@D. M. But with the Labour MP they were sat in standard class. So yes, it does say a lot when Portillo chose to sit in first class. He's also most well known for losing his seat.
train ticket is really expensive in UK, from Heathrow to Victoria i paid 30 £ and in Vienna even for a longer route i paid 4,50€ (from the Airport to my home). 6t times more that is ridiculous.
@@derekmulready1523 Wages remain static because immigration is too high, the problem runs across the board in the western world. It's about supply and demand, you have more supply (people) and less demand (work) then wages will freeze or go down. Its a way to artificially lower wages for corporations, in the baby boomer era you could buy a house from a labor job out of highschool, because they had more work then people. Spread the word, we need to pressure the governments to slow immigration or we will lose our nations, you look at history and our society would not even be in the history books their so young, we have a lot of problems in our laws, our democracy is young.
I realise its not conclusive evidence but surely the fact that foreign state owned railway companies are now bidding for UK contracts tells you a lot about the current state of affairs?
Alex Turlais yeah I was kinda surprised to see the NS logo on some trains when I visited England last year. Basically the Dutch state owns a part of the English railway
An annual ticket between Glasgow and Edinburgh costs the same as one for the whole German network! Guess which works better, guess which is nationalised
German trains are still way too expensive and have frequent delays.. Swiss railways are really good but expensive.. Austrian railways is where it’s at modern trains cheap and good service..
@ Like most European countries, Spain needs smaller government relative to its economic activity. It's draining the private sector of the capital it needs to expand.
@@bucketofbarnacles Yes, but they are mostly capital subsidies, funding enhancements and capital maintenance, for infrastructure owners Network Rail, not operating subsidies for the freight (FOCs) and passenger (TOCs) operating companies.
I would suggest the reason passenger numbers have gone up is people are forced onto them. Living in the south i have to say that my service is worse and considerably more expensive than BR ever was. They recieved less subsidy than now and if Mr Portillo chose cattle class in the rush hour rather than 1st off peak he may offer a slightly less pompous opinion
Renfe, SNCF and other state rail companies were told to privatise by the EU. the only country to do so was Britain. Mrs Thatcher and her illck have a lot to answer for.
TEENS AND THE RAINBOW what’s a shame is there are sections of Amtrak that are profitable- the unprofitable ones either fed or local governments just keep bailing them out due to the number of jobs that would be lost. Some of the long distance ones have nostalgia attached as well - but they probably could have built some high speed lines with the amount they keep shelling out.
@David Fakename the fact that even now they're only just suggesting to have rail going been Oxford and Cambridge again after Beeching cut it, is so ridiculous. The two most prestigious university cities! To go from Oxford to Cambridge for any reason requires a changeover and a lot of wasted time. smh
@@ChrisWoodhead2811 The USA used to have lots of trains and trams but the car and oil companies used lobbying and propaganda to ruin it. The size of the country doesn’t matter, China is also a big country yet it has high speed rail connections.
@@neljay9149 well that was because of the neglect from the Tory government before Blair and funding needed to come somewhere! Also Blair's Labour was called 'New Labour' which more more centre left than direction the party right now. Also I never blamed any 'government' I am simply saying that 26years from today the FT will probably be making the same type of video on why the NHS was sold off. The NHS is always a pawn in an election campaign and its a shame that the public sit and back and watch the greatest British institution be broken down bit by bit. When the annual UK wage is around £22,000, the cost of living continues to increase and house prices are ridiculous prices can the average British citizen really afford an American style healthcare?
Also it's clear he would be a staunch supporter of privatisation since he was part of the cabinet that made it happen in the 90's! He's hardly going to say "Oh, I'm totally for nationalisation" because to do so would be to admit he had made a mistake. Politicians don't admit to mistakes. It's utterly stupid to privatise something that consumers have no choice in, as the lady near the start pointed out. If I don't like the Scotrail train that takes me from Dundee to Edinburgh can I just wait for a cheaper one supplied by Thameslink or Merseyrail? No, I can't. You use the only service that is available in your area - which is called a monopoly.
I’ve been on one of those new high speed trains. First Class is nice but the rest of the train is really grim and uncomfortable. The old intercity 125s are more comfortable in economy
Portillo smugly claiming the rise in passenger numbers as a win for privatisation is really imbecilic when population pressures are so obviously the main factor. Equally, the idea that the public system was bad because public bodies are inherently bad seems like pure ideology. If he was right the Tube and London Overground should be basket cases. There is amazing irony to have someone sitting in the comfort of first class during off peak hours and waxing lyrical about how wonderful the whole experience of rail travel today is...
London Overground is actually a weird one because TFL actually contract out the operation of the trains as a concession, it is presently operated by Arriva Trains London. So whilst TFL do make most of the decisions with the Overground and thus take the majority of the revenue they don't operate it directly. There are similar arrangements on TFL Rail and what will be the Elizabeth Line too
If the service was so bad people would not use the railways, they would drive cars, use planes or live closer to work and commute on foot. Clearly there has been a success in how the railways run.
Bushrod Rust Johnson No, it isn't. It's known as intra-market competition - it only works for the benefit of the consumer if alternatives such as car travel or walking are cheaper and viable. In many places, especially the city, these are either not viable (too expensive, high entry costs such as the initial price of the car, or takes too long compared to rail travel), or they are so inconvenient compared to rail travel people will accept the lower quality and higher priced rail administration. And this isn't just theory - it's called market inflexibility, and it's found in essential, low competition markets such as transport - when you plot passenger numbers against service quality or cost, fare hikes and poorer service have smaller effects on passenger numbers as it would in competitive markets, as people don't have as free a choice to take their custom elsewhere and change their behaviour as you seem to think they do. I find it hard to understand how people fail to realise car travel and moving house have vast associated costs which keep people forced to use train and bus travel to reach work.
Michael Portillo misses out the reason why British rail (Nationalised railways) was ran very poorly and lead to unreliable service. The main reason was massive underinvestment and piss poor management by the Government at the time, of which he was bloody part of!! Also, we still plow millions of taxpayers money into the railways to this day, whilst the private companies that run them reap massive profits! Michael Portillo your full of utter crap as always. The guy can never ever admit the times when he, and especially the Tory government he was a part of at the time, failed us!
The reason for nationalisation simply can't be "it didn't work because underinvestment" every single time - throwing more money at the problem won't help and merely reveals the central problem to this kind of dogma : who will pay for it?? Dont dismiss this central question as simply "another of them stupid things tories say" Sincerely, Not a tory
*fritzki1* I won't don't worry, but it needn't cost a fortune, buying back the various franchises. The solution is (relatively) simple, you wait until each current franchise contract is coming up for renewal but instead of putting them back out for tender you take them back into government ownership, saving the taxpayers the billions it would take to buy the current operating companies out. Yes you would still have to repurchase the likes of the infrastructure and the maintenance company but that won't cost the astronomical fortune that it would going the other way.
Nationalisation won't work in Britain because the country doesn't have a coherent industrial and infrastructure policy that spans 20-50 years, and the political will to stick to it. Otherwise the next British Rail will just end up looking like Indian Railways. The other nations with excellent rail networks (e.g. China, Japan, Germany, France) all have centralised, long-term rail strategies that the nationalised rail companies can use to follow and plan ahead, and guaranteed state investment for them to succeed. For these nations decisions like HS2 and Heathrow expansion would've been a no-brainer, but not for Britain because the government there is weak, and prone to the lassiez-faire argument and politically expedient cop-outs. To put this into perspective the Chinese have long viewed Britain as past its prime, not because the British are getting poorer, but the country stopped thinking big and started thinking small. Recent events like Brexit and the weakness of the Theresa May government only serves to confirm such bias.
@@leobragaurbe but the government owns and operates highways the think with privatizing and still subsidizing it with taxpayers dollars doesn’t make sense since it is technically public in that we subsidize but private individuals get the profit which makes no sense
I remember being stuck on a BR train between Sheffield and Manchester because of a points failure. We sat there for about two hours in the middle of nowhere waiting for an engineer to show up. By the time we got to Stockport one passenger was screaming at the conductor. "But you're a representative of British Rail, aren't you? I've probably lost ten thousand pounds because you couldn't get me to Manchester on time! The sooner you lot get bloody privatized the better!" Then a few years after privatization I was trying to get from Yorkshire to Manchester again, but the Arriva train staff had gone on a no-warning strike and I found myself stranded for a few hours at Barnsley. Never made it to Manchester, I had to give up and go home on a bus. I don't know if Britain will ever get its trains sorted out. It seems like nationalization v privatization is the wrong debate. There's something deeper wrong with the system.
I can echo your concerns thoroughly. Anything to/from anywhere to London works more like a clock work (see Virgin / Avanti). But anything east to west is a mess.
@@ashishtripathi7138 I don't know about London working like clockwork. I used to commute into London on the Hastings line (run by Southeastern). The complaints made by passengers in the 1960s footage in this video were the same ones we were making on that line when I was using it daily two years ago! Trains being terminated early, turning up late, being sent back down the line in the other direction or just being outright cancelled was a common occurrence. Quite often I'd get to Charing Cross at the end of my working day to find all trains were cancelled and not know how (or when) I'd get home. It was a nightmare.
Stuck on an overcrowded service from Meadowhall to Leeds last month due to a failure at Manchester. It was so busy at Leeds they had to open the automated gates to lessen the crush. Madness. That the first time I've travelled by train for a few years now and cant believe how bad its got.
That is not near privatisation! This is a hybrid system, because the tax-payers pay subsidiaries through the state. If the state would not pay anything, then companies could not allow themselves to overprice the service, because there is a breaking point, when people say, i will not pay any cent for this shitty service.
British rail was never as bad as it's being claimed. It was run very efficiently and they used to design and build their own trains including the HST that was so good and reliable it is still being used.
I had to laugh at the insinuation that the increase in passenger numbers is down to privatisation. Correlation does not equal causation. The passenger numbers have increased largely because commuting by car in the last 25 years has become considerably more painful. And it's not just because of the increase in traffic, but the cost of fuel, insurance, and if you work in a city, the cost of parking is ridiculous. The train is cheaper, quicker and more convenient. Or at least, it was. But let's also look at the decline in numbers. Train usage had been on a downturn since the mid sixties, when car ownership turned from being aspirational to entirely feasible, and then on to almost essential. Of course, given the choice between a car and a train back then, the car would always win because of the sheer convenience. It didn't help that trains were decrepit, but even if they were glorious bastions of luxury transportation, they'd still have struggled. The turning point for trains was always going to be that where there were more cars than the road network could handle, which I feel happened some time in the late nineties and the graph on train usage in this video appears to back that up.
This. Privatisation may have played a role in increased train passenger numbers, but there are so many other factors. The spate of road building in the 50s and 60s, especially motorways, then cars like the Mini and later Japanese brands, along with low fuel prices (other than the oil crisis in the 70s) would all take time to have an effect. Facilities like parking at workplaces and in city centre all had to be built too. I think the rate of decline in rail passenger numbers shows that quite clearly. And it was the 90s when driving started to become a little inconvenient, but the 2000s that really started to see far too much traffic. Now there is surely also a not inconsiderable amount of train travel due to environmental concerns.
The increase in passengers has nothing to do with privatisation - that is false correlation and Portillo knows this. Some sectors within a country should be nationalised - you wouldn't have a private police force. I personally believe a government can do anything more efficient and cheaper than a private company can, if properly run. A capitalist economy is the only real one can work, one where people are rewarded for their work. We do not want a state owned supermarket, but we don't want a private police force and we certainly don't want a private railway system. If you want it privatised then it should receive no public subsidy, but oh wait we tried that with Railtrack, and look how that ended out - quite literally fatal. BTW the most efficiently run franchise in the history of the railways as we know them today was East Coast, a government run franchise that paid over £1 billion back into the treasury - and "nationalised railways don't work". If persons in government say they can't run things in government they shouldn't be in bloody government. I could go on for ever about how privatisation is constantly misrepresented as great. No the railways were not run acceptably in past government hands, and I do not want us to see a return to that. But private ownership should never happen to key services, the railways being one. Just because your train was late doesn't mean railway technology is crap - it's false correlation. Just because past governments have incompetently & corruptly managed the railways doesn't mean a state railway has to be crap....
A private police force doesn't work because there is no natural revenue stream to fund it. When viewing rail investment across Europe (i.e alternative models) there are various flaws, national ownership is far from a panacea.
