UK Inches Closer To Eliminating Private Car Ownership

@Ryannnnnn The sticking-point there is "public transport".

It has become a vicious circle by which the growing private car ownership meant declining bus and train use - bringing higher fares and higher subsidies from taxes than might have been possible.

Many areas of the UK, even suburban ones or satellite villages close to large towns, now have are very scanty or no bus services at all. Typically, many bus services run in the day but stop fairly early in the evening - no good for an evening out in town.

These services are just not economical, if they ever were, and it is hard to see them returning.

It's worse still in rural areas where the decline in all public services and private businesses (shops, pubs, etc.) has been accelerated by the reliance on the car compounded by the depopulating effect of the huge trade in homes for long-distance commuters, and as second-homes and holiday-lets.

The owners of these do not work locally, and are conditioned to shop by long car trips for big loads from out-of-town supermarkets - emporia designed deliberately for such car-only customers. Thus creating a further, car-based, vicious-circle decline in public transport that can never break it.

@ArishMell We need to nationalise the railways and buses, it's ridiculous that we don't and I've thought it was for long time. People shouldn't be paying nearly £100 for a 2 and half hour train ride. I'd think the problem is that they're privately owned and thus they can run off of a model of profit rather than providing a service to keep the country moving. Rural areas will still be using cars I'd imagine as there aren't ways around it. Commuting will be a thing for a long time to come.

@Ryannnnnn Years ago I would have disagreed with you about nationalising industries and the public services, but not now.

Despite interference by governments and the Treasury often taking too much of the operating profits (as happened to British Railways), so damaging investment, by and large they worked, were cohesive and coherent; and all the profits - or losses - stayed in the country and safe from the panicky ignorami in Canary Wharf and Wall Street.

Network Rail is still UK state-owned. So are the Cross-Country Trains (SW England - NE England - Scotland), much of the UK's goods-train services and licensing the steam-hauled charter trains... only the State in question is Germany.

Just as anything EDF is State-owned - by France.

I doubt the fares would be any lower though. Railways are undeniably very expensive to build, maintain and operate to the standards we demand; and the more they have to do to meet those the costlier they become. You want a £50 fare for that £100 journey? Then expect £50-worth engineering standards of track and rolling-stock, and £50-worth speeds.

Some people fondly compare unfavourably British rail fares etc. with those in a few other countries. Comparisons like that are almost always spurious though. They ignore the problems of course they have there, the very different national economies and travelling patterns, and their far higher subsidies from taxes.

Yes - I think the railways should be state-owned and be using equipment built in Britain, not imported from Japan even if as kits or licence-designs merely assembled here. They should though be run by skilled Chartered Engineers and business managers; not politicians.

(I looked up HS2 once: not a single Engineer on its Board, but it has a 'Director of Strategic Partners' or something equally waffly - so that's all right then. Who would run the HS2 trains? The First Group, apparently, an absolute money-mill whose shares are worth about £90 each. It already owns several rail franchises and the Docklands Light Railway, under false badges. It also owned America's Greyhound Bus company for a while.)

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An incident from 3 years ago:

Travelling from the North of England I needed to be in Bristol early enough for the third of my 3-train journey. We were delayed badly at Leeds by the services' previous train having broken down further North, blocking the path.

You and I are rare nowadays by knowing nothing can ever be guaranteed never to break down unexpectedly, but this was worrying for my trip.

Seeking advice on alternative routes, I asked the staff member why they can't simply shanghai the nearest heavy freight locomotive to draw the breakdown to a safe station where the passengers can alight and wait for the next, and other trains can pass. As used to be feasible.

He replied:

"None of the couplings and so on are compatible any more, like they used to be."

Then he added, "That's privatisation for you!"

@ArishMell Privitisation and outsourcing seems like a good idea in the short term but it always comes back to bite you later. Take the situation we're in now due to Thatcher in regards to energy, since we started relying on the market for energy and not producing enough on our own, we're now at the hands of those wishing to profit from our prediciment. That's as far as I know anyway, I'm not entirely clued up but my grandparents told me of that recently.

@Ryannnnnn Well, Mrs. Thatcher's then John Major's governments certainly gave us a dose of rather unpleasant medicine based on an economic thoery that has not benefited as it was meant to do.

