The Labour Government

[Kompany Car]

Nice idea but capacity is the problem. And a comparison with the London- Paris air route is not comparing like with like as they are going from/to different airports. Competition is indeed good and hopefully should drive down prices. However there are some services and utilities that just should not be "for profit".

People dont seem to understand railways are not like roads where you can just put on a bus and charge a different price. They are not like a hornby train set. The infrastructure limits the capacity based upon the designed headway, the only way you can cram more trains in is by changing over to a dynamic headway based system such as ETCS which calculates the protection distance between trains based upon speed, gradients and braking profiles. This would be changes in not only the railway infrastructure but also retrofitting equipment to existing train fleets. Furthermore not all trains are compatible with every bit of infrastructure.

As you say the whole franchise idea is wrong and railways should be an essential service run at breakeven, not for profit.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

You keep saying this but just because it hasn't happened previously, no-one should draw any comfort from that and assume it cannot happen in the future.

At the moment, the Muslim population is a minority. What happens when they become a majority? What happens when an Islamist party in the UK wins a General Election and votes to introduce Sharia Law? Then what?

Your answer seems to be don't worry this can never happen. Why not?

I'll tell you why not. Because when it becomes an imminent threat, thank God, wiser heads will decide we must act to stop it before it is too late. The progressive shift from a Christian to Muslim majority is happening, day by day, voter by voter. It is inexorable. A car crash in slow motion. Unless we do something about it.

"Don't worry it will never happen" will result in it happening.

I’m not worried as I don’t believe it will ever happen.

The fear of people telling me that it’s inevitable means it will never happen, even if the scenario you paint happens.

It registers zero on my “Caredar”.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Absolute lunatic on here at the moment.

If we go Sharia law, you’ll be dead and your kids/grandkids have made their choice.

No wonder I do drive past on here these days, not much to debate so probably won’t even give it a click in the future.

See you in 5 years.

Bye. You won't be missed.

 

[Chippy_boy]

I’m not worried as I don’t believe it will ever happen.

The fear of people telling me that it’s inevitable means it will never happen, even if the scenario you paint happens.

It registers zero on my “Caredar”.

I didn't say it was inevitable. I said it will not happen. I've said that at least a couple of times.

It will not happen because wiser people will prevent it when it becomes a serious threat. They will do that by action, not by inaction.

 

[KS55]

The liberal left Labour voters always insist that all our problems are due to the wealthiest individuals and corporations not paying their fair share of taxes... yet so far all I've heard from the Labour government is the "pain" that's going to have to be felt by pensioners, council tax paying households and people with modest works pensions.

They seem to have forgotten about all the millionaires, billionaires and greedy corporations.

Wait for the budget announcement.

 

[Kompany Car]

Sure there are. Police for example. But there are not many, IMO. I think the main reason when it does not work is because it has not been implemented correctly.

The fundamental issue I have with state-owned operations is that there is often enough desire or motivation or urgency in those organizations. I struggle to think of or to remember a state-owned anything which runs efficiently and which provides excellent service at low taxpayer cost. Can you think of one? For example, the NHS is actually relatively cheap compared to some European alternatives, but in terms of availability, wait times, clinical outcomes, it is pretty dire.

If someone could persuade me how a state-run organization would be better, then I am all for it. My negativity about them is empirical, not ideological!

Efficiency only works where the inputs and outputs from a system are fairly static or at least are within very defined ranges. Its one of those things that people love to measure but often failure to measure the wrong parameter. When it comes to the NHS what do you measure ? You can increase the number of patients by limiting the consultation time but the quality goes down. The process is more efficient but the patient satisfaction is less. In a business if there are markets which are difficult you would not get involved in them or charge a massive premium, so what do you do with people with complex care needs, decide that its inefficient to treat them ?

Fundamentally its the old cost, quality, time triangle. Change one and you affect the others.

Im not denying that there is waste but putting it into private hands your just converting that waste into company profit, not saving any of the taxpayers money.

You only need to look at our water industry to realise that privatisation does not work.

In the Energy sector, after privatisation what was the first thing they did ? Immediately minimise maintenance, sweating the existing assets as it allowed increased shareholder profits. Then when things started failing asked the government for tax breaks and handouts to invest in the failing infrastructure rather than reinvesting their own profits. The government then have no real option but to pay up or have power outages.