"BTW the most efficiently run franchise in the history of the railways as we know them today was East Coast, a government run franchise that paid over £1 billion back into the treasury" BTW your statement is bollocks, the film and source data show it was South West Trains, who recently lost their franchise.
The key words are "if properly run". Politicians and bureaucrats are not business people and get paid no matter what. Knowing how to win elections and how to run a government are two completely different things. Plus they have many other things to worry about when it comes to overall public support. The problem is the best placed people to be in government are never going to put themselves forward as a result of how much money they can make in other areas of life and who your average voter is. My biggest problem with the current railway system is that it's not remotely free market, at the same time we can hardly call it nationalized either.
All government ever does is run things inefficiently and at massive expense compared to the private sector. I can only assume you're young or a full blown communist because there's no other reason anyone would say such a thing.
Governments have no incentive to run railways at a profit, since they can be subsidised by taxpayers. Since they have no competition the service becomes worse and worse, so less and less people use it. But that's okay, because the government can just subsidise it more! So now we're paying more money for a worse service! Even if fares are cheaper on this new system the money hasn't just come out of nowhere, it's either come from debts or taxes. Public ownership of the railways sounds like a good idea, but looking into it, it clearly is not.
It's not so much nostalgia and more seeing what other countries of similar populations and size are doing. Germany and France both have state owned railway that function much better and cheaper, they also have invested in UK Railway which helps subsidised rail fares in there home Nations.
German railways are semi-privatised actually, which is exactly what FT are suggesting. British companies even run some German railways!! Like National Express...
Thomas Crabtree Your very right, I ment to say that , but there is a lot of government restrictions on the private companies not something a small government UK Conservative Party would be in favour of.
All European countries - except of UK, and Liechtensten (who uses ÖBB) have national railway companies. No other country in Europe except of UK that has tracks owned by non-state company. There are public companies competing between each other on some lines, but that's very rare. It's even rare to see private companies doing anything outside of UK.
You wanna come to america? Go ahead, ride on amtrak! Costs 2 times as much to ride as a plane, and as fast as a car. Ah, and I forgot to mention that it's completely run by the government.
This happened here in New Zealand in the 80s, sadly after 20 year's with absolutely no infrastructural development, the government had to re purchase it all back but at a huge cost plus billions of dollars to get it safely and securely into operating, now so many huge range of development is being done, sadly the original sale was to the government's friend's whom sold it on,
Telling a Government Railway to 'Make money everywhere' via national caused great cuts, I believe railways on government ownership should take its yield from the income earning streams such as rush hour commuters and inject it to cover the cost of areas with small ridership.
That was a great little film, and the kind of political independence/lack of agenda that the FT does so well. One of the comments interested me - the idea of a state/NFP competing for a franchise. You can do so for marginal cost on a level playing field. If it is successful and if it manages to deliver better value than private TOC's whilst delivering a decent service, then the model can be tried with additional franchises. If not, then the market finds its level.
Lack of an agenda? Are you having a laugh? Conservatives and free market advocates were allowed to dominate and dictate the narrative. Their assertions went unchecked and unchallenged. Meanwhile the advocates for nationalisation were given less time and their arguments given less weight. How can you give someone like Portillo such a prominent role and expect this to be unbiased? He was at the centre of privatisation, his reputation was staked in it. Of course he's going to say it was the right thing to do.
Also to add to what Blackstar is saying about Portillo. He makes a snide comment about how the BR trains were old and dirty, while sitting in first class. If he sat with the rest of us 'plebs' he might realise that an ancient pacer is pretty much the standard in many parts of the country. I don't ask for much: trains being decently on time, sufficient amount of seats and fair prices. Other countries manage to do it just fine with nationalised systems.
No, not really. What ends up happening is that the public company takes special "loans" (which are never paid back) "bailouts" and tax relief. Either the Private Companies fail in the face of subsidization. Or the Private company succeeds through innovation, and the government begins to fear bankruptcy will mean they never get their grants/loans/bailout money back, so they step in to guarantee business to their pet project. Public companies are never competitive, and NEVER the solution.
Running a passenger railroad is an extremely capital_intensive business. It may be that a state_controlled model is the optimum means of doing so. But regardless of whether it's govt or private owned there should be accountability and standards for excellence.
Portillo : "Trains were old" - wrong, some were brand new and designed to run at 140 mph, as BR was about to start running trains at that speed until this was cancelled by privatisation, UK Trains still, run at a 125 mph maximum. Under BR new trains were manufactured when the government allowed it and the trains they replaced were cascaded and reused on lesser services, this being a sensible way of reusing expensive resources. Post privatisation the government still controls ordering new trains and older trains are often scrapped. ... "they were very often dirty", - Some older trains were dirtier, but BR was only given 1/3 of the amount of money that UK rail has today and so had to cut corners somewhere. (Source : DfT (UK government, Department for Transport) - UK Rail costs around 3.8 times the amount that it did in BR days, allowing for inflation .... "and the most famous symbol was the curly British Rail sandwich, because the standard of catering was so poor" - It wasn't, BR sold thousands of sandwiches each day and hundreds of cooked meals. Post-privatisation, the standard of catering on the majority of trains is non-existent and it is impossible to buy sandwiches on trains. The hundreds of BR buffet & kitchen coaches have been replaced with a hand-full of kitchen coaches on a few long-distant services, the majority of train services today have no catering at all, and for the remainder a small trolley tries to work its way down the train offering a very limited range of pre-manufactured snacks and as they have no fridges, no sandwiches. ... "so it was universally acknowledged that the nationalised industries were giving an extremely poor standard of service because they had no accountability" - wrong BR was answerable and accountable to the DfT who also controlled what money BR was allowed. BR gave an excellent and very cost-effective service given the comparably small amount of money it was allowed. Today's private railway is costing the UK tax-payer 3.8 times the amount and it can be argued that as UK Rail today is run by the DfT, who are answerable to nobody. Finally, it is Interesting to note that the interview with Lillian Greeenwood took place on a HST, a train that was built by BR in the late 1970s - one of the old dirty trains that was running when privatisation was introduced, although despite privatisation, it is even older now. The coach they were sitting on (a BR Mk 3 coach) comprises a rigid aluminium honeycomb construction, that won awards as a world-leading design in the 1970s. 25 years of privatisation with the same dirty old trains. The interview with Michael Portillo took place on one of the fleet of brand-new 125 mph trains that run out of Paddington station. British Rail had advanced plans to electrify the lines out of Paddington in the 1990s and introduce new 140 mph trains, but privatisation saw these plans cancelled with no plans to increase the line speed above 125 mph. This line, however, was partly electrified a few years ago, around 20 years later.
The same issue. Oil lobby's ripped up the american boxcars. All of them. They used to cover pretty much the whole country. Then built highways directly through the center of every large city, only stopping in New York's Greenwich village (by a protest group) which is now the largest stock of 19th century architecture in the world and probably the nicest place to live in the city. Otherwise, Amtrak would not have to play second fiddle to freight companies who own all the cross country lines. If the US wasn't enthral to oil, they would have a world class high speed rail system. At this point, now the roads are more or less gridlocked they are not going to see an efficient rail system for the best part of a century. So the only sensible way to travel long distance is by air which is polluting and even now airspace is pretty much at breaking point.
We need a graph of the government expenditure on the railways before and after privatisation to see how things have changed. Also there was no comment on the pillage by private industry of the ripe railworkers pension fund.
I think the biggest problem is lack of interconnected routes. Everything is focused on only going to or from London! If you want to travel east to west, in some cases you have to travel right into London from up to 100 miles away, to travel by train to somewhere that’s possibly only 20 miles away as the crow flies! And we wonder why the network is overcrowded?! An example; Kettering/Corby to Peterborough. Places close to each other, not well connected by road or rail, but has numerous commuters between the two areas. The country roads are blocked to a standstill at peak hours. All the railway needs is 50 metres of track at Manton Junction to create a triangle and therefore a connection from Kettering/Corby to Peterborough. That’s all it needs! But without it, you have to either travel up to Leicester and across on a slow train from there, or into London and then out again to Peterborough up the east coast! All this over 50m of missing track that could easily be put in!!! It’s farcical but hasn’t been done because it doesn’t benefit London. This is just one example. There are hardly any fast East-West routes! HS2 seems to have an open chequebook for the first phase from London to Birmingham (duplicating existing routes!), but the later phases connecting places like Manchester and Sheffield are in jeopardy, when they currently have only very poor connections! It’s a joke.
I don't see how going back to a nationalised system and all its problems (underinvestment and no accountability to customers being key ones) will be an improvement. The privatisation has clearly brought improvements, the numbers speak for themselves. Instead, the system should be reformed in ways that reduce fares if possible without taking them into government ownership.
But there are nationalised railways in say Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark that have excellent quality, frequency, capacity and fares... Which are 40% more efficient. Why do privatization when nationalization works (often better) for less money?
@@simondahl5437 What you don't see is the tax money (or worse, borrowed money) subsidising those tickets, making it feel cheaper than it really is. Anyway, the UK government is moving to nationalise the railways by regulating it and by taking on the industry's debts, so the nationalists and socialists are winning the arguments, or at least are lucky the virus came along to give the government the emergency powers to force this through.
@@simondahl5437 I wouldn't know, I've never read up on Nordic Train systems. Are they cheaper when you factor in the cost of subsidies? Are they really more reliable? Almost every UK train I've ever used was on time or arrived early, and most are of comfortable quality, so the point of argument shouldn't be whether the trains work but of overall cost. It is a bit more complicated in the UK though. We have a mixture of privatisation and continued government subsidies, so I admit the comparison is hard to make.
@@MUSTASCH1O, My local system didn't make a profit, but only a million dollar deficit. Sure, that's with heavy subsidies but according to British sources the British network still costs 40% more with what I would consider to be worse results. But who knows.
Why can't the UK just do as its neightbour countries and run its trains not to get profit, but to give a good service. Even if it costs more in investments.
Thank you for your message, Mikel. That is a very good question and one that the FT has been trying to answer in a series it published in 2018 on privatisation. There's also the question of whether other private systems could offer some lessons to the UK. You might find this article from our bureau chief in Tokyo, Robin Harding, interesting: www.ft.com/content/9f7f044e-1f16-11e9-b2f7-97e4dbd3580d. In it, he discusses Japan's private railway system and how it succeeded where the UK failed. If you want to see the full series on nationalisation in the UK, take a look here: www.ft.com/content/40ef9ff8-fd4b-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167. Let us know what you think.
At the time this video was released I was happily crisscrossing the UK on trains. Two years before I spent two months in Japan with a Japan Rail Pass and a Suica card for the Tokyo subways. Absolutely amazing! What really bothered me about the UK, and France, was passengers had to wait and stare up a signboards waiting for the moment it would tell them which track their train was going to be on-- then they had ten minutes to race to their train. Every time I was in a major station I saw exhausted commuters being subjected to this this passive-aggressive incompetence. I was told it had always been this way, nationalized or not. I had a huge backpack, so several times I asked a train employee if they knew which track my train would be on. Only once was the answer I got incorrect. In Japan, also with myriad private train companies, I could buy (or reserve with my Rail Pass) a ticket for a specific seat in a specific car for a specific date and time months in the future. Painted on the platform number on that ticket, is the train's number, car number and whether this spot is the front or rear door. And that's where it will be. That's how to treat passengers with respect and keep high standards. For me the litmus test for public or private is, will this same nonsense continue? Trains are political only because a lot of money is involved. What railways really are is a specific range of practical functions; with necessary human accommodation. It's not political, it's pragmatic, or it's just incompetent noise. How do you know if they're doing it right? Well, take a trip to Japan, are your trains running as well? (Or China, also excellent trains). The symmetry of the neglectful public employee is the PR nonsense, covering over equally callous money grubbing. (btw the class war in the UK? Congratulations you all lost. But in the contest for the stupidest leader? We (US) won that race to surrealism.) It's interesting that some passengers in this video are grumpy at Richard Branson. I'm quite a fan of Virgin, I flew to and from Heathrow on a Virgin plane, and traveled on several Virgin trains while in the UK. My experience was of course, limited. (They did leave me at the Belfast port expecting a bus....) On one hand he seems to want his companies to treat customers well, but of course he's also another billionaire. What might be interesting would be to collect all the complaints about the two Virgin rail companies, give this list to Branson and say, 'you're going to run all the trains in the UK that have lost their franchises, for the government. Do a good job and you'll be paid. Just as communists seem to make good capitalists, some capitalists would probably be good socialists. btw the views out of the train windows? The UK wins! Shinkansen trains have sound barrier walls that block a lot of the view, and kudzu vines growing everywhere create a green 'wall'. And yes I know most of this is a lot of nonsense. Cheers.
