People vote for socialist policies. Time goes by. Things get worse. Time goes by. People vote out the socialist policies. Time goes by. Things get better. Time goes by. People forget what it was like before. Time goes by. People vote for socialist policies. The fundamental things apply…
Here’s why renationalisation won’t make the trains run on time
When Owen Smith was asked at his Labour leadership launch about his stance on railways, he replied, “I would re-nationalise our railways tomorrow.” Needless to say, this went down well. In August last year, a YouGov poll found that 58% of the British public support renationalising the railways compared to just 17% who oppose it. The irony will not be lost on followers of the Labour party who may remember that renationalisation of the railways was Corbyn’s first official policy as Labour leader. Recently, Corbyn has thrust this issue back into the spotlight, jumping on the recent troubles of Southern Rail.
To set the scene, until 1994, the railway network in the UK was operated by the Government-controlled and owned British Rail. The Railways Act 1993 started the break-up of British Rail and the privatisation process concluded in 1997. The operation of passenger services is now contracted out under a system of franchising.
Most people are basically stupid. It is like the 1970’s never happened or if they did, what could possibly be learned from them? And unfortunately we have Blue Blairites in power who are incapable of making the counter arguments.
My wife and I spent six weeks in the UK last year and most of our travel was by train. Clean, comfortable, on time with excellent service from the various rail companies personnel – and someone wants to go back to British Rail? Peak stupid.
I think it’s just nostalgia for the famous British Rail ‘cuppa’
“58% of the British public support renationalizating the railways.” Right.
“… a YouGov poll found that 58% of the British public support renationalising…“.
Would that be the same 58% that were to support Remain in the referendum?
Scapegrace, August 12, 2016 at 10:54 pm: “It is like the 1970’s never happened”
People under 45 have almost no memory of UK public events of the 70s. (A child might remember power-cutsi n 73.) People forget, as Natalie says. People also die, while other people are born.
The idea cuts both ways. When I was young, a strongly-asserted myth in my family was that the wicked Tories squandered things and rule stupidly. Eventually it got so bad that Labour was voted in. Labour made the hard choices and so were unpopular and so, just as they’d got things fixed, they were voted out again. The shortness of Labour’s periods of power in 45-51, 64-70 and 74-79 were all explained (away!) in that fashion.
Even when you learn of the past, you have not the emotional memory of those who lived through it. I am just old enough to remember the sheer silliness of the end of the 60s as they appeared to a child. I’ve read some accounts saying that at the time felt wonderfully liberating from the constraining society of the past. I have no personal memory of that past society – and much experience of how those who say that behaved when they were not (longer?) constrained. So it appeals little to me. But I won’t swear there was nothing in it.
Listening to Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith discuss their collectivist beliefs is bad for one’s mental health.
As for “58% of the British public” – they should be pleased.
Network Rail is 100% government owned.
Apart from a few lines (less than 1% of the total), railways in Britain are nationalised, and have been since the 1940s.
Why some free market people talk as if the British railways are not nationalised (state owned) I do not know.
But then the latest fad in some “free market” circles is the “basic income”.
In short such “free market” people think that the American Welfare Reform of the 1990s (starting in Wisconsin and then becoming Federal) was a mistake – that people should be paid by the taxpayers for NOT working.
That some “free market” types now hold the same position as Barack Obama (who has done everything he can to undermine the work requirements in welfare) fills me with despair.
Most people are not stupid – most are ignorant of the past though, and usually not through any fault of their own, as Niall shows.
Additionally, everyone is subject to deliberate disinformation by people with vested interests (either ideological or material – or both). In fact, it is a wonder that some (albeit too few) manage to evade this disinformation, and to study history independently and with an open mind.
The very same ones 😀
Alisa, most people are of below-average intelligence; how would you define ‘stupid’? And how much responsibility does one need to truly be human?
If the last question seems somewhat abstruse, apologies, but I’m trying to explore the link between responsibility, autonomy and one’s humanity. This constant blame for the ‘other’ is what allows people to elect spendthrift and destructive governments then shift the blame for their decision onto the people they elected. It’s fundamentally dishonest and, if they’re so easily gulled, should they be voting at all?
