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.