These are the most expensive trains in Europe, no, no investment in infrastructure, pork projects like the high speed rail to the north. I don't live there, the majority of UK's population will not use that train but we are funding it through our taxes And despite the high fares, still the population is the one paying for infrastructure that they don't use
Pedro pepe you have no idea, it's like paying for others welfare, I paid 26k last year on tax and NI plus what my employer paid so a nice nifty sum of around 32k Now I was made redundant and I get paid not even 300£ a month, and this will only happen for 6 months because I had the nerve of setting some cash aside for a rainy day So paying indiscriminately for others is something I am tired of doing Paying extortionate taxes is not patriotic, and this shotgun marriages to other familyes via extraction of my labour to fund others does not make me and would not make you happy But then again, you might be one of those on welfare or that pays little taxes but gets the same benefits, so you of course have no objection Pigs do not complain about feeding at the trough
Yeah that's not really a valid argument, is it? I mean most Britons won't use your local hospital even once in their live but still they're paying for the NHS
@Dissonantia Cognitiva The tube and bus networks in London are still nationalised and my taxes pay for those, yet I live 250 miles away from there and have very little cause to use them. So what's your point? We all pay in for the overall benefit of the country. As the saying goes, "If you don't like it, you know where the door is." Just make sure the door doesn't bang you on the arse on the way out. Where I live is at the northernmost end of the HS2 line, so in theory it's of use to me. Except it really isn't as much of a benefit as they are making it out to be. I'm still struggling with the concept of why we're spending billions of pounds and destroying acres of open land to make a train line that will get people between Manchester and London in a smidgeon under two hours, when there's a service already in existence that can do it almost as quickly. Apart from the odd stopper service, most of the current trains can make the journey in 2 hours 20, and the commuter rush trains can do it in 2 hours 5. How many billions to save five minutes?
How is it that Japan Rail, divided into segments with separate private owners, can run a seamless, punctual and efficient service with affordable fares but Network Rail cannot?
You're right about Japan Railways being the best example. I wish the UK could follow suit but it seems like people don't want to think these things through. Network Rail only *maintain* *the* *rail* *infrastructure* . They don't run any services; that's up to the TOCs (Train Operating Companies) who have use trains on lease from the ROSSCOs (Rolling Stock Operating Companies). All this so TOCs can run a service on NetworkRail's track. Japan has excellent communication between ALL its departments because it is under one roof of a company: JR. Our system is not, and it's justified to question why the heck we haven't followed the Japanese model. It's so odd!
The best examples for private railroads are North American companies. There's no complicated artificial crap like keeping rolling stock and operating companies separate from the infrastructure company. There are just railroads.
I know why. Tories smelt money. When they bankrolled the refit of the entire signalling system with unproven radio based technologies, that project was the most expensive engineering project in the world. It didn't work at all and they had to rehire the old BR staff to supervise the re-implementaion of the original system. We now subsidise the railways to the tune of 200% of what they were subsidised before privatisation. Dr. Beeching advised 50% of the stations were mothballed and so we lost half the destinations, cutting of swathes of the country, markedly seaside resorts. Beechings findings were based on route usage and ticket returns, ignoring the larger overall infrastructure and how that affected subsequent routes, let alone overall economic impact. I remember travelling on an intercity from Kings Cross when I was young and it was chaos. These days, given the money our family had back then, we would have been going down the motorway to save money in our Ford Cortina estate with missmatched door and bonnet and flight safety belts in the back. A far more arduous journey than having to stand for a few stops outside of London. Portillo says, "get your Super 8's out if you think Nationalisation is good". So why is the rest of Europe's railways run by the government and better in every respect? Since this video Virgin gave the route back to the government and the DfT run east cost line is now the most profitable in the country - only one other operator actually turns a profit and it's the GWR but that profit is negligible. It's pure Tory ideology when you sack every single British Rail employee in one go and wonder why these fancy new inexperienced companies, bloated with management botch everything. National Express were given the east cost line before Virgin and they won the contract by undercutting every other bid in what is in hindsight an unrealistic target to meet but rather than simply give NE more money like they do nowadays, they took the line back then sold it to some other company with much less ambitious targets. The railway system is an economic driver, providing that service is accessible by the majority. Businessmen travelling to and from London are the only target market for the current system so ticket prices don't make sense unless your company is paying or you expect to make back that money directly from profit gained form that journey. Less immediate returns from rail travel such as family cohesion or tourism is completely ignored. As Thatcher said. "There is no community." I think that was it.
I used to study and live in Coventry, as a Foreign student. On weekends use to travel to Birmingham for Indian curry and shopping. I think the railway (Coventry -Birmingham route) was overloaded with people standing, especially during the morning hours, and with very few foods or beverage purchase facilities. However, on longer trips/routes, Virgin trains and other liner services had better services like food and bar counter drinks, from which you can select miniature versions of Gin/ whiskey etc. Overall British railway is not bad but just a bit congested.
Atlee's government had to nationalise the railways, the war had devastated them and the companies were effectively bankrupt. Lack of investment in the 1960's and 70's had degraded the service. Yes allow private companies use the rails (freight etc), however, the main passenger provider should be the government. Letting it transition from franchise to public would be cheap...
Has that guy (who travels 1st class) ever seen Abelio's trains, or some trains in the northern part of the country? They are dirty and old but they are private so hey ho. Also, when it is cheaper to fly or drive and pay for parking rather than taking the train, there is something very wrong with the model imposed.
Sorry to repeat part of my reply to Paul Davis, but I would like to see a table of fares from the 80s and journey times and one from now. As for investment, ha ha, for years the franchise companies ran the same old BR locos and rolling stock! When the one armed Scotsman was in charge things were looking up....
@@tou7331 The quality IS terrible. Have you been on a French train, or an Irish train, or a German train, or a Portuguese train, etc... Why is Britain willing to accept such unbelievably bad standards, and pay so much for it.
One of the options only hinted at is the QuANGO; while the BBC is often criticised, it's well regarded globally for quality of output. If rail is going to be a perpetual halfbreed of public and private, why not use the same model that has worked so well elsewhere?
I live on the Windermere Branch, the other day (5th April) our ENTIRE daily service was cancelled. Any time there's an issue around Manchester etc we suffer
Hong-Kong MTR is part of the joint venture running South Western Railway. It is losing money because of extensive strikes and likely to fail before year end.
Hugo Lindum The national railway systems ran perfectly well until the Tories decided to defund them till they collapsed and they could flog them off cheap to other Tories. I remember being pulled from London to Newcastle behind the " silver fox " Mallard class in carriages lined in mahogany, brass, and etched glass. Fabulous ! Of course the Tories are working the same scam on the NHS right now !
Did you not just see the ending? When governments control industries, quality and customer satisfaction always drop. When there is no competition, there is no incentive to improve customer satisfaction.
Gordon Bradley That is just not true. Under funding was a factor. But so was poor management and a system run for the convenience of the workers and the unions, rather than the passengers. The nationalised railways were grubby, but very affordable.
The real problem with the privatization of the railways is that there is no competition and, consequently, half-capitalism does not get anywhere. Either trains from different companies run on the same line, which keep prices low and offer good service to attract customers, or keep the whole system under state control; giving the individual lines does not lead to anything. Look what happens in Italy, the only trains that offer a good service are those that have to compete with a rival company (Italo).
Facts. You can’t subsidise some, let the govt control some parts and limit over regulate the private railways. They have no incentive to improve cos they’re just gonna keep getting govt handouts.
I always assumed it was the last frantic bit of asset stripping done to benefit the Tories and their mates who no doubt had their share of profit from the cheap sell off of surplus land owned by the railway.
Yes I agree, no mention of that though. I find it incredible to believe Portillo et al didn't have the vision to see how important the rail system would be on a small island like Britain. I would also like to see a table of fares from the 80s and journey times and one from now. As for investment, ha ha, for years the franchise companies ran the same old BR loco s and running stock.
That may be true and I condemn it. But do you people not understand, that when the government controls industry, there is zero incentive to make quality better. Thus consumer satisfaction massively decreases and governments still bay billions (which this country doesn't have) to run the industry. It's just like the NHS. there is no incentive to improve its service which is why its so shite; only difference there is that people will always need medicine unlike with trains where you can choose different transportation.
Dear Hans - Firstly I object to being referred to condescendingly as 'you people'. Secondly I have spent 40 years at senior level in private industry and I can tell you that the way we make money is to cut corners and take risks. You cannot do that when you are running essential services. In addition you can't afford the luxury of running up debt and letting the company go bust. The pragmatic answer is to run essential services as Government owned and let cut throat competition drive those areas of the economy selling non-essential goods where there is plenty of competition, the mantra that private companies run things more efficiently is just that - a mantra to persuade the public that privatisation is a good thing. It bears no relation to reality.
And here in India, our regime is incessantly moving towards privatisation of railways across regions. They have deferred partly due to covid, but some cunning elements will bring it some day or other. Learn from others !!
Japan did it without separating track, operation and rolling stock ownership. It is as if the UK had returned to the pre-BR era. About a quarter of the plethoric Japanese National Railroad employees lost their position, including the more troublesome ones. JR Freight is the exception: They do not own tracks and run their trains on the various passenger companies rails.
120 containers pulled by a locomotive for 1000 miles = 6370 gallons of diesel. A Semi-truck with a single container for 1000 miles = 167 gallons of diesel fuel. Thus you would need 20,040 gallons of diesel by trucks to move 120 containers. Furthermore a locomotive can last 2 decades. A semi-truck? about 1 million miles or about 4 years...
120 containers would only go a short distance in the UK, before needing to be split up and transported on far less efficient modes of transport to their disparate destinations. Places like the US, Canada, Australia, can really use distance to their benefit and yes, for long distances, rail is by far the most efficient land-based method of transporting anything, whether people or goods. In the UK, a US/CA/AU style train would still be applying full power and trying to accelerate when it reached its destination.
There's no competition ? What's Rifkin talking about ? You have to use the particular operator, and pay extortionate fares or drive, which is eminently cheaper, which is not what public transport should stand for.
Think about it mate; he means there'd be zero competition within the rail network. There will always be people who have to use the rail. Those people will get a better service if they have to choose a service of rail. Taxi services will be way too much; busses will be unreliable and long. Only other choice is the car but then that means you have to have a licence, a car, tax, insurance plus parking which is always bs. So he's right to talk about competition within the rail industry because many people have no other viable choice.
Well, if we wanted true competition drives would have to pay to maintain the roads, likely on a per mile used basis, you would have to pay to use a airport as a airline, a fee which fully supports the airline, and in a market like that rail would likely be a lot cheaper, in comparison
British train fare is way too expensive compared to other European countries. I think we need to have a look at the European model where low fares and profit can be made at the same time.
I live in London and it used to cost me 1/4 of my monthly salary to get to work, it was a total joke!!!! and constant delays!! all because each part of my journey is owned by a different company
No mention of successful nationalised railways in places around the world. Why do some politicians think that we can manage a Brexit despite not believing we can even manage a nationalised railway like in Japan for example?
Then it should also be mentioned how many world states have denationalized railroads, resulting in them quickly catching up in performance to the most profitable and efficient ones in the world (the U.S.). I'm pretty sure the idea of shitcanning the E.U. comes from the same kind of reasoning as privatizing railroads: less government.
@@MilwaukeeF40C It's the pure selfishness of the retired to call for complete deregualtion and the profit boom for their pensions that would happen at the expense of all the workers getting squeezed into the dust. The boomers have it good and always did. They are not willing to believe that they should have a social conscience. "There is no such thing as Society" Fuckers.
Japanese Railways were nationalised in 1949. In the end JNR was considered to be unmanageable because its unions were too powerful. At privatisation i 1987, JNR was divided in six integrated passenger units (owning tracks, operations and rolling stock in a specific area) and one national freight company and the most troublesome employees were dismissed. It worked well but the UK opted for a different type of privatisation a few years later.
There is an optimal balance to be struck. And I think that is the TfL model. The state owns the infrastructure, which is then operated by a private contractor who are hired and paid based on performance.