However, their policies were continued at least as enthusiastically by the following Blair and Brown, Labour, governments that sold my state-owned employer off at well under-value via some shady deal involving some spivvy lot on Wall Street.

I think you are right though, otherwise.

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One (not sole) reason for the selling-off, cuts and closures was to shed the heavy, growing pension plans that originated when very many people popped their clogs within a few years of retiring at 65(M) or 60(F).

Although the stuff about "civil servants' gold-plated pensions" was at best ignorant and at worst naked lies, public-service and commercial-company DB pensions generally were becoming a huge responsibility, and new ones are now rare.+

Selling the organisations was supposed to relieve that tax-payers' future pension burden; but in fact the first buyers at least had to continue much the same employment terms and conditions (I think by EU law); so the burden remained.

Then of course it was compounded by the contractors' profit element; and the extra administration in issuing and overseeing the contracts - not always done very well, too.

The last point as we saw with the Royal Mail's Horizon scandal; although that was unique for the Board of Directors getting off scot-free with its perjury and theft.

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+ The Civil Service DB (final salary) Pension was based on 80ths. So if you worked a full 40 years you would receive a pension of 40/80 of your salary at retirement.

Which sounds a lot until you realise two things: It's a 50% cut. It is hedged against inflation and that helps but does not make you rich. Most public-service salaries are no bigger and often less than commercial equivalents; and the service includes store-keepers, drivers, workshop staff, admin assistants, counter-staff laboratory assistants etc.; all on fairly modest pay.

Be a civil-servant for 20 years: a 25% pension. And so on.

Then your pensions are taxed if above a fairly modest limit!

They add your State Pension, employers' pension plus any private pension: if the total exceeds a quite modest limit you lose most of the excess in income-tax, taken at source.

@ArishMell don’t forget to include the fact that the civil service has not had a pay rise in ten years and how that affected the value of thier pensions

@ArishMell I'm guessing you worked for Royal mail?. I think it was..Brown at the time? under labour and it yes it was sold off for a ridiculously low price. Or tbh it could have been Cameron at that time, I forget as the conservatives have been in power for what seems like a long time now.

@Ryannnnnn No, I dodn't work for Royal Mail and I am glad I did not! There was series on the radio a few months ago about the whole scandal.

RM had bought a new IT system called 'Horizon' from some Japanese firm, Hitachi I think, to run its Post Office branch finances. Unfortunetely it was just not fit for purpose and kept showing apparent losses of money - some due to the manufacturer's attempts to put it right. Its staff could read the finances directly and when they altered figures to test the programme, they did not or could not correct their changes.

No money was really missing, but rather than have the guts to admit it had bought rubbish and given the firm a month to correct the software errors or no more work and no more money to it, RM's directors decided to blame the sub-posters/mistresses and started to had have them prosecuted for theft.

Some were reimbursing the Post Office with their own money - where has that money gone? Why were the non-thefts and the attempted repayments not detected in audits?

They tried to keep it secret, to make it look like isolated rogue staff; but it was not long before everyone began to realise there was something odd about the apparent rise in branch thefts. Yet the Directors, even the so-called CEOs involved (two successive ones if I recall aright), and the software company stayed cowards and liars to the end. They still tried to claim Horizon was faultless; and resisted all attempts to have it, the finances and their claims investigated properly.

To them, and to the incompetent IT supplier who has escaped all action against it, ruining innocent people's lives and livelihoods was nothing. Many were sent to prison as result of the RM's perversion of the course of justice - none of the perjurers have been brougght to justice.

Simnce then, and indeed quite recently, the Courts have quashed the wrongful convictions but as the sole shareholder the Government (i.e. everyone via taxes) has to find the money to compensate them. It has admitted that RM itself could not afford it, and the cowards who ran RM or sold the software certainly would not even if you confiscate all their assets.

Too late for one or two victims, driven to suicide.

You might wonder why the post-masters' union failed them. It had basically been paid off by RM.

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Blair and Brown had wanted to give the Post Office to the Dutch delivery company, TNT! Well, we all know now that courier companies are not set up for domestic deliveries; and are often incompetent or inconvenient at it.