“Crowd justice” against Southern Rail

Continuing the discussion from Southern Rail:

Surprise surprise:

This isn’t “commuters.” This is ideological leftwing activism.

The same sort of activism at work in the unions - the target being a private rail company and the Tory government. And the unions make no secret of their game plan, as evidenced in the Unions vs Tories topic.

And to anyone that thinks British Rail is the solution:

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Rail modal share (rail’s share of total travel) 1952–2014:

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As for safety:

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Is that an ad hominen attack?

In any case, activists who are committed to a left-wing ideology can also be commuters.

No. Unless you think “leftwing” is a dirty word?

I’m just pointing out that once again, political activists (from the “nationalise the rail” camp) are assuming the guise of a broader group of people (commuters) in order to gain leverage for their ideology.

I think it is wrong to assume from those graphs that privatisation has saved lives and improved passenger numbers. There are a number of other factors that are worth considering (as well as - not instead of - the market v the state).

1. British Rail was deliberately underfunded for many years prior to privatisation. You could start counting this from the 1950s when so many stations and lines were cut. That certainly had a impact in the fall in numbers in the 1960s.

2. Since privatisation government subsidies have increased significantly, this has allowed improvements in the railway infrastructure as well as profits for shareholders (primarily foreign governments). It is worth considering what the impact of investing in the railway without private companies making a profit would have been in terms of efficiency of the market. On the face of it it would seem that high profits are not efficient, but most people recognise that state v private is not as simple as that!

3. Public policy since mid-90s has been away from the motor car and towards public transportation. In the 70s and 80s there was a massive expansion in private car ownership and investment in roads, there was little investment in the railways. Today it is the roads that are barely fit for purpose, with too much traffic, while the train system is better than previously.

4. Housing costs in London have encouraged people to live further out and commute further than they did in the 1980s or 1990s. Trains have proved the most important method for commuting, particularly for those living in outer London and the Home Counties.

5. The population of Britain is higher than it was in the 1990s. That would account for 10% of the 100% increase in passenger numbers.

6. Railtrack was effectively renationalised in 2000 and it is since this time that the largest growth in passenger numbers has taken place.

Claiming that privatisation is the reason for the difference in the rail industry seems almost as ideological as claiming that the current wave of strikes and poor management would be solved by full re-nationalisation.

Absolutely - there are other broader factors at play that affected the shape of the graphs - but your points 3-6 cannot explain the extraordinary reversal of passenger numbers in the mid nineties:

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Regarding your points 1 and 2 (subsidies) - the data doesn’t support your argument, as in the beginning of privatisation (mid 90s), subsidies went down dramatically yet passenger numbers rose astronomically:

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Imagine the union uproar if funding was cut to less than a third of its previous level for a public service within the space of a year? Yet this is what happened during the first year of privatisation.

It was only after the Hatfield crash five years later, that subsidies went up. And then, it took several years for them to reach the levels previously attained under nationalised rail.

The FT mentions your third point (car usage trends), but argues that the quality of management is a factor:

I’m not going to disagree with the FT article. There have clearly been some advantages of privatisation. But you are still assuming the full explanation is privatisation and ignoring other factor. For comparison we have a nationalised train system in the UK with a large number of passengers - the London Underground system.

If we look at the graph below you will see little difference in growth in passenger numbers for the 1995-2000 period between the privatised and nationalised systems. Both saw a rapid increase in passenger numbers (approx 25% over the 5 years).

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Beyond those first five years there is a much more pronounced difference. A major part of this is likely to be London Underground having reached something close to maximum capacity, while the rest of the railway system had spare capacity after years of under investment.

There are plenty of other theories about how the changing work and leisure travel, I’m not really suggesting that my list is perfect. What I am suggesting is that privatisation is not the only reason for growth in passenger numbers, there’s a lot more going on.

That is a good point about London Underground.

I’m not ignoring anything. I fully read your posts and I think they are well argued. I just don’t agree fully with all the points you made, that’s all. It’s fine for us to disagree. No one is being ignorant here.

Don’t you?

Left wing, right wing. Does it matter, Southern are still shit be it Southern management or Unions.

Nice play. Shame none of us can do this.

This is an excellent discussion on trains and particularly the pros and cons of privatization and public ownership. And to me is a nice divergence from what I gathered was the point raised in the OP.

Reached through some tenuous links. The same sort of tenuous links which of course has led me (sarcastically) to assume Donald Trump is a member of the KKK. Anyways this train of thought eventually led the OP to support an argument that rail nationalization is a bad thing (coincidentally I agree) thoughthe organisation cited in the source material has indicated no such objective. So I’m with @AndyS insofar that this appeared to me another ad hominem attack on the left.