Nemo, I doubt I should be the one to define stupid, as I was not the one to use the term in the first place.
To your substantive question, responsibility is not the same as guilt. Just as a simple example that comes to mind: I may not be guilty of something my child or dog have done, but I still bear the responsibility for the consequences of their deeds.
Somewhat similarly, I may not be stupid (whatever that means), and I may be ignorant through no fault (“guilt”) of my own – but I still bear the responsibility for the consequences of my political decisions (voting or abstaining, protesting or staying home, opinionating on the internet or keeping quiet, etc.).
And how many of those who want to see the railways renationalised and who also voted Remain are aware that separation of the management of the infrastructure from the provision of rail transport services is a requirement of EU law (Directive 91/440/EEC)?
Oh dear, re-nationalise the railways???? Einstein’s definition of insanity goes something along the lines of “a person who imitates what was done in the past in the sure belief that it will turn out differently this time”. It never does, same applications fail in exactly the way they always did. And I remember the coming of BR, a disaster as were all the other attempts at government running things. The railways were run for the benefit of the staff not the passengers.
The article makes three useful points about the realities :
1. The UK government subsidises the railways to the tune of £4.5 billion a year. By comparison with both BR and European railways, a nationalised system would require a subsidy between £9 and £14 billion (ie two to three times as much.)
2. The UK railways perform better than European railways on safety, and at least as well on punctuality
3. The main complaint is apparently about high fares
The article fails to add one more relevant fact. The extra relevant fact is that total train operating costs are about £7.5 billion a year.
Now to joint the dots. Without bothering to renationalise the railways it would be possible to spend an extra £4.5 billion directly subsidising rail fares, without even bruising the low end estimate of the extra subsidy required by a nationalised railway. This would reduce fares by 60%. (7.5 – 4.5 = 3)
I don’t – God forbid – argue for greater subsidies. I merely point out that simple arithmetic shows us that the “fare” problem, if it be a problem worthy of government solutions, is not an argument for nationalisation.
How exactly did privatisation work for UK trains? I was under the impression that different parts of the country were divvied up between different companies, in which case, there’s no or little competition and thus none of the benefits of a free market. Have I got it wrong?
– “The operation of passenger services is now contracted out under a system of franchising…”
– Government owns the company that owns the track/infrastructure.
– Government pays £4 billion in subsidies to rail operators.
Therefore the railways are NOT privatised… they are still nationalised with subcontractors.
The enthusiasm for nationalisation is the people who use them do not want to pay for them, they think people who don’t use them should pay for them instead – the commonplace notion these days that everyone can live as they please at everyone else’s expense.
I agree with both of Alisa’s recent posts (at 9:15 and 10:56 today). Nemo, if it means anything “stupid” must mean someone whose intelligence is significantly below the norm. By definition, most people are not “of below-average intelligence”; strictly speaking, precisely half are below the midpoint, which is not “most”. But in any event, “normal” intelligence is a range around the mean, not the precise midpoint. So I would define “stupid” as being at least one, and probably two, standard deviations below the mean. And that is far from “most people”. Don’t confuse stupidity with ignorance (or, for that matter, with political cunning).
I beg to differ with Laird. I don’t think “stupid” has to be measured as a relative lack of intelligence or common sense, as opposed to an absolute lack.
If some evil virus wiped out the least stupid 90% of humanity, I don’t see that half of the bottom 10% would suddenly have ceased to be stupid. They would still struggle with arithmetic, never mind algebra; and they would only have become safe from snake oil salesmen because that happy breed would have fallen victim to the virus. 90% of the population can’t be below the median intelligence (though 90% could be below the mean) but I don’t think it’s impossible for 90% of the population to be stupid.
My last comment is not formulated well – it should read fault everywhere it reads guilt.
Lee, as Einstein famously never said, ‘Everything is relative’.