Look up the Beeching cuts, and find out how well the government ran the railways when they owned the entire system. They ripped up 1/3 of all railway lines, and closed over half of all stations in the UK in the 1960s alone. Pure vandalism. Creating a private monopoly called "RailTrack" that owned all the railway infrastructure was a stupid idea. We should firstly change the laws on planning permission, so it's as easy as possible to build new railway lines, then second we should break up the railway lines into dozens of different companies, so they actually have to compete against each other on a route by route basis. For example, you can get to London from Birmingham either by Moor Street-Marylebone, or from New Street-Euston. Same with Worcester-London, you can either take GWR through the Cotswolds and Oxford, or you can go via Birmingham New Street with London Midland. If there were genuine alternatives, then train companies wouldn't be able to rip-off their customers, because they would simply use another provider. Private companies don't "always do things better", but that's not the point. Privatization should mean that people who aren't involved aren't forced to pay, which is why the current system is such a shambles. Private companies should not receive a penny of taxpayer money.
Agreed. There is no longer a direct railway between Perth and Edinburgh. That's ridiculous. It's a straight line on the map and the track used to be there. The train now goes Perth-Dundee-Most of Rural East Fife - Edinburgh. It could have been a 30 minute journey. Madness.
So your proposal is that several companies should each carry the (enormous) cost of owning and operating trains, all offering journeys from the same departure point to the same destination, but travelling along different routes (thereby all running part empty trains so reducing earning potential), and all having to compete for passengers against each other. Do you seriously believe this will lead to cheaper fairs and better quality? Surely you can think through what would actually happen in reality under this system???!! Hints: loss leaders, cost cutting, mergers, poor quality, lack of investment, safety breaches, ultimate collapse, state bail outs, etc
I've ridden on French National Railways (SNCF) and the service is, although expensive, excellent. It seems that, in Britain, the service is not excellent yet expensive. Hmmm. There seems to be a disconnect in Britain. The SNCF gets huge state subsidies because it provides an essential service, not only to private companies, but to the travelling public. This does not seem to be the case in the UK.
"privatization" is a religion of its own. It's a way to induce the inequality(giving certain individual an opportunity to get rich). Inequality is certainly growing in England, so it did its purpose. Railway gave the country a empire status(as a public project, the profit wasn't the goal but the boosting of the economy was) and they gave it away so willingly. The invented the technology and were exporting the technology but now they are importing it from another country which used to buy the technology from England. Privatization virus is now spreading in US even quicker, and look how their economy is doing.
So, should HS2 have been funded from taxpayers as it currently is, or private-funded? Because it's turning out to be an expensive waste. Also, you mentioned that the railways were a public project- were they?
Should have asked Portillo why it's ok for foreign state-owned entities to run our railway services but not ok for British state-owned entities to do so. Or why he believes that a UK state-owned railway operator would be as bad as BR was, when BR received less subsidy than the privatised TOCs do now. Or why the east coast main line had a good service when it was briefly renationalised, but a poor service before and since.
It really get's my goat up when they say Do you Remember the 70's Yeah we didnt have computers! and AI was the stuff of sci-fi. Are you seriously telling me Mr Portillo in 50yrs we havent evolved...and now we are smarter we can keep an eye on the crooks better
BR was a disaster because Portillo and his mates didn't get Orient Express service. Trains are not meant to be Concord, they're meant to move ordinary people from A to B cheaply and efficiently. In other words, they are a public utility.
Me too, and sadly they are being discontinued everywhere, it seems. Such a calmer and more civilized way to travel. You also meet people in those compartments sometimes! On good long trips, a camaraderie develops within your little group, and sitting facing one another is conducive to conversation. In Poland, I can still ride these often enough, but all new rolling stock is mostly "plane-style" seating...
I have some Giles cartoons in a book with British Railways posters. One shows a snail pulling a train with the caption, "British Rail - We'll get you there eventually". Another has, "Worried about arriving late?? Travel by British Rail and be sure!!" British Rail was always the butt of jokes on TV, Radio and newspaper cartoons. Like the saying goes, "Many a true word said in jest". One radio sketch had Bill Oddie as a (not) very helpful BR ticket office staff member and John Cleese as a passenger trying to buy a ticket, with interruptions by station tannoy announcements, the best of which was, "The train arriving at platform 2 is Stephenson's Rocket. British Rail apologises for the delay to any surviving passengers". Ah, the good old days of BR (Badly Run).....
Everything is relative. I’m quite ignorant of the complaints mentioned. Two of us took the train across England, from a ferry terminal on the wes (Harwich?) to London, and on to Swansea. Putting bicycles on trains is almost unknown here in Canada. Cycling from Liverpool St Station to Paddington was an “adventure”.
Fitting a bicycle on a train in 99% of the UK is a matter for hysterical laughter! There are cycle racks left on some services - if you book in advance. The vast majority of cycle racks were replaced by more seating, or more accurately more standing room, for passengers.
Why did we sell off the railways. WE didn't. The Tories did, simply to make their cronies a shed load of money. Meanwhile millions travel to work every day in over priced cattle trucks.
They could have just privatised the buffet cars and the first class carriages, so the people who want to pay for luxury can do so, while their operators can compete in a positive auction to subsidise the rest of the system which runs on a national timetable and ticketing regime.
People dont realsie that THIS is the reason why the UK state priovatised railways, economists in the government saw it to be unfair that non users of thw service would be taxed for the benefit of users. Those who dont drive cars, dont pay road tax, if we nationalise railways, everyone will pay, yet only a % of the population use them.
Well, thats not entirely true, your railways are run by the millions of Moroccans and Turks whom you pay piss wages too so enabling you to make a profit. If only Dutch people worked on the Railways you would have to pay them so much money it would bankrupt the entire system. EU hahahaha
what he means is that the dutch have bought uk rail companys and are running them with a profit, at the expense of the uk citizen. And stop with the racist rants please...
2021 is not 1994 - most of the railway TOCs are technically ‘nationalised’ due to the pandemic. Passenger numbers are growing - there are problems with investment being cut in the railways and operator problems that are not solved by either public or private. The government needs to invest in the railways more, end the current franchise system and find a new solution. Put passengers first, not profit
Where did that economic book of you comes from. Did you buy it online, in a shop a book store? Who made that book? Who printed that book? Who published that book? Where does the paper comes from? Who designed the characters? Maybe centralization and decentralization working together is the best and both are needed?
What's funny is that it strikes me as severely short sighted to assume that more people are riding trains today because it somehow became more attractive and not, as is happening in the US that wages are stagnant and rail has become a more affordable option. It kills me when politicians and businessmen overlook dwindling resources of consumers in justifying the privatization of public programs, especially since such privatization is always accompanied by a relative reduction in quality and availability while they're deeply subsidized by tax payers. The US prison system is a prime example. Adding a profit motive is not the answer to services essential to people.
keeping the railways on public hands instead of private would benefit most. Partially privatization would have been the key in the future, Deutsche Bahn Is a success.
Intercity train services travel a longer distance and primarily serve the big cities, so economies of scale are truly at work in intercity rail. That portion of the network belongs to the private sector, but where slots on the intercity main lines aren’t leased to a single operator, but rather, competing operators. Grand Central Railway is really the only train operator that does this on a widespread scale. If you can get more operators doing this, you’ll force private operators to compete on price to attract customers. (FYI, when I say intercity rail, the lines I’m referring to are the West Coast Main Line [Avanti AKA FirstGroup + Trenitalia], Great Western Main Line [GWR], Midland Main Line [East Midland Trains], East Coast Main Line [LNER], Cross Country Main Line [Arriva Trains UK], and the Transpennine North Route). Commuter belt services however, belong to the taxpayer. Why? Because they (the commuting taxpayer) often don’t have a choice - when driving to work takes longer and may or may not cost more in petrol, maintenance, and other expenses, rail transport is the only logical method to get from home to work and back again. To most effectively operate a commuter railway (that is, to operate as many peak time services as safely possible and to run those services on time), a monopoly on slots must be held, and if a monopoly on slots is held, then private train operators have no incentive to reduce the price or improve the service.
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Throws up some really good topics for discussion interspersed with some wit. What could be better?
@Andrew Battersby Rubbish - privatisation was the direct result of Tory policies, nothing more, nothing less.
Vcxz🏁🇦🇴😶🌫️🇧🇦🇧🇲😄🥹🥹🥹🥹😆😆😆😘😘🥰😘😚😚😘😘😘😘😘😙😙😙😙😙😙😙😙😙😙😚😝😝😚😚😚😌😇😇🥰😙😙😙😄😆😊😊😣😖😖😖🙁😖🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁🙁😔🙁😔😔😔😔😔🙁🙁😔😔😔😔😔😕😕😕😕😕😕😕😕😞😞😞😞😞😒😒😒😒😒😟😒 4:07 ☹️😊😢🎉😅😊
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Useless and broken down cost of rail 🚆ticket price
He says that sitting in a first class carriage
D. M.?
Conor Malanaphy ....the irony was NOT lost on me......I felt it was kinda a "let them eat cake" moment.
D. M. ....so, are you implying that intelligence is not in a poor person's capacity? ....hmmm.....and the rich wonder why revolutions occur.
@D. M. And thank you sir for your kind gratitude (doffs cap).
@D. M. But with the Labour MP they were sat in standard class. So yes, it does say a lot when Portillo chose to sit in first class.
He's also most well known for losing his seat.
The fact it's cheaper to fly to Europe than it is for a train ticket halfway up the country tells you something is seriously wrong.
train ticket is really expensive in UK, from Heathrow to Victoria i paid 30 £ and in Vienna even for a longer route i paid 4,50€ (from the Airport to my home). 6t times more that is ridiculous.
@John Brighton and wages have remained static for the last 8 years and more of the same to come,
@@derekmulready1523 Wages remain static because immigration is too high, the problem runs across the board in the western world. It's about supply and demand, you have more supply (people) and less demand (work) then wages will freeze or go down. Its a way to artificially lower wages for corporations, in the baby boomer era you could buy a house from a labor job out of highschool, because they had more work then people.
Spread the word, we need to pressure the governments to slow immigration or we will lose our nations, you look at history and our society would not even be in the history books their so young, we have a lot of problems in our laws, our democracy is young.
Ironically they gave the companies an instant monopoly.
Glasgow to London is nearly £100 by train but you can fly with Ryan air for about £15
I realise its not conclusive evidence but surely the fact that foreign state owned railway companies are now bidding for UK contracts tells you a lot about the current state of affairs?
Alex Turlais yeah I was kinda surprised to see the NS logo on some trains when I visited England last year. Basically the Dutch state owns a part of the English railway
J S it does account for about 50% of the money earned each year for the NS. But then, they also make a large loss on the UK market lol
Yep: hit the nail on the head.
It has all been sold off or in the process of. But these idiots love privatising.
@@radioclash84 No passenger service or train has been sold to any foreign business. Do at least be accurate.
An annual ticket between Glasgow and Edinburgh costs the same as one for the whole German network! Guess which works better, guess which is nationalised
The Germans just dropped their fares a further 10%.
Guess which is subsidised by taxpayers?
@@abatesnz Transport is a key public service and better it is, the better the economy can do.
German trains are still way too expensive and have frequent delays.. Swiss railways are really good but expensive.. Austrian railways is where it’s at modern trains cheap and good service..
@@Mishima505 Nope. 100% of the DB is owned by the German government and there are no shares traded at the stock market!
I wish this piece had included some cross-comparison with other countries’ rail systems (France, Spain, Japan, China).
Japan's rail is not inexpensive.
Particularly how much taxpayers subsidise them.
The UK system has large subsidies in spite of privitization. It’s mentioned in the FT video.
@ Like most European countries, Spain needs smaller government relative to its economic activity. It's draining the private sector of the capital it needs to expand.
@@bucketofbarnacles Yes, but they are mostly capital subsidies, funding enhancements and capital maintenance, for infrastructure owners Network Rail, not operating subsidies for the freight (FOCs) and passenger (TOCs) operating companies.
I would suggest the reason passenger numbers have gone up is people are forced onto them.
Living in the south i have to say that my service is worse and considerably more expensive than BR ever was. They recieved less subsidy than now and if Mr Portillo chose cattle class in the rush hour rather than 1st off peak he may offer a slightly less pompous opinion
Nick Appleton Portillo doesn't have to live in the real world, just like the rest of them.
Nick Appleton em
I do agree with you, however I think FT made the decision to do the interview in First Class and off peak.
The subsidies are the problem.
Renfe, SNCF and other state rail companies were told to privatise by the EU. the only country to do so was Britain.
Mrs Thatcher and her illck have a lot to answer for.
Could be worse. In the US they sold the railways to the auto industry, who destroyed them so we would drive or fly instead.
