Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Don't talk wet H/S, The Railways are a public service and not a private thiefdem for the oinks who cosy up to and vote for your "Con" artists.

The railways used to cost us a fortune in subsidies as most state enterprises have. BR was appallingly run by people who treated it as their pet train set. I worked as a consultant at BR in the early 1980s doing IT and operational research to calculate the government subsidy based on costs, ticket sales and journeys taken over specific pieces of track. I often needed to have a meeting with a BR exec. When I went looking for them I was told that they were on platform 7 looking at a new locomotive. We worked at the back of Marylebone Stn. BR needed to be nationalised. I have done work for a few state institutions including the DHSS. Without a doubt BR was the worst run of them all.

Well, that's a very good insight there H/S thanks, And just goes to show what I have been banging on about on here in that British Management are generally Lazy, Useless, Incompetent and Good for very little except for filling their own boots along with their mates boots!

ahem! i think that was when the railways were state owned!!

or put another way, why do you think the railways were or would be better run if nationalised? .... there certainly doesn't seem to be much evidence that i have heard or seen to support that

British cities could be hit by rioting because of an influx of Roma migrants, David Blunkett has warned.

The former Home Secretary said ‘frictions’ with local people could lead racial tensions to ‘explode’ in a repeat of the riots that rocked Northern towns in the summer of 2001.

Mr Blunkett called on Roma migrants from Slovakia to ‘change their culture’ because their dumping of rubbish and refusal to send their children to school had caused ‘understandable tensions’ with residents in his home city of Sheffield.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502072/Influx-Roma-migrants-spark-city-riots-warns-Blunkett.html#ixzz2kPvnyftc
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

As fears of a winter casualty crisis grow... The 12,000 patients left for 12 hours on trolleys
Figures show shocking number of patients left in casualty units

Another 250 waited for a minimum of 24 hours, statistics reveal

College of Emergency Medicine say situation in A&E units is a 'crisis'


the uk 2013 full of immigrants filling the A@E who have paid nothing in to the country coming here to get free treatment and the
local people can not see a doctor it is a disgrace
put these immigrants on a plane back home
they must be refused treatment

British cities could be hit by rioting because of an influx of Roma migrants, David Blunkett has warned.

rivers of blood etc etc - enoch powell

never did happen did it

cynic before you post I WILL SAY THIS 90% OF THE POPULATION OF THE UK
THINK THIS BUT I POST IT AND NOT TO SCARED TO SAY SO

i merely posted a factual historical report

you post what that purveyor of inalienable truths alleges what was said by DB - i'ld be surprised if that was not taken out of context at best anyway

Curry that upset the hygiene squad: Four health inspectors caught up in food poisoning outbreak at restaurant that featured on Hairy Bikers' show
The Kayal in Leicester was closed on November 6 after 19 people fell ill

The Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood visited the restaurant earlier this year to learn how to make spinach dosa
Owner Jaimon Thomas said it is the first time since opening in 2008 they have had any problems with customers falling ill
Last month inspectors rated the eaterie 'very good' awarding it five stars


if you want to be healthy keep away from these restaurants filthy places
if you do not care about your health then so be it

Tiny victim of the killer typhoon: Devastated father carries his dead daughter to the morgue as rescuers battle to save victims

ever one should donate money to help these poor people

Andrew Neil ‏@afneil 2m
Latest Guardian/ICM poll sees Labour widen to 8 points. Miliband personal ratings improve.

electionista ‏@electionista 1h
UK - YouGov/Sun poll: CON 33%, LAB 40%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 11%

gf the gap is bigger than that the polls take the view that we life long torys will always vote tory we will not at the next election my is is the cons on less than 28%

Milly closes the gap on Camoron.......

Guardian/ICM poll: Labour lead over Tories widens to eight points

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/11/guardian-icm-poll-labour-lead-tories-miliband-cameron

TANKER a lot of pensioners at my local Con club are fed up of no interest on their savings. They are saying will not vote or will vote UKIP.

Michael Dugher ‏@MichaelDugherMP 18m
Commons rises tonight - so Cameron can miss PMQs tomorrow. Now we hear Autumn Statement moving to a Thursday - so he'll dodge another one..

Hays,

In the case of Railways think of subsidies as payment out of the tax payers pot into the Shareholders hands;

If the railways hadn't been allowed to deteriorate by subsequent governments after the WW2, it wouldn't have decayed into the state it had.


Before crowing over the success of British Railways and privatisation read the following and it continuing subsidisation.

------------------



'Bust'
The bigger picture here is this - despite the fact that the railways were privatised nearly two decades ago, the industry is still propped up by bundles of public money.

Ministers handed over nearly £4bn last year. Successive governments have been working hard to get that figure down, mainly by charging more for tickets, hence the endless, above-inflation fare increases. But it is still more than 40% of the total cost of running the network.

All four rail unions (ASLEF, RMT, TSSA and Unite) together with the TUC are highlighting these figures as part of their ongoing "Action for Rail" campaign. They argue that the figures prove the franchising system is bust, because it just means public money that could be used to improve services, ends up in the pockets of train company shareholders.

They've worked out that train firms gave £1.17bn in premiums to the government last year, and got £3.88bn back in subsidies. Expect to see protests at many stations across Britain on Friday.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19914219

Franchising - giving private companies contracts to run train services - is clearly under a lot of pressure since the government messed up its sums on the West Coast deal.

----------------------

And of course from what might be your favourite paper after party handouts.



http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/410039/The-great-train-robbery-How-we-subsidise-foreign-rail-fares


The great train robbery: How we subsidise foreign rail fares

BRITISH rail passengers are subsidising German trains by paying the highest fares in Europe, a powerful union claimed yesterday.

By: John InghamPublished: Tue, June 25, 2013
32Comments
The RMT argues that profits earned in Britain are helping to subsidise fares overseas The RMT argues that profits earned in Britain are helping to subsidise fares overseas

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers said 65 per cent of this country’s rail firms – 17 out of 26 – are foreign owned.

Nearly one in four operators are owned wholly or in part by Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway.

SNCF, the French state railway, part-owns six operators. three are wholly or part-owned by Dutch state railway Nederlandse Spoorwegen.

UK passengers can pay up to 10 times more for a season ticket to London than an equivalent journey in Italy and more than four times as much as in Germany.

The imbalance was revealed in a study by the Campaign for Better Transport last year. Since then British passengers have had another inflation-busting fare rise – the 10th year on the trot – as the Government tries to reduce its subsidy to the industry.

It would be interesting how much the Railways are subsidise out of County Councils "Taxes"?

If a Company is privately owned should it be subsidised and dependent on the public purse?

It is interesting that when a company is profit making it wants to keep all the profits and when it is financially failing it wishes to be bailed out by the public purse.