 

[west didsblue]

Nice idea but capacity is the problem. And a comparison with the London- Paris air route is not comparing like with like as they are going from/to different airports. Competition is indeed good and hopefully should drive down prices. However there are some services and utilities that just should not be "for profit".

Yes indeed. Since Beeching the number of routes from A to B on the rail network is usually one and without huge investment such as HS2 that’s not going to change. That constrains the number of services on the line. As you will be aware better than most people, developments on aircraft navigation, collision avoidance technology and ATC have massively increased the capacity of air travel with the limiting constraints usually being runway capacity (or French ATC going on strike every year!). However expensive it is to build additional runways, it pales into insignificance compared to building new railway lines.

 

[Alan Harper's Tash]

I didn't say it was inevitable. I said it will not happen. I've said that at least a couple of times.

It will not happen because wiser people will prevent it when it becomes a serious threat. They will do that by action, not by inaction.

lol, so we agree, you just want to use wise men in your answer.

Sounds a bit Christian to me…

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

You keep saying this but just because it hasn't happened previously, no-one should draw any comfort from that and assume it cannot happen in the future.

At the moment, the Muslim population is a minority. What happens when they become a majority? What happens when an Islamist party in the UK wins a General Election and votes to introduce Sharia Law? Then what?

Your answer seems to be don't worry this can never happen. Why not?

I'll tell you why not. Because when it becomes an imminent threat, thank God, wiser heads will decide we must act to stop it before it is too late. The progressive shift from a Christian to Muslim majority is happening, day by day, voter by voter. It is inexorable. A car crash in slow motion. Unless we do something about it.

"Don't worry it will never happen" will result in it happening.

Are all the immigrants coming to the UK Muslim?

 

[hampshireblue]

Sure there are. Police for example. But there are not many, IMO. I think the main reason when it does not work is because it has not been implemented correctly.

The fundamental issue I have with state-owned operations is that there is often enough desire or motivation or urgency in those organizations. I struggle to think of or to remember a state-owned anything which runs efficiently and which provides excellent service at low taxpayer cost. Can you think of one? For example, the NHS is actually relatively cheap compared to some European alternatives, but in terms of availability, wait times, clinical outcomes, it is pretty dire.

If someone could persuade me how a state-run organization would be better, then I am all for it. My negativity about them is empirical, not ideological!

So you choose the very worst example.The utilities have been privatised but in fact there is not a competitive market in most of them and yet profits are sucked out. If a profit can be made from, say, water then that should be fed back in to invest in the infrastructure. Yes, that could and should be nationalised.

There are actually very few truly state run organisations and yet we are still in the mess we are. This is as much an argument in the other direction to yours. I would hope that we have learnt something as a country how no to do stuff over the last 30-40 years to make it better should any of these organisations be brought back under state control. It also doesn't help any organisation that the Minister responsible ofetn is only short term and has very litlle experience in the field they are overseeing.

 

[Chippy_boy]

So you choose the very worst example.The utilities have been privatised but in fact there is not a competitive market in most of them and yet profits are sucked out. If a profit can be made from, say, water then that should be fed back in to invest in the infrastructure. Yes, that could and should be nationalised.

There are actually very few truly state run organisations and yet we are still in the mess we are. This is as much an argument in the other direction to yours. I would hope that we have learnt something as a country how no to do stuff over the last 30-40 years to make it better should any of these organisations be brought back under state control. It also doesn't help any organisation that the Minister responsible ofetn is only short term and has very litlle experience in the field they are overseeing.

In a perfect world, I would absolutely be all in favour of nationalised businesses that ran super efficiently, had employees really motivated and prepared to go the extra mile, totally focused on delivering fabulous services AND focusing all their returns on continuing improvement. Wouldn't that be marvellous.

I am 63 years old. I have never seen such an organization because no such organization can exist. It is fantasy.

I don't want my post to be too long, so I will try to keep it brief but my issues with state ownership include:

1. A false belief that the government or government appointed people can run businesses better than executives in the private sector.
2. At the core, a deep-seated lack of care as to whether the organization is delivering or not, because there tends to be little or no consequences for poor performance.
3. A lack of desire to go the extra mile, work late, work weekends, strive to be better because their tends to be insufficient reward for doing so and no pain if you do not do so.
4. Poor productivity with people not working hard enough, leaving early, taking too much time off sick.