TEENS AND THE RAINBOW what’s a shame is there are sections of Amtrak that are profitable- the unprofitable ones either fed or local governments just keep bailing them out due to the number of jobs that would be lost. Some of the long distance ones have nostalgia attached as well - but they probably could have built some high speed lines with the amount they keep shelling out.
We didn't sell them off to the auto industry, we just sold our politicians to the auto industry.
@David Fakename the fact that even now they're only just suggesting to have rail going been Oxford and Cambridge again after Beeching cut it, is so ridiculous. The two most prestigious university cities! To go from Oxford to Cambridge for any reason requires a changeover and a lot of wasted time. smh
The USA is bigger than Europe!! Hardly a fair comparison 🤣
@@ChrisWoodhead2811 The USA used to have lots of trains and trams but the car and oil companies used lobbying and propaganda to ruin it. The size of the country doesn’t matter, China is also a big country yet it has high speed rail connections.
In 26 years from now we will watching youtube videos ''Why did we sell off the NHS''.
26?
@@b9y They began selling off the railways in 1994 - 26 years ago.
@@b9y However to be honest they have already began selling off the NHS .....
@@nl9546 they started privatising the NHS under Blair's government?
@@neljay9149 well that was because of the neglect from the Tory government before Blair and funding needed to come somewhere! Also Blair's Labour was called 'New Labour' which more more centre left than direction the party right now. Also I never blamed any 'government' I am simply saying that 26years from today the FT will probably be making the same type of video on why the NHS was sold off. The NHS is always a pawn in an election campaign and its a shame that the public sit and back and watch the greatest British institution be broken down bit by bit. When the annual UK wage is around £22,000, the cost of living continues to increase and house prices are ridiculous prices can the average British citizen really afford an American style healthcare?
Portillo sitting in first class, commenting, says it all.
Aye he doesn't hide the posh does he? XD
No room for cameras in cattle class.
Also it's clear he would be a staunch supporter of privatisation since he was part of the cabinet that made it happen in the 90's! He's hardly going to say "Oh, I'm totally for nationalisation" because to do so would be to admit he had made a mistake. Politicians don't admit to mistakes.
It's utterly stupid to privatise something that consumers have no choice in, as the lady near the start pointed out. If I don't like the Scotrail train that takes me from Dundee to Edinburgh can I just wait for a cheaper one supplied by Thameslink or Merseyrail? No, I can't. You use the only service that is available in your area - which is called a monopoly.
I’ve been on one of those new high speed trains. First Class is nice but the rest of the train is really grim and uncomfortable. The old intercity 125s are more comfortable in economy
Are you that poor you can't afford first class? 😂😂😂😂 scrub.
Portillo smugly claiming the rise in passenger numbers as a win for privatisation is really imbecilic when population pressures are so obviously the main factor. Equally, the idea that the public system was bad because public bodies are inherently bad seems like pure ideology. If he was right the Tube and London Overground should be basket cases.
There is amazing irony to have someone sitting in the comfort of first class during off peak hours and waxing lyrical about how wonderful the whole experience of rail travel today is...
London Overground is actually a weird one because TFL actually contract out the operation of the trains as a concession, it is presently operated by Arriva Trains London. So whilst TFL do make most of the decisions with the Overground and thus take the majority of the revenue they don't operate it directly.
There are similar arrangements on TFL Rail and what will be the Elizabeth Line too
Fair point, I guess that's true. TfL only buy the trains, set the timetables and set the fares. Arriva... hire people to do those jobs?
If the service was so bad people would not use the railways, they would drive cars, use planes or live closer to work and commute on foot. Clearly there has been a success in how the railways run.
People always fail to acknowledge that altering their own behavior is a form of competition.
Bushrod Rust Johnson No, it isn't. It's known as intra-market competition - it only works for the benefit of the consumer if alternatives such as car travel or walking are cheaper and viable. In many places, especially the city, these are either not viable (too expensive, high entry costs such as the initial price of the car, or takes too long compared to rail travel), or they are so inconvenient compared to rail travel people will accept the lower quality and higher priced rail administration.
And this isn't just theory - it's called market inflexibility, and it's found in essential, low competition markets such as transport - when you plot passenger numbers against service quality or cost, fare hikes and poorer service have smaller effects on passenger numbers as it would in competitive markets, as people don't have as free a choice to take their custom elsewhere and change their behaviour as you seem to think they do.
I find it hard to understand how people fail to realise car travel and moving house have vast associated costs which keep people forced to use train and bus travel to reach work.
Nice for him as he rides first class
Michael Portillo misses out the reason why British rail (Nationalised railways) was ran very poorly and lead to unreliable service. The main reason was massive underinvestment and piss poor management by the Government at the time, of which he was bloody part of!!
Also, we still plow millions of taxpayers money into the railways to this day, whilst the private companies that run them reap massive profits!
Michael Portillo your full of utter crap as always. The guy can never ever admit the times when he, and especially the Tory government he was a part of at the time, failed us!
The reason for nationalisation simply can't be "it didn't work because underinvestment" every single time - throwing more money at the problem won't help and merely reveals the central problem to this kind of dogma : who will pay for it?? Dont dismiss this central question as simply "another of them stupid things tories say"
Sincerely,
Not a tory
*fritzki1*
I won't don't worry, but it needn't cost a fortune, buying back the various franchises. The solution is (relatively) simple, you wait until each current franchise contract is coming up for renewal but instead of putting them back out for tender you take them back into government ownership, saving the taxpayers the billions it would take to buy the current operating companies out. Yes you would still have to repurchase the likes of the infrastructure and the maintenance company but that won't cost the astronomical fortune that it would going the other way.
Nationalisation won't work in Britain because the country doesn't have a coherent industrial and infrastructure policy that spans 20-50 years, and the political will to stick to it. Otherwise the next British Rail will just end up looking like Indian Railways. The other nations with excellent rail networks (e.g. China, Japan, Germany, France) all have centralised, long-term rail strategies that the nationalised rail companies can use to follow and plan ahead, and guaranteed state investment for them to succeed. For these nations decisions like HS2 and Heathrow expansion would've been a no-brainer, but not for Britain because the government there is weak, and prone to the lassiez-faire argument and politically expedient cop-outs.
To put this into perspective the Chinese have long viewed Britain as past its prime, not because the British are getting poorer, but the country stopped thinking big and started thinking small. Recent events like Brexit and the weakness of the Theresa May government only serves to confirm such bias.
Ryan Cairns ,2
Ryan Cairns He wasn't involved in the 50's you idiot, It was the late 80's when it was virtually BR collapsed.
Plenty countries do it just fine - either we did it wrong, or we're morons
The current privatised system is an embarassement
I think it is just mocked as privatised. If subsidiaries are payed, this is just a hybrid system. Tax-payers money should be totally cut off!
@@csocseszrocsesz highways receive public money, we should cut off that too!!
@@leobragaurbe but the government owns and operates highways the think with privatizing and still subsidizing it with taxpayers dollars doesn’t make sense since it is technically public in that we subsidize but private individuals get the profit which makes no sense
@@jailonbailey2149 I know, I support state operation just like Switzerland's railway operator
@@leobragaurbe almost made a based take. try again.
I remember being stuck on a BR train between Sheffield and Manchester because of a points failure. We sat there for about two hours in the middle of nowhere waiting for an engineer to show up. By the time we got to Stockport one passenger was screaming at the conductor. "But you're a representative of British Rail, aren't you? I've probably lost ten thousand pounds because you couldn't get me to Manchester on time! The sooner you lot get bloody privatized the better!"
Then a few years after privatization I was trying to get from Yorkshire to Manchester again, but the Arriva train staff had gone on a no-warning strike and I found myself stranded for a few hours at Barnsley. Never made it to Manchester, I had to give up and go home on a bus.
I don't know if Britain will ever get its trains sorted out. It seems like nationalization v privatization is the wrong debate. There's something deeper wrong with the system.
I can echo your concerns thoroughly.
Anything to/from anywhere to London works more like a clock work (see Virgin / Avanti). But anything east to west is a mess.
@@ashishtripathi7138 I don't know about London working like clockwork. I used to commute into London on the Hastings line (run by Southeastern). The complaints made by passengers in the 1960s footage in this video were the same ones we were making on that line when I was using it daily two years ago! Trains being terminated early, turning up late, being sent back down the line in the other direction or just being outright cancelled was a common occurrence. Quite often I'd get to Charing Cross at the end of my working day to find all trains were cancelled and not know how (or when) I'd get home. It was a nightmare.
Stuck on an overcrowded service from Meadowhall to Leeds last month due to a failure at Manchester. It was so busy at Leeds they had to open the automated gates to lessen the crush. Madness. That the first time I've travelled by train for a few years now and cant believe how bad its got.
Indeed, it’s called the unions
That is not near privatisation! This is a hybrid system, because the tax-payers pay subsidiaries through the state. If the state would not pay anything, then companies could not allow themselves to overprice the service, because there is a breaking point, when people say, i will not pay any cent for this shitty service.
British rail was never as bad as it's being claimed. It was run very efficiently and they used to design and build their own trains including the HST that was so good and reliable it is still being used.
I had to laugh at the insinuation that the increase in passenger numbers is down to privatisation. Correlation does not equal causation. The passenger numbers have increased largely because commuting by car in the last 25 years has become considerably more painful. And it's not just because of the increase in traffic, but the cost of fuel, insurance, and if you work in a city, the cost of parking is ridiculous. The train is cheaper, quicker and more convenient. Or at least, it was.
But let's also look at the decline in numbers. Train usage had been on a downturn since the mid sixties, when car ownership turned from being aspirational to entirely feasible, and then on to almost essential. Of course, given the choice between a car and a train back then, the car would always win because of the sheer convenience. It didn't help that trains were decrepit, but even if they were glorious bastions of luxury transportation, they'd still have struggled.
The turning point for trains was always going to be that where there were more cars than the road network could handle, which I feel happened some time in the late nineties and the graph on train usage in this video appears to back that up.
This. Privatisation may have played a role in increased train passenger numbers, but there are so many other factors.
The spate of road building in the 50s and 60s, especially motorways, then cars like the Mini and later Japanese brands, along with low fuel prices (other than the oil crisis in the 70s) would all take time to have an effect. Facilities like parking at workplaces and in city centre all had to be built too. I think the rate of decline in rail passenger numbers shows that quite clearly. And it was the 90s when driving started to become a little inconvenient, but the 2000s that really started to see far too much traffic.
Now there is surely also a not inconsiderable amount of train travel due to environmental concerns.
The increase in passengers has nothing to do with privatisation - that is false correlation and Portillo knows this. Some sectors within a country should be nationalised - you wouldn't have a private police force. I personally believe a government can do anything more efficient and cheaper than a private company can, if properly run. A capitalist economy is the only real one can work, one where people are rewarded for their work. We do not want a state owned supermarket, but we don't want a private police force and we certainly don't want a private railway system. If you want it privatised then it should receive no public subsidy, but oh wait we tried that with Railtrack, and look how that ended out - quite literally fatal. BTW the most efficiently run franchise in the history of the railways as we know them today was East Coast, a government run franchise that paid over £1 billion back into the treasury - and "nationalised railways don't work". If persons in government say they can't run things in government they shouldn't be in bloody government.
I could go on for ever about how privatisation is constantly misrepresented as great. No the railways were not run acceptably in past government hands, and I do not want us to see a return to that. But private ownership should never happen to key services, the railways being one. Just because your train was late doesn't mean railway technology is crap - it's false correlation. Just because past governments have incompetently & corruptly managed the railways doesn't mean a state railway has to be crap....
A private police force doesn't work because there is no natural revenue stream to fund it.
When viewing rail investment across Europe (i.e alternative models) there are various flaws, national ownership is far from a panacea.
"BTW the most efficiently run franchise in the history of the railways as we know them today was East Coast, a government run franchise that paid over £1 billion back into the treasury"
BTW your statement is bollocks, the film and source data show it was South West Trains, who recently lost their franchise.
The key words are "if properly run". Politicians and bureaucrats are not business people and get paid no matter what. Knowing how to win elections and how to run a government are two completely different things. Plus they have many other things to worry about when it comes to overall public support. The problem is the best placed people to be in government are never going to put themselves forward as a result of how much money they can make in other areas of life and who your average voter is. My biggest problem with the current railway system is that it's not remotely free market, at the same time we can hardly call it nationalized either.
All government ever does is run things inefficiently and at massive expense compared to the private sector. I can only assume you're young or a full blown communist because there's no other reason anyone would say such a thing.
