Forcing the conservative government (which in a past incarnation privatised the British rail system) to rescind the franchise.
Here's the thing. The Tory privatisation subsidises companies like First Group, Arriva and other private firms and this is at least the third time they've pocketed the money, run the service into the ground, and left the government with no option but to cancel the contract.
On one occasion a private company handed the franchise back to the government claiming they couldn't make it pay... Months before they were due to start repaying the bung from the government.
That franchise was temporarily put back under government ownership pending a new private company taking it over. The service improved, running costs plummeted, customer satisfaction soared.
So they privatised it again. Costs shot up, customer satisfaction went back down.
It isn't just leftist tankies saying privatisation has failed spectacularly now.
Tracey Brabin, a conservative leader in the area inflicted by Transpennine Express and Northern Rail debacles, is celebrating the termination of the franchise, and the Labour Party is saying that it's demonstrably cheaper (even in taxpayer money terms) to being the railway back under state ownership than prop up the failing private operators.
It gets weirder when you consider that the dogma of privatisation for the sheer hell of it resulted in the French and German state railways running British "private" franchises, and taking the subsidies and profits they got in the UK to prop up their own state owned rail services.
One for the conservatives here - if you agree with me that the problem isn't privatisation per se, but a model that is basically a n embezzlement wet dream, how would you propose to fix a privatised model that is demonstrably FUBAR? Britain needs the railways but the private sector can barely manage to run a mediocre service and even then seems to need so much subsidies to make it profitable that you might as well cut out the middle man and nationalise it.
And even die hard pro privatisation conservatives are now thinking the unthinkable.
First things first.
The UK is now controlled by its Deep State.
That needs to be sorted before anything can truly be fixed.
A government run train system slowly becomes a welfare program.
What’s missing is COMPETITION
Giving it to one company is just the same as having the government run it. No incentive to make it actually work effectively. Just pocket the money and move on. No consequences for that, either.
That just make the cronyism visible to one company.
Give it to many companies, the one that saves the most money and provides the best service gets a bonus for all the employees.
I flew from Philly into Manchester airport early on a Sunday morning for a 4-day business trip in 2012 and had to take two trains to get to my destination in Hull.
After the first train (I don’t remember what train line it was, but it was a very nice and comfortable train and had booked reserved seating) I had to get off in Sheffield and get on a TransPennine for the last leg. There was no reserved seating on the TransPennine and it was horribly overcrowded and uncomfortable.
Halfway thought an announcement was made (one that I barely understood) that we would be transferred to buses at the next stop as the rail line was under repair. It would have been nice to know this ahead of time.
We had to lug our luggage several blocks and up a large steep flight of stairs to get to the bus where a porter literally grabbed out bags from us and threw them into the bus’s luggage compartment.
The bus made several stops along the way including one for the bus driver to take an extended smoke break. At least he was “kind” enough to invite any other smokers to join him.
I had hired a car to take me from the last train station on my trip to my hotel and by now I was nearly 45 minutes late. Fortunately, the driver waited for me. I know tipping isn’t as customary in the UK, but I gave him a nice tip for waiting for me.
On my return trip back to Manchester airport, I cancelled the train tickets and I hired a car as I didn’t feel I could depend on TransPennine to get me to the airport on time and feared I might miss my flight.
Not unless the private train company’s owners have the freedom to adjust fares accordingly. Any kind of government control on fares would be a death knell. And, you know the government would be heavy-handed on the fares allowed to be charged.