In short, the end result is they deliver a Lada not a BMW.

Privatiztion solves the above with its desire to maximise profit through higher sales, higher market share, better service, lowest cost. People in private businesses need to work hard or ultimately they lose their jobs. Unfortunately, that same profit desire will if not properly channelled also drive companies to cut costs to the extent of ruining the service, if there is no disincentive from doing so.

So privatization is not perfect either, I get that. My perspective however is that it is easier to fix that to fix the issues above in the public sector, which IMO can never be fixed, they are intrinsic.

EDIT: This should go without saying but I will say it anyway else some people get the wrong idea. OF COURSE there are many people in the public sector who work tremendously hard and do well all the things I criticise, and there are many idle and incompetent twats in the private sector. I am talking about a generalisation, a general theme which typically affects organisations.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Are all the immigrants coming to the UK Muslim?

Do they need to be for my argument to hold true? I cannot find any up to date data but if we go back a few years, 46% were Muslim and i see no reason to assume that percentage has declined.

But either way, Muslim population growth far ourstrips non-Muslim population growth. England and Wales population grew by 3.52 million in the decade 2011-2021, with a 43% increase in the Muslim population, vs a 4.2% growth in non-Muslim population over that same period.

So it doesn't really matter where they are arriving on boats, through legal immigration or just breeding more; it is progressively change our demographic make up.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Do they need to be for my argument to hold true?

Do you have any stats? Are Muslims having significantly more children than immigrants from African Christian or Indian Hindu backgrounds?

 

[Chippy_boy]

Do you have any stats? Are Muslims having significantly more children than immigrants from African Christian or Indian Hindu backgrounds?

I don't know if they are - although the Muslim demographic is younger than average so that may be a reason why could be the case.

I just grabbed some figures from the Muslim Council of GB, which said that the Muslim population (in England and Wales) grew from 2.71m in 2010 to 3.87m in 2021. So 1.16m growth, out of a total of 3.52m growth across the whole population.

2021 Census: As UK Population Grows, So Do British Muslim Communities | Muslim Council of Britain

The population of England & Wales stands at 59.60 million; the Muslim population is 3.87 million, or 6.5 % of the total. As the overall England and Wales population grows by 3.52 million in the decade 2011-2021, so do Muslim communities by 1.16 million contributing to 33% of the increase...

mcb.org.uk

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

I don't know if they are - although the Muslim demographic is younger than average so that may be a reason why could be the case.

I just grabbed some figures from the Muslim Council of GB, which said that the Muslim population (in England and Wales) grew from 2.71m in 2010 to 3.87m in 2021. So 1.16m growth, out of a total of 3.52m growth across the whole population.

2021 Census: As UK Population Grows, So Do British Muslim Communities | Muslim Council of Britain

The population of England & Wales stands at 59.60 million; the Muslim population is 3.87 million, or 6.5 % of the total. As the overall England and Wales population grows by 3.52 million in the decade 2011-2021, so do Muslim communities by 1.16 million contributing to 33% of the increase...

mcb.org.uk

Why are you scared of Muslims?

Also your assumption that all the Muslims will conspire to create an Islamic state despite coming from different cultures and sects seems a bit far fetched.

 

[Vic]

Bye. You won't be missed.

Whereas you would be?

 

[Chippy_boy]

Whereas you would be?

Hugely ;-) But not by you I suspect.

 

[Phil1]

Whereas you would be?

He wasn’t for the years he never posted on this thread so I suspect not.
He’s scared of his fucking shadow is Chippy.
Another who harks back to a better time when the country was supposedly’great’

 

[Chippy_boy]

Why are you scared of Muslims?

Also your assumption that all the Muslims will conspire to create an Islamic state despite coming from different cultures and sects seems a bit far fetched.

I am really not. I have no issue with the many Muslim people I know and work with. But I do not want Islam to become the national religion of the UK and for Islam to start to shape our culture and our lives. This is not about Sharia Law, about which I wholeheartedly agree with @Alan Harper's Tash.

 

[mexico1970]