Governments have no incentive to run railways at a profit, since they can be subsidised by taxpayers. Since they have no competition the service becomes worse and worse, so less and less people use it. But that's okay, because the government can just subsidise it more! So now we're paying more money for a worse service! Even if fares are cheaper on this new system the money hasn't just come out of nowhere, it's either come from debts or taxes. Public ownership of the railways sounds like a good idea, but looking into it, it clearly is not.
It's not so much nostalgia and more seeing what other countries of similar populations and size are doing. Germany and France both have state owned railway that function much better and cheaper, they also have invested in UK Railway which helps subsidised rail fares in there home Nations.
German railways are semi-privatised actually, which is exactly what FT are suggesting. British companies even run some German railways!! Like National Express...
Thomas Crabtree Your very right, I ment to say that , but there is a lot of government restrictions on the private companies not something a small government UK Conservative Party would be in favour of.
All European countries - except of UK, and Liechtensten (who uses ÖBB) have national railway companies. No other country in Europe except of UK that has tracks owned by non-state company. There are public companies competing between each other on some lines, but that's very rare. It's even rare to see private companies doing anything outside of UK.
Literally all tracks in the UK are owned by Network Rail, a state owned company
You wanna come to america? Go ahead, ride on amtrak! Costs 2 times as much to ride as a plane, and as fast as a car. Ah, and I forgot to mention that it's completely run by the government.
Let's give it to corporations who pay zero tax.
Gavin Nash they do pay taxes... Lol
Which one n how much?
Let's give it to the government who can't afford it. And if they do then quality and customer satisfaction will drop instantly.
Hans Gruber the ownership of railways belongs to the government, educate yourself.
sounds about right
This happened here in New Zealand in the 80s, sadly after 20 year's with absolutely no infrastructural development, the government had to re purchase it all back but at a huge cost plus billions of dollars to get it safely and securely into operating, now so many huge range of development is being done, sadly the original sale was to the government's friend's whom sold it on,
Telling a Government Railway to 'Make money everywhere' via national caused great cuts, I believe railways on government ownership should take its yield from the income earning streams such as rush hour commuters and inject it to cover the cost of areas with small ridership.
That was a great little film, and the kind of political independence/lack of agenda that the FT does so well. One of the comments interested me - the idea of a state/NFP competing for a franchise. You can do so for marginal cost on a level playing field. If it is successful and if it manages to deliver better value than private TOC's whilst delivering a decent service, then the model can be tried with additional franchises. If not, then the market finds its level.
Paddy Robinson-Griffin ;
Lack of an agenda? Are you having a laugh? Conservatives and free market advocates were allowed to dominate and dictate the narrative. Their assertions went unchecked and unchallenged. Meanwhile the advocates for nationalisation were given less time and their arguments given less weight. How can you give someone like Portillo such a prominent role and expect this to be unbiased? He was at the centre of privatisation, his reputation was staked in it. Of course he's going to say it was the right thing to do.
When the government service wins the contracts the private operators will bleat that they have an "unfair advantage" or something.
Also to add to what Blackstar is saying about Portillo. He makes a snide comment about how the BR trains were old and dirty, while sitting in first class. If he sat with the rest of us 'plebs' he might realise that an ancient pacer is pretty much the standard in many parts of the country.
I don't ask for much: trains being decently on time, sufficient amount of seats and fair prices. Other countries manage to do it just fine with nationalised systems.
No, not really. What ends up happening is that the public company takes special "loans" (which are never paid back) "bailouts" and tax relief. Either the Private Companies fail in the face of subsidization. Or the Private company succeeds through innovation, and the government begins to fear bankruptcy will mean they never get their grants/loans/bailout money back, so they step in to guarantee business to their pet project.
Public companies are never competitive, and NEVER the solution.
as an American, privatisation has been the root of all evils: the Prison industry, the health care industries (insurance and pharmaceuticals), etc...
"The railways are in decline. Something must be done. Privatisation is something. Therefore it must be done.
underrated comment XD
Running a passenger railroad is an extremely capital_intensive business. It may be that a state_controlled model is the optimum means of doing so. But regardless of whether it's govt or private owned there should be accountability and standards for excellence.
4:28 that is simply the greatest transition in a video ever.
Portillo :
"Trains were old" - wrong, some were brand new and designed to run at 140 mph, as BR was about to start running trains at that speed until this was cancelled by privatisation, UK Trains still, run at a 125 mph maximum. Under BR new trains were manufactured when the government allowed it and the trains they replaced were cascaded and reused on lesser services, this being a sensible way of reusing expensive resources. Post privatisation the government still controls ordering new trains and older trains are often scrapped.
... "they were very often dirty", - Some older trains were dirtier, but BR was only given 1/3 of the amount of money that UK rail has today and so had to cut corners somewhere. (Source : DfT (UK government, Department for Transport) - UK Rail costs around 3.8 times the amount that it did in BR days, allowing for inflation
.... "and the most famous symbol was the curly British Rail sandwich, because the standard of catering was so poor" - It wasn't, BR sold thousands of sandwiches each day and hundreds of cooked meals. Post-privatisation, the standard of catering on the majority of trains is non-existent and it is impossible to buy sandwiches on trains. The hundreds of BR buffet & kitchen coaches have been replaced with a hand-full of kitchen coaches on a few long-distant services, the majority of train services today have no catering at all, and for the remainder a small trolley tries to work its way down the train offering a very limited range of pre-manufactured snacks and as they have no fridges, no sandwiches.
... "so it was universally acknowledged that the nationalised industries were giving an extremely poor standard of service because they had no accountability" - wrong BR was answerable and accountable to the DfT who also controlled what money BR was allowed. BR gave an excellent and very cost-effective service given the comparably small amount of money it was allowed. Today's private railway is costing the UK tax-payer 3.8 times the amount and it can be argued that as UK Rail today is run by the DfT, who are answerable to nobody.
Finally, it is Interesting to note that the interview with Lillian Greeenwood took place on a HST, a train that was built by BR in the late 1970s - one of the old dirty trains that was running when privatisation was introduced, although despite privatisation, it is even older now. The coach they were sitting on (a BR Mk 3 coach) comprises a rigid aluminium honeycomb construction, that won awards as a world-leading design in the 1970s. 25 years of privatisation with the same dirty old trains. The interview with Michael Portillo took place on one of the fleet of brand-new 125 mph trains that run out of Paddington station. British Rail had advanced plans to electrify the lines out of Paddington in the 1990s and introduce new 140 mph trains, but privatisation saw these plans cancelled with no plans to increase the line speed above 125 mph. This line, however, was partly electrified a few years ago, around 20 years later.
well said
I'm sure the Train Networks look great from your vantage point in First Class Mr Portillo.
UK: we have terrible railways
US: hold my beer
The same issue. Oil lobby's ripped up the american boxcars. All of them. They used to cover pretty much the whole country. Then built highways directly through the center of every large city, only stopping in New York's Greenwich village (by a protest group) which is now the largest stock of 19th century architecture in the world and probably the nicest place to live in the city.
Otherwise, Amtrak would not have to play second fiddle to freight companies who own all the cross country lines. If the US wasn't enthral to oil, they would have a world class high speed rail system.
At this point, now the roads are more or less gridlocked they are not going to see an efficient rail system for the best part of a century. So the only sensible way to travel long distance is by air which is polluting and even now airspace is pretty much at breaking point.
We need a graph of the government expenditure on the railways before and after privatisation to see how things have changed. Also there was no comment on the pillage by private industry of the ripe railworkers pension fund.
I think the biggest problem is lack of interconnected routes. Everything is focused on only going to or from London!
If you want to travel east to west, in some cases you have to travel right into London from up to 100 miles away, to travel by train to somewhere that’s possibly only 20 miles away as the crow flies! And we wonder why the network is overcrowded?!
An example; Kettering/Corby to Peterborough. Places close to each other, not well connected by road or rail, but has numerous commuters between the two areas. The country roads are blocked to a standstill at peak hours.
All the railway needs is 50 metres of track at Manton Junction to create a triangle and therefore a connection from Kettering/Corby to Peterborough. That’s all it needs!
But without it, you have to either travel up to Leicester and across on a slow train from there, or into London and then out again to Peterborough up the east coast!
All this over 50m of missing track that could easily be put in!!! It’s farcical but hasn’t been done because it doesn’t benefit London.
This is just one example. There are hardly any fast East-West routes! HS2 seems to have an open chequebook for the first phase from London to Birmingham (duplicating existing routes!), but the later phases connecting places like Manchester and Sheffield are in jeopardy, when they currently have only very poor connections! It’s a joke.
I don't see how going back to a nationalised system and all its problems (underinvestment and no accountability to customers being key ones) will be an improvement. The privatisation has clearly brought improvements, the numbers speak for themselves. Instead, the system should be reformed in ways that reduce fares if possible without taking them into government ownership.
But there are nationalised railways in say Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark that have excellent quality, frequency, capacity and fares... Which are 40% more efficient.
Why do privatization when nationalization works (often better) for less money?
@@simondahl5437 What you don't see is the tax money (or worse, borrowed money) subsidising those tickets, making it feel cheaper than it really is.
Anyway, the UK government is moving to nationalise the railways by regulating it and by taking on the industry's debts, so the nationalists and socialists are winning the arguments, or at least are lucky the virus came along to give the government the emergency powers to force this through.
@@MUSTASCH1O, But those networks work, and are still cheaper than Britain’s privatized...
@@simondahl5437 I wouldn't know, I've never read up on Nordic Train systems. Are they cheaper when you factor in the cost of subsidies? Are they really more reliable?
Almost every UK train I've ever used was on time or arrived early, and most are of comfortable quality, so the point of argument shouldn't be whether the trains work but of overall cost.
It is a bit more complicated in the UK though. We have a mixture of privatisation and continued government subsidies, so I admit the comparison is hard to make.
@@MUSTASCH1O, My local system didn't make a profit, but only a million dollar deficit. Sure, that's with heavy subsidies but according to British sources the British network still costs 40% more with what I would consider to be worse results. But who knows.
Why can't the UK just do as its neightbour countries and run its trains not to get profit, but to give a good service. Even if it costs more in investments.
Thank you for your message, Mikel. That is a very good question and one that the FT has been trying to answer in a series it published in 2018 on privatisation. There's also the question of whether other private systems could offer some lessons to the UK. You might find this article from our bureau chief in Tokyo, Robin Harding, interesting: www.ft.com/content/9f7f044e-1f16-11e9-b2f7-97e4dbd3580d. In it, he discusses Japan's private railway system and how it succeeded where the UK failed. If you want to see the full series on nationalisation in the UK, take a look here: www.ft.com/content/40ef9ff8-fd4b-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167. Let us know what you think.
This video did not talk about how these “private railway companies” are owned by foreign states
At the time this video was released I was happily crisscrossing the UK on trains. Two years before I spent two months in Japan with a Japan Rail Pass and a Suica card for the Tokyo subways. Absolutely amazing! What really bothered me about the UK, and France, was passengers had to wait and stare up a signboards waiting for the moment it would tell them which track their train was going to be on-- then they had ten minutes to race to their train. Every time I was in a major station I saw exhausted commuters being subjected to this this passive-aggressive incompetence. I was told it had always been this way, nationalized or not. I had a huge backpack, so several times I asked a train employee if they knew which track my train would be on. Only once was the answer I got incorrect. In Japan, also with myriad private train companies, I could buy (or reserve with my Rail Pass) a ticket for a specific seat in a specific car for a specific date and time months in the future. Painted on the platform number on that ticket, is the train's number, car number and whether this spot is the front or rear door. And that's where it will be. That's how to treat passengers with respect and keep high standards.
For me the litmus test for public or private is, will this same nonsense continue? Trains are political only because a lot of money is involved. What railways really are is a specific range of practical functions; with necessary human accommodation. It's not political, it's pragmatic, or it's just incompetent noise. How do you know if they're doing it right? Well, take a trip to Japan, are your trains running as well? (Or China, also excellent trains). The symmetry of the neglectful public employee is the PR nonsense, covering over equally callous money grubbing. (btw the class war in the UK? Congratulations you all lost. But in the contest for the stupidest leader? We (US) won that race to surrealism.)
It's interesting that some passengers in this video are grumpy at Richard Branson. I'm quite a fan of Virgin, I flew to and from Heathrow on a Virgin plane, and traveled on several Virgin trains while in the UK. My experience was of course, limited. (They did leave me at the Belfast port expecting a bus....) On one hand he seems to want his companies to treat customers well, but of course he's also another billionaire.