Laird, I was never in any danger of confusing stupidity with ignorance, but your command is noted. Back to the point, why “must” stupidity mean significantly below the norm? Such absolutism sits badly with the uncertainty of “at least one, and probably two, standard deviations” – and note that I’m not dismissing either value. Furthermore, if intelligence follows anything like a standard distribution, then more more than half will be below the mean, no matter how strictly you speak; this is because upper outliers will drag the mean to the right of the distribution peak in a way that lower outliers cannot – minimum brain function being required for life. I’d expect this to hold true even with measurements such as Cattell that attempt to fit results to the distribution, though perhaps statistically insignificant.
In pursuit of John B:
Is not a principal set of voices that which supposedly represents the employees of the private contractors who operate the government’s rail (and auxiliary) systems.
Of course the “fare payors” will egg things on, but look back to Robert Kiley and London Transport under Red Ken. Users have to pay up.
There is a strange thing about “public” transportation just about everywhere – the public using it doesn’t pay for the costs.
Would rail workers want their pensions dependent solely on investment in the rail system?
Would anybody?
Alisa, I wrote a detailed response this morning that disappeared into a bad internet connection, and one of the points was why you introduced guilt. Fault makes more sense, but in the wry examples of child and pet, I’m not sure fault is so easily avoided: if you bear responsibility for the misdeeds of those animals, are you not at fault for failing to make safeguards commensurate with that responsibility? It might sound terribly judgmental, but I’m asking entirely theoretically, as I don’t have either dog or child.
As to stupid, you weren’t the first to mention it but you did say “Most people are not stupid” and it’s hard to see how one can make such a determinative statement without a view as to what they are not.
And, if people are not at fault for their ignorance, doesn’t it follow that they’re not to be credited for being knowledgeable? Wouldn’t that make being well-informed akin to a mystery virus – just something that some people catch and some don’t?
I hope you don’t think I’m picking on you in particular, but I see the habit of blaming politicians rather than the people who elected them as deeply dishonest and dangerous – it allows people to enjoy the ‘free’ lunch knowing inside that there’s no such thing, then get angry with their chosen dining partner. And it’s this corrupting effect on the individual that I think is most pernicious and wicked. Good job wicked means good nowadays, eh?
Sometimes I am, other times I am not. It just so happens that I have both children and dogs, and I can tell you that it is humanly impossible to prevent them from doing something bad at least some times. Unless you treat them as robots or prisoners – which would defeat the entire purpose of having them in the first place, plus in the long run it can make them even more dangerous than they’d normally be.
Regarding the definition of stupid, you are right, and I simply chose to evade the question as I found it of no sufficient interest, unfortunately. That said, Laird more or less covered my general take on it, your objections (however correct or not) notwithstanding.
No, I don’t think that it so follows. I think that the acquisition of knowledge always has an active element to it – whereas the failure to acquire it, although may be deliberate, is not always so. IOW, some people are ignorant of history through fault of their own, but I think that the vast majority are not.
Not at all.
I agree, in most aspects – but note that I made a kind of exception for one narrower aspect, and that is knowledge of history. I could possibly also include in that exception the understanding of economics, especially its monetary aspects.
The privatization was botched. Splitting between ownership of fixed infrastructure, trains an train operating was very wrong. A rail company has to be vertically integrated. As Taylor says the service is though better without the truly dead hand of BR.
Let me tell you a story… I am from Gateshead and I had an interview as a kid for UEA in Norwich (for a BSc). Quite a hike. It was winter. It was somewhat of an odyssey courtesy of BR. At one point I wound up somewhere in Cambridgeshire[?] staring at icicles hanging from the overhead power lines. I was re-assured by the disembodied voice telling me such useful things like, “Service is delayed due to a landslide near Leicester” and the classic, “This service is delayed due to the late running of the service before it.”
They couldn’t get a fuck in a monkey whore-house if they had a sack-load of bananas.
I eventually got to UEA by hook, crook, pogo-stick and the kindness of strangers. I was “interviewed” by a Prof as he