Would you like to see the mail, rail and energy industries nationalised?
What are your views?
We'd love to hear your comments
Log in to comment
You need to be logged in to interact with Silversurfers. Please use the button below if you already have an account.
LoginNot a member?
You need to be a member to interact with Silversurfers. Joining is free and simple to do. Click the button below to join today!
JoinCommunity Terms & Conditions
Content standards
These content standards apply to any and all material which you contribute to our site (contributions), and to any interactive services associated with it.
You must comply with the spirit of the following standards as well as the letter. The standards apply to each part of any contribution as well as to its whole.
Contributions must:
be accurate (where they state facts); be genuinely held (where they state opinions); and comply with applicable law in the UK and in any country from which they are posted.
Contributions must not:
contain any material which is defamatory of any person; or contain any material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory; or promote sexually explicit material; or promote violence; promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age; or infringe any copyright, database right or trade mark of any other person; or be likely to deceive any person; or be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as a contractual duty or a duty of confidence; or promote any illegal activity; or be threatening, abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety; or be likely to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person; or be used to impersonate any person, or to misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person; or give the impression that they emanate from us, if this is not the case; or advocate, promote or assist any unlawful act such as (by way of example only) copyright infringement or computer misuse.
Nurturing a safe environment
Our Silversurfers community is designed to foster friendships, based on trust, honesty, integrity and loyalty and is underpinned by these values.
We don't tolerate swearing, and reserve the right to remove any posts which we feel may offend others... let's keep it friendly!
"Governments received a net payment from TOCs in each of the
last six years, receiving £817 million in 2015-16, which is the
largest amount received since the time series started in 1985-86.
On average, for every passenger kilometre travelled in Great
Britain, governments received 1.3p in franchise premiums in
2015-16, which was the same as the previous year.
The majority of government funding was in direct rail support,
which is the grant payment to Network Rail. This was £4.0 billion
in 2015-16, an increase of £197 million on 2014-15."
As for nationalisation taking us back to strikes then clearly some commenters don't see the same news that I do as they are ongoing, mainly because they want to remove the guards from the service. I'm really not sure what happens if there is any kind of incident on a train if this becomes nationwide practice. And of course there is the overcrowding issue - again publicised widely.
Arriva is an outpost of Deutsche Bahn, the highly efficient German train operator. The Essex-operator C2c is part of Trenitalia, the Italian state rail company. Not a lot of comment there. But I could go on and be very boring.
It’s just that the government ownership is by foreign governments. Not ours. Therefore, ultimately a foreign power has control over our water, electricity, gas, railways ... and it goes on.
How Corbyn thinks he may extricate these utilities from the hands of continental megaliths I don't know. But I know this. These companies perform so much better in their home countries than they do here. so, what's good for them is good for us too.
I was also a postmen during some of that period and take offence to the person who suggests i was back in bed by noon, my shift started at 5am, i would be out of the sorting office in all weathers by 7am putting up with peoples aggressive dogs among other things, back to the office about 10.30 for a break before taking out another load before returning and finishing my shift about 2.30
Also quite often we would be asked to do overtime to cover lack of staff which meant we would probably do another 3 hours in the evening
The same applies to the energy industry, The cost of my gas and electricity has dropped dramatically since privatisation. The old state owned organisations were inefficient and held to ransom by the Trade Unions.
Similarly the Royal Mail. Inefficient practices protected by the Trade Unions. I personally knew postmen who would have done their days work and be back in bed before noon. Everybody must have seen how the old push bikes have now gone.
I worked in Local Government for 30 years managing the 'hourly paid' labour force but the restrictive working practices were unbelievable and cost a fortune, until compulsory competition was introduced and reduced costs dramatically.
Nationalised Industries lead to Trade Union domination, restrictive working practices, and increased costs to the consumer. We must never go back to those days.