the Luftwaffe remodelling random bits; the government was on the hook for the repair bill but buying off the shareholders and nationalisation was deemed cheaper.

craigjm said:

Vocal Minority said:

And the war left the infrastructure and the big four on their knees. It felt like nationalisation or complete collapse

Indeed. It is just a shame we didn't invest and move away from steam at that point like continental Europe did

When all you have is a hammer, etc; we had a lot of capacity set up for building steam locos and no experience building diesel traction and not much building electrics, and a loco fleet that was worn out.

But why should the new owners be liable for a knackered asset and have to find its repair - given they are only going to have a franchise for 7 years where is the incentive?


A bit like the Royal Mail DB pensions which had been asset stripped noone in their right mind would take on that liability so the govt did instead and rightly so - OR they would pay into the scheme what the assets should be.