What might be interesting would be to collect all the complaints about the two Virgin rail companies, give this list to Branson and say, 'you're going to run all the trains in the UK that have lost their franchises, for the government. Do a good job and you'll be paid.
Just as communists seem to make good capitalists, some capitalists would probably be good socialists.
btw the views out of the train windows? The UK wins! Shinkansen trains have sound barrier walls that block a lot of the view, and kudzu vines growing everywhere create a green 'wall'.
And yes I know most of this is a lot of nonsense. Cheers.
These are the most expensive trains in Europe, no, no investment in infrastructure, pork projects like the high speed rail to the north. I don't live there, the majority of UK's population will not use that train but we are funding it through our taxes
And despite the high fares, still the population is the one paying for infrastructure that they don't use
Pedro pepe you have no idea, it's like paying for others welfare, I paid 26k last year on tax and NI plus what my employer paid so a nice nifty sum of around 32k
Now I was made redundant and I get paid not even 300£ a month, and this will only happen for 6 months because I had the nerve of setting some cash aside for a rainy day
So paying indiscriminately for others is something I am tired of doing
Paying extortionate taxes is not patriotic, and this shotgun marriages to other familyes via extraction of my labour to fund others does not make me and would not make you happy
But then again, you might be one of those on welfare or that pays little taxes but gets the same benefits, so you of course have no objection
Pigs do not complain about feeding at the trough
Yeah that's not really a valid argument, is it?
I mean most Britons won't use your local hospital even once in their live but still they're paying for the NHS
@Dissonantia Cognitiva The tube and bus networks in London are still nationalised and my taxes pay for those, yet I live 250 miles away from there and have very little cause to use them. So what's your point? We all pay in for the overall benefit of the country. As the saying goes, "If you don't like it, you know where the door is." Just make sure the door doesn't bang you on the arse on the way out.
Where I live is at the northernmost end of the HS2 line, so in theory it's of use to me. Except it really isn't as much of a benefit as they are making it out to be. I'm still struggling with the concept of why we're spending billions of pounds and destroying acres of open land to make a train line that will get people between Manchester and London in a smidgeon under two hours, when there's a service already in existence that can do it almost as quickly. Apart from the odd stopper service, most of the current trains can make the journey in 2 hours 20, and the commuter rush trains can do it in 2 hours 5. How many billions to save five minutes?
How is it that Japan Rail, divided into segments with separate private owners, can run a seamless, punctual and efficient service with affordable fares but Network Rail cannot?
It’s not affordable. 500£ for unlimited train rides for a week wtf
didi you misread japanese rail for british rail? or are you saying japanese rail is not at all affordable?
You're right about Japan Railways being the best example. I wish the UK could follow suit but it seems like people don't want to think these things through. Network Rail only *maintain* *the* *rail* *infrastructure* . They don't run any services; that's up to the TOCs (Train Operating Companies) who have use trains on lease from the ROSSCOs (Rolling Stock Operating Companies). All this so TOCs can run a service on NetworkRail's track.
Japan has excellent communication between ALL its departments because it is under one roof of a company: JR. Our system is not, and it's justified to question why the heck we haven't followed the Japanese model. It's so odd!
The best examples for private railroads are North American companies. There's no complicated artificial crap like keeping rolling stock and operating companies separate from the infrastructure company. There are just railroads.
I've ridden a train from Osaka to Tokyo and this single journey was the best I've ever encountered in my life ..... EVER!!!!
I know why. Tories smelt money. When they bankrolled the refit of the entire signalling system with unproven radio based technologies, that project was the most expensive engineering project in the world. It didn't work at all and they had to rehire the old BR staff to supervise the re-implementaion of the original system.
We now subsidise the railways to the tune of 200% of what they were subsidised before privatisation. Dr. Beeching advised 50% of the stations were mothballed and so we lost half the destinations, cutting of swathes of the country, markedly seaside resorts. Beechings findings were based on route usage and ticket returns, ignoring the larger overall infrastructure and how that affected subsequent routes, let alone overall economic impact.
I remember travelling on an intercity from Kings Cross when I was young and it was chaos. These days, given the money our family had back then, we would have been going down the motorway to save money in our Ford Cortina estate with missmatched door and bonnet and flight safety belts in the back. A far more arduous journey than having to stand for a few stops outside of London.
Portillo says, "get your Super 8's out if you think Nationalisation is good". So why is the rest of Europe's railways run by the government and better in every respect?
Since this video Virgin gave the route back to the government and the DfT run east cost line is now the most profitable in the country - only one other operator actually turns a profit and it's the GWR but that profit is negligible.
It's pure Tory ideology when you sack every single British Rail employee in one go and wonder why these fancy new inexperienced companies, bloated with management botch everything.
National Express were given the east cost line before Virgin and they won the contract by undercutting every other bid in what is in hindsight an unrealistic target to meet but rather than simply give NE more money like they do nowadays, they took the line back then sold it to some other company with much less ambitious targets.
The railway system is an economic driver, providing that service is accessible by the majority. Businessmen travelling to and from London are the only target market for the current system so ticket prices don't make sense unless your company is paying or you expect to make back that money directly from profit gained form that journey.
Less immediate returns from rail travel such as family cohesion or tourism is completely ignored. As Thatcher said. "There is no community." I think that was it.
"one man was attacked with an umbrella" brilliant
I used to study and live in Coventry, as a Foreign student. On weekends use to travel to Birmingham for Indian curry and shopping. I think the railway (Coventry -Birmingham route) was overloaded with people standing, especially during the morning hours, and with very few foods or beverage purchase facilities. However, on longer trips/routes, Virgin trains and other liner services had better services like food and bar counter drinks, from which you can select miniature versions of Gin/ whiskey etc. Overall British railway is not bad but just a bit congested.
Atlee's government had to nationalise the railways, the war had devastated them and the companies were effectively bankrupt. Lack of investment in the 1960's and 70's had degraded the service. Yes allow private companies use the rails (freight etc), however, the main passenger provider should be the government. Letting it transition from franchise to public would be cheap...
Has that guy (who travels 1st class) ever seen Abelio's trains, or some trains in the northern part of the country? They are dirty and old but they are private so hey ho.
Also, when it is cheaper to fly or drive and pay for parking rather than taking the train, there is something very wrong with the model imposed.
BR got me to & from school every day and up to London on a regular basis - no problem.
Lee Humphries Thats why...Everything goes to London thats its main priority. Everywhere else is significant problems.
Sorry to repeat part of my reply to Paul Davis, but I would like to see a table of fares from the 80s and journey times and one from now. As for investment, ha ha, for years the franchise companies ran the same old BR locos and rolling stock! When the one armed Scotsman was in charge things were looking up....
The quality was terrible.
@@tou7331 The quality IS terrible. Have you been on a French train, or an Irish train, or a German train, or a Portuguese train, etc... Why is Britain willing to accept such unbelievably bad standards, and pay so much for it.
Late, poor service, expensive... Just get it fixed ffs. Don't care why it's privatised. Put the customers first for once
Of course rail usage declined between 1945 and 1994. It's because car ownership greatly increased, not due to mismanagement.
One of the options only hinted at is the QuANGO; while the BBC is often criticised, it's well regarded globally for quality of output.
If rail is going to be a perpetual halfbreed of public and private, why not use the same model that has worked so well elsewhere?
Pretty much the plans of the Great British Railways plan
I live on the Windermere Branch, the other day (5th April) our ENTIRE daily service was cancelled. Any time there's an issue around Manchester etc we suffer
So glad Portillo lost in 1997
Shame you have so little joy in your life, isn't it?
Privatisation = the privatisation of profits and public ownership of bailouts/ losses
I enjoyed this short film, It's a much bigger and more complex subject though and it simply cannot be tackled in 15 minutes....maybe a series!
Alisdair Hamilton-Wilkes It is a little..! Here's a good place to start: th-cam.com/video/M0VADl_SgAE/w-d-xo.html
Anyone who thinks Southern is bad has clearly never used Northern before
What’s a raiway?
😶!!!😶
Hong Kong subway is semi-privated and running well. Try contacting them to manage your railway for positive results.
Hong-Kong MTR is part of the joint venture running South Western Railway. It is losing money because of extensive strikes and likely to fail before year end.
Privatisation has been a fecking disaster.
Gordon Bradley
So were the nationalised railways a disaster.
Hugo Lindum
The national railway systems ran perfectly well until the Tories decided to defund them till they collapsed and they could flog them off cheap to other Tories.
I remember being pulled from London to Newcastle behind the " silver fox " Mallard class in carriages lined in mahogany, brass, and etched glass. Fabulous !
Of course the Tories are working the same scam on the NHS right now !
Did you not just see the ending? When governments control industries, quality and customer satisfaction always drop. When there is no competition, there is no incentive to improve customer satisfaction.
Gordon Bradley
That is just not true. Under funding was a factor. But so was poor management and a system run for the convenience of the workers and the unions, rather than the passengers. The nationalised railways were grubby, but very affordable.
The real problem with the privatization of the railways is that there is no competition and, consequently, half-capitalism does not get anywhere. Either trains from different companies run on the same line, which keep prices low and offer good service to attract customers, or keep the whole system under state control; giving the individual lines does not lead to anything. Look what happens in Italy, the only trains that offer a good service are those that have to compete with a rival company (Italo).
Facts. You can’t subsidise some, let the govt control some parts and limit over regulate the private railways. They have no incentive to improve cos they’re just gonna keep getting govt handouts.
I always assumed it was the last frantic bit of asset stripping done to benefit the Tories and their mates who no doubt had their share of profit from the cheap sell off of surplus land owned by the railway.
Yes I agree, no mention of that though. I find it incredible to believe Portillo et al didn't have the vision to see how important the rail system would be on a small island like Britain. I would also like to see a table of fares from the 80s and journey times and one from now. As for investment, ha ha, for years the franchise companies ran the same old BR loco s and running stock.
It was.
That may be true and I condemn it. But do you people not understand, that when the government controls industry, there is zero incentive to make quality better. Thus consumer satisfaction massively decreases and governments still bay billions (which this country doesn't have) to run the industry. It's just like the NHS. there is no incentive to improve its service which is why its so shite; only difference there is that people will always need medicine unlike with trains where you can choose different transportation.
Dear Hans - Firstly I object to being referred to condescendingly as 'you people'. Secondly I have spent 40 years at senior level in private industry and I can tell you that the way we make money is to cut corners and take risks. You cannot do that when you are running essential services. In addition you can't afford the luxury of running up debt and letting the company go bust. The pragmatic answer is to run essential services as Government owned and let cut throat competition drive those areas of the economy selling non-essential goods where there is plenty of competition, the mantra that private companies run things more efficiently is just that - a mantra to persuade the public that privatisation is a good thing. It bears no relation to reality.
Like the way your mate Brown sold off all our gold.
And here in India, our regime is incessantly moving towards privatisation of railways across regions.
They have deferred partly due to covid, but some cunning elements will bring it some day or other.
Learn from others !!
When some in some country someone "Let's privatise the railway" the answer is "Great Brittan" an the discussion ends.
What about japan?
Japan did it without separating track, operation and rolling stock ownership. It is as if the UK had returned to the pre-BR era. About a quarter of the plethoric Japanese National Railroad employees lost their position, including the more troublesome ones. JR Freight is the exception: They do not own tracks and run their trains on the various passenger companies rails.
120 containers pulled by a locomotive for 1000 miles = 6370 gallons of diesel. A Semi-truck with a single container for 1000 miles = 167 gallons of diesel fuel. Thus you would need 20,040 gallons of diesel by trucks to move 120 containers. Furthermore a locomotive can last 2 decades. A semi-truck? about 1 million miles or about 4 years...
120 containers would only go a short distance in the UK, before needing to be split up and transported on far less efficient modes of transport to their disparate destinations.
Places like the US, Canada, Australia, can really use distance to their benefit and yes, for long distances, rail is by far the most efficient land-based method of transporting anything, whether people or goods. In the UK, a US/CA/AU style train would still be applying full power and trying to accelerate when it reached its destination.
There's no competition ? What's Rifkin talking about ? You have to use the particular operator, and pay extortionate fares or drive, which is eminently cheaper, which is not what public transport should stand for.
Yes, no long term strategy as Avantime points out above.
idiert the busdoud
Louise Corley Eh ?
Think about it mate; he means there'd be zero competition within the rail network. There will always be people who have to use the rail. Those people will get a better service if they have to choose a service of rail. Taxi services will be way too much; busses will be unreliable and long. Only other choice is the car but then that means you have to have a licence, a car, tax, insurance plus parking which is always bs. So he's right to talk about competition within the rail industry because many people have no other viable choice.
Well, if we wanted true competition drives would have to pay to maintain the roads, likely on a per mile used basis, you would have to pay to use a airport as a airline, a fee which fully supports the airline, and in a market like that rail would likely be a lot cheaper, in comparison
Government should be in the business of regulating business as opposed to being in the business of being in business.
short answer: tories
British train fare is way too expensive compared to other European countries. I think we need to have a look at the European model where low fares and profit can be made at the same time.
Why? Neoliberalism.
I live in London and it used to cost me 1/4 of my monthly salary to get to work, it was a total joke!!!! and constant delays!! all because each part of my journey is owned by a different company
No mention of successful nationalised railways in places around the world. Why do some politicians think that we can manage a Brexit despite not believing we can even manage a nationalised railway like in Japan for example?
Then it should also be mentioned how many world states have denationalized railroads, resulting in them quickly catching up in performance to the most profitable and efficient ones in the world (the U.S.).
I'm pretty sure the idea of shitcanning the E.U. comes from the same kind of reasoning as privatizing railroads: less government.
@@MilwaukeeF40C It's the pure selfishness of the retired to call for complete deregualtion and the profit boom for their pensions that would happen at the expense of all the workers getting squeezed into the dust.
The boomers have it good and always did. They are not willing to believe that they should have a social conscience. "There is no such thing as Society"
Fuckers.
Japanese Railways were nationalised in 1949. In the end JNR was considered to be unmanageable because its unions were too powerful. At privatisation i 1987, JNR was divided in six integrated passenger units (owning tracks, operations and rolling stock in a specific area) and one national freight company and the most troublesome employees were dismissed. It worked well but the UK opted for a different type of privatisation a few years later.
There is an optimal balance to be struck. And I think that is the TfL model. The state owns the infrastructure, which is then operated by a private contractor who are hired and paid based on performance.
Look up the Beeching cuts, and find out how well the government ran the railways when they owned the entire system. They ripped up 1/3 of all railway lines, and closed over half of all stations in the UK in the 1960s alone. Pure vandalism.
Creating a private monopoly called "RailTrack" that owned all the railway infrastructure was a stupid idea. We should firstly change the laws on planning permission, so it's as easy as possible to build new railway lines, then second we should break up the railway lines into dozens of different companies, so they actually have to compete against each other on a route by route basis. For example, you can get to London from Birmingham either by Moor Street-Marylebone, or from New Street-Euston. Same with Worcester-London, you can either take GWR through the Cotswolds and Oxford, or you can go via Birmingham New Street with London Midland. If there were genuine alternatives, then train companies wouldn't be able to rip-off their customers, because they would simply use another provider.
Private companies don't "always do things better", but that's not the point. Privatization should mean that people who aren't involved aren't forced to pay, which is why the current system is such a shambles. Private companies should not receive a penny of taxpayer money.
Agreed. There is no longer a direct railway between Perth and Edinburgh. That's ridiculous. It's a straight line on the map and the track used to be there.
The train now goes Perth-Dundee-Most of Rural East Fife - Edinburgh.
It could have been a 30 minute journey.
Madness.
So your proposal is that several companies should each carry the (enormous) cost of owning and operating trains, all offering journeys from the same departure point to the same destination, but travelling along different routes (thereby all running part empty trains so reducing earning potential), and all having to compete for passengers against each other. Do you seriously believe this will lead to cheaper fairs and better quality? Surely you can think through what would actually happen in reality under this system???!! Hints: loss leaders, cost cutting, mergers, poor quality, lack of investment, safety breaches, ultimate collapse, state bail outs, etc
Clever. Misspelling the ad on purpose so people click on it to flex their grammatical muscles
LMAOOOO the advert for this video is "why do we sell the raiways" love me a good raiway
I've ridden on French National Railways (SNCF) and the service is, although expensive, excellent. It seems that, in Britain, the service is not excellent yet expensive. Hmmm. There seems to be a disconnect in Britain. The SNCF gets huge state subsidies because it provides an essential service, not only to private companies, but to the travelling public. This does not seem to be the case in the UK.
"privatization" is a religion of its own.
It's a way to induce the inequality(giving certain individual an opportunity to get rich).
Inequality is certainly growing in England, so it did its purpose.
Railway gave the country a empire status(as a public project, the profit wasn't the goal but the boosting of the economy was) and they gave it away so willingly.
The invented the technology and were exporting the technology but now they are importing it from another country which used to buy the technology from England.
Privatization virus is now spreading in US even quicker, and look how their economy is doing.
So, should HS2 have been funded from taxpayers as it currently is, or private-funded? Because it's turning out to be an expensive waste. Also, you mentioned that the railways were a public project- were they?
Should have asked Portillo why it's ok for foreign state-owned entities to run our railway services but not ok for British state-owned entities to do so. Or why he believes that a UK state-owned railway operator would be as bad as BR was, when BR received less subsidy than the privatised TOCs do now. Or why the east coast main line had a good service when it was briefly renationalised, but a poor service before and since.
It really get's my goat up when they say Do you Remember the 70's Yeah we didnt have computers! and AI was the stuff of sci-fi. Are you seriously telling me Mr Portillo in 50yrs we havent evolved...and now we are smarter we can keep an eye on the crooks better
BR was a disaster because Portillo and his mates didn't get Orient Express service.
Trains are not meant to be Concord, they're meant to move ordinary people from A to B cheaply and efficiently. In other words, they are a public utility.
I liked the trains that had compartments
Me too, and sadly they are being discontinued everywhere, it seems. Such a calmer and more civilized way to travel. You also meet people in those compartments sometimes! On good long trips, a camaraderie develops within your little group, and sitting facing one another is conducive to conversation. In Poland, I can still ride these often enough, but all new rolling stock is mostly "plane-style" seating...
I have some Giles cartoons in a book with British Railways posters.
One shows a snail pulling a train with the caption, "British Rail - We'll get you there eventually".
Another has, "Worried about arriving late?? Travel by British Rail and be sure!!"
British Rail was always the butt of jokes on TV, Radio and newspaper cartoons. Like the saying goes, "Many a true word said in jest".
One radio sketch had Bill Oddie as a (not) very helpful BR ticket office staff member and John Cleese as a passenger trying to buy a ticket, with interruptions by station tannoy announcements, the best of which was, "The train arriving at platform 2 is Stephenson's Rocket. British Rail apologises for the delay to any surviving passengers".
Ah, the good old days of BR (Badly Run).....
When I lived in England in the mid 80s, British Rail was terrible.
Everything is relative. I’m quite ignorant of the complaints mentioned. Two of us took the train across England, from a ferry terminal on the wes (Harwich?) to London, and on to Swansea. Putting bicycles on trains is almost unknown here in Canada.
Cycling from Liverpool St Station to Paddington was an “adventure”.
Fitting a bicycle on a train in 99% of the UK is a matter for hysterical laughter!
There are cycle racks left on some services - if you book in advance. The vast majority of cycle racks were replaced by more seating, or more accurately more standing room, for passengers.
Why did we sell off the railways. WE didn't. The Tories did, simply to make their cronies a shed load of money. Meanwhile millions travel to work every day in over priced cattle trucks.
thank you FT for not showing the amount of government money spent on the railways when in public hands VS private. respect to you.
And people still voted for the conservative again..... British people clearly asked for this!
Just pick @0:08 Watch the landscape go by. This train is moving at like warp 10. I only wish we had something like this in the US.
They could have just privatised the buffet cars and the first class carriages, so the people who want to pay for luxury can do so, while their operators can compete in a positive auction to subsidise the rest of the system which runs on a national timetable and ticketing regime.
Was privatisation worse after 1923? When it was just LNER, LMS, GWR and SR?
I rarely use trains (I don't travel much anyway) so why should I subsidize people earning big money commuting to cities?
Ronnie G are you stupid? Do you understand how tax works?
Go on then enlighten me.
Taxation is theft.
Mucics
People dont realsie that THIS is the reason why the UK state priovatised railways, economists in the government saw it to be unfair that non users of thw service would be taxed for the benefit of users. Those who dont drive cars, dont pay road tax, if we nationalise railways, everyone will pay, yet only a % of the population use them.
Were the private companies so bad?
The separation of Routes/Rolling Stock/Track? CRAZY!
Southern/LMS/LNER/GER, etc.
Who cares,....we Dutch bought most of them and run our rails on the profits.
Brexit hahaha 😂.
Well, thats not entirely true, your railways are run by the millions of Moroccans and Turks whom you pay piss wages too so enabling you to make a profit. If only Dutch people worked on the Railways you would have to pay them so much money it would bankrupt the entire system.
EU hahahaha
what he means is that the dutch have bought uk rail companys and are running them with a profit, at the expense of the uk citizen. And stop with the racist rants please...
Yeah that's true...You bought a stake in the Market for a return to manufacture the engines and carriges...Thats where we went wrong.
Ian Goldsworthy We bought more then that. The right to exploit the most profitable railways in the UK and the stations.
ThatDutchguy just like France and our power supply
According to Portillo privatising the cleaning and the catering would have solved the problems.
If you want to get to point of this "debate" Noam Chomsky sums it up in 30 seconds. Just watch the first youtube video "Noam Chomsky on Privatization"
montanaplatinum I didn't know Chomsky could even finish half a sentence in under 30 seconds
I love how people trash people's 'ideas' without providing any explanation
ugaaa5 Then shut your mouth, you have nothing to add at all
We all make mistakes sometimes, as did your parents apparently
Lazy and un-creative trolling, 2/10.
2021 is not 1994 - most of the railway TOCs are technically ‘nationalised’ due to the pandemic. Passenger numbers are growing - there are problems with investment being cut in the railways and operator problems that are not solved by either public or private. The government needs to invest in the railways more, end the current franchise system and find a new solution. Put passengers first, not profit
lol, the railway still belongs to the British public.
"Power to the hand of the people" is not the same as "Power to the hand of a person."
The last thing we need is a bigger public sector. Civil servants are notoriously lazy and notoriously hard to get rid of.
Civil servants are working for the common good, like soldiers.
And your police forces are lazy also and the Fire service in fact most of the employee's of the state below the management? Yeah right
Where did that economic book of you comes from. Did you buy it online, in a shop a book store? Who made that book? Who printed that book? Who published that book? Where does the paper comes from? Who designed the characters? Maybe centralization and decentralization working together is the best and both are needed?
@@analogeit Yeah you're right NOTHING should be centrally planned, what a fantastic idea, are you an economic genius?
You're dense, pal.@@analogeit
What's funny is that it strikes me as severely short sighted to assume that more people are riding trains today because it somehow became more attractive and not, as is happening in the US that wages are stagnant and rail has become a more affordable option. It kills me when politicians and businessmen overlook dwindling resources of consumers in justifying the privatization of public programs, especially since such privatization is always accompanied by a relative reduction in quality and availability while they're deeply subsidized by tax payers. The US prison system is a prime example. Adding a profit motive is not the answer to services essential to people.
Everybody wants classy style services bit nobody wants to pay for it. Hmmm classic British attitude.
keeping the railways on public hands instead of private would benefit most. Partially privatization would have been the key in the future, Deutsche Bahn Is a success.
Be careful, you might be invaded if you nationalize something.
Intercity train services travel a longer distance and primarily serve the big cities, so economies of scale are truly at work in intercity rail. That portion of the network belongs to the private sector, but where slots on the intercity main lines aren’t leased to a single operator, but rather, competing operators. Grand Central Railway is really the only train operator that does this on a widespread scale. If you can get more operators doing this, you’ll force private operators to compete on price to attract customers. (FYI, when I say intercity rail, the lines I’m referring to are the West Coast Main Line [Avanti AKA FirstGroup + Trenitalia], Great Western Main Line [GWR], Midland Main Line [East Midland Trains], East Coast Main Line [LNER], Cross Country Main Line [Arriva Trains UK], and the Transpennine North Route).
Commuter belt services however, belong to the taxpayer. Why? Because they (the commuting taxpayer) often don’t have a choice - when driving to work takes longer and may or may not cost more in petrol, maintenance, and other expenses, rail transport is the only logical method to get from home to work and back again. To most effectively operate a commuter railway (that is, to operate as many peak time services as safely possible and to run those services on time), a monopoly on slots must be held, and if a monopoly on slots is held, then private train operators have no incentive to reduce the price or improve the service.
Can you please drop the "we", it was the Tories, you know, the people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.