But that’s just me reading. Catch 'ya later.

Amen. So why bring it up?

Because I can.

Ignoring facts and being ignorant are slightly different.
But none of this is really about whether Southern Rail should give up their franchise and temporarily renationalise, as happened with a few other under-performing franchises already.

The poll, you mean? I might be wrong, but you should be able to create polls - click the little cog in the compose window, then click “Build Poll” - let me know if it doesn’t work.

Oh? Cool. Thanks.

The quote I used (“This Crowd Justice campaign launches with the support of Bring Back British Rail”) was from the campaign page that @DevonishForester provided - I don’t think it’s helpful to accuse DevonishForester’s page of being “tenuous”

What? Huh? Did @DevonishForester link the ‘commuters’ in the Association of British Commuters to ideological leftwing activists? If so then I offer you my apologies for this. If not, I stand by my earlier comment. Or are you suggesting activists must somehow by nature be political? You’ve lost me again buddy.

Chris is being a little bit naughty - the first post in this thread contains this:

This is building on sand a little, since the “evidence” in question is all a bit second-hand and partial, and based on hearsay and “reportedly” type reporting.

Reading into the minds of the people who have started this action is a bit tricky, as it’s unlikely they all have a uniform position on the rights or wrongs of privatisation, and feels a bit like a cheap bit of point-scoring. There’s a lot of correlation without causation in this thread as well - as Michael rightly calls out above.

But have we really privatised our railways in the UK? I’d argue that we’ve just changed the form of the state subsidy - that’s the real issue. The fact that National Express were able to walk away from their obligations on the East Coast without any penalty to their other rail operations shows that the game is rigged, surely?

That’s not actually the case. As reported by the Times, there’s recorded evidence of what the union bosses have said:

And anyway, what’s this got to do with my comment about DevonishForester’s page? Bear in mind I was defending it from @Starman’s “tenuous” claim

The activist organisation in question named themselves “Bring Back British Rail” - I don’t mean to be obtuse, but how many ways are there to “read into” their motivation?

Agree with you on this. The only way we’ll see the true benefits of privatisation is via a true privatisation. Whilst the UK rail industry was built by private sector ingenuity, it is now a very difficult system to fully privatise. And sadly the franchise model is a flawed halfway house.

Couldn’t we just sell off the remainder to the French, Dutch or Chinese government? Apparently that counts as privatisation.

If Brexit means anything, it means giving our government back the right to sell our railway and power stations to foreign governments

Which is something I suggested on another thread, given that our best performing railways appear often to be in some foreign ownership, usually German. But not French. Don’t sell to the French!

My attempts to copy-and-paste from the poll wound up turning into a click on one of the buttons. For the avoidance of doubt, I most certainly do not want to discuss @anon5422159’s views of the term ‘left wing’.

Which means nationalization, although not by the ‘home nation’ since Deutsche Bahn AG is owned by the German government. So foreign ownership in this case is a curious hybrid of outsourced nationalization by competitive tender.

My post on the Southern Rail thread (moved to Politicos) was to flag the Judicial Review of the Government’s handling of the industrial action, but apparently no-one is interested in that. There is interest in the motivations and beliefs of those initiating the case. Isn’t that a form of ad-hominem argument - “they would say that wouldn’t they”- focusing on the characteristics of the players rather than what they are doing and their arguments for doing so?

My own view is that it is probably better to have a nationalized monopoly running the railways than a private monopoly. But there are many factors affecting this : the ability of the state to regulate and scrutinize; whether the enterprise running the company is based in a culture of short-term-ism and quick wins (UK) or a culture which values long-term investment (Germany) etc. etc.

Which means nationalization, although not by the ‘home nation’ since Deutsche Bahn AG is owned by the German government. So foreign ownership in this case is a curious hybrid of outsourced nationalization by competitive tender.

My post on the Southern Rail thread (moved to Politicos) was to flag the Judicial Review of the Government’s handling of the industrial action, but apparently no-one is interested in that. There is interest in the motivations and beliefs of those initiating the case. Isn’t that a form of ad-hominem argument - “they would say that wouldn’t they”- focusing on the characteristics of the players rather than what they are doing and their arguments for doing so?

My own view is that it is probably better to have a nationalized monopoly running the railways than a private monopoly. But there are many factors affecting this: ability of the state to regulate and scrutinize and hold to account, whether the enterprise running the company is based in a culture of short-term-ism (UK) or long-term investment (Germany) etc. etc.

I’m okay with this. As long as the competitive tender is open to other foreign-government owned enterprises in addition to those in private ownership. From an operations basis, I’d seek to include other interests such as public sector pension funds such as the case with HS1.

Yep.