This history of nationalised rail is pretty bad. Poor services, late and dirty trains. Endless strikes and cancelled trains. No investment. The money all got spent on the workers. Resulting in long travel times. Unreliable vehicles and most notable no track replacement resulting in several disasters and deaths on a mass scale. This in the country that invented the damn railroads. **** off British Rail. Don't come back. Ever. Journey time has halved.
Utter rubbish ! Journey times today are significantly longer under British Rail, and both subsidies and fares are far, far higher in real terms today. The disasters you refer to (Paddington, Potters Bar) were a direct result of the way the network was privatised and of course, rail safety in the UK has been, compared to other forms of land transport, excellent. British Rail was chronically underfunded for decades and arguably never really recovered from WWII where the network was worked to near collapse without any investment to repair the network post-war. Regarding journey times, I have direct personal experience of the lengthening journey times, and worse punctuality. When I started commuting from Bristol to London, the line was operated by British rail and the scheduled journey time to London from Bristol Parkway was 1h20m - 1h25m depending on the number of stops and the trains were reliably punctual. There was even on direct train that took 1h10m. Today the quickest service is 1h30m and punctuality is poor, especially at peak times - and for around £15k a year season ticket just for that route. Our European neighbours can show us how to run a publicly-owned railway. An annual pass to the whole of the Deutsche Bahn is under £4k annually for standard class and that would cover all rail travel not just your commuter route.
The reasons I support privatisation of gas, telecoms and electricity is that there is opportunity for competition. For example, I pay a premium to get electricity entirely from renewable sources. I wouldn't force my choice on anyone else.
I beg to differ. The competition would require that the single-source of any such service (electricity or gas) comes from the very same provider in most cases. There are NOT multiple atomic-energy plants competing with one another to supply electricity to the general public. The notion of "competition" simply does not work any many such areas where provision is established, which is the reason they were made "state or national government services" in most countries. Where competition works is in New Outlets - for instance, electricity from solar panels or wind farms. These providers do compete with established electrical energy distributors. (But, if you look at from where the money comes for such alternative-supplies of electricity, you might be dismayed to see that it is from existing electricity suppliers!) PS: And yet another facet of the same question, this time relating to the Internet. Please show one bonafide example of any company successfully competing with Facebook. The Internet is a very different services-world indeed!
That will change as the cost-of-establishing the renewable-source is covered and real-competition institutes itself. Geographically that is easier to do in Europe than the US, because of the comparative great difference in territorial size of each. Still, it all depends upon some highly variable "variables". Neither the wind nor the sun is always available, whereas atomic energy is almost always producing electricity ...
Nuclear is the one exception, though that may change, but for every other generation source, there are multiple generators. And regarding Facebook, they are losing traffic to Twitter and Instagram. Apparently only fogies like me use Facebook these days...
I'm making electricity (marginally) less expensive for other people by paying more for renewable energy. Seems at least I'm doing something practical now. What are you doing today to reduce fuel poverty ?
Where I live, there is no such thing as Fuel Poverty. The French embarked upon a massive program to replace coal/gas fired electricity plants in the 1980s. Today, almost 85% of its electricity is atomic-based. And the Far-left Nerds are not happy with that either - they want every house in France to have its own electric wind-mill!!! (What is true however is the cost-reduction in solar-power PV-panels and partial reimbursement of the total-cost by the French government.) France has also offered national rebates on any hybrid-driven car to reduce pollution. Tell that to your mindless PotUS and see how he responds. President Macron of France spent three days in the White House with Donald Dork to convince him NOT TO RENOUNCE the Paris Agreement. But DD will undo anything Obama has done. DD has an obsession as regards Obama. (It's not the same but is akin to "penis envy" ... ;^)
No you're not. You're paying a premium to puff your chest out and pretend you're saving the world. The impact on fuel poverty is zero. Happy for you to refer to a study that shows otherwise. Good luck!
I'm supporting a Labour Party committed to ending fuel poverty. It's through solidarity that we can change things, a reality lost to New Labour. You forgot to present a source that confirms your preening reduces fuel poverty. Am I to assume a source won't be provided?
Right, so nothing actually practical at this point in time, just agitating in the hope that a Labour Party-led government is elected in several years time and that the Labour Party government is effective in addressing fuel poverty. Meanwhile, I'm making taking practical steps by using less energy and by buying comparatively more expensive renewables.
The French complain about everything. But not their electricity-bill. And nobody "struggles" to pay for it, because France has one of the lowest costs (due to atomic-energy). See that factually corroborated here. So, in fact, looking at that chart, you pay a wee-bit less than I do in France (or for most of Europe as well). Why are you complaining ... ?
Do you know that it's a good-idea to quote the person to whom you are responding in an on-line "debate" forum ... ? PS: Btw, I would not vote for the hairbrained Labor Party in the UK in its present form. Corbyn has to go!
Practical steps? It's like wearing a cardigan and thinking you're solving world poverty. You're doing nothing. You've tacitly admitted that by dodging my repeated request for evidence.
You claimed that there was no fuel poverty in France - I've yet to see you support that claim. Reiver is the one complaining about UK fuel poverty, so you'd better take that up with him/her
The question was directed at Reiver - but well done. I looked at the economics of both ground source and air source heat pumps but the sums did not add up for me.
If I'm buying the expensive renewable electricity, it drives down the price for everyone else - stands to reason, it's basic economics.
I did quote the person posting. If you have a person on ignore however, none of their posts will appear - even if quoted by another person. Do you have Reiver on ignore ?
That's drivel, not basic economics! There is absolutely no reason for prices to be driven down. Your behaviour is irrelevant, even if supply/demand did operate in these non-competitive markets (and it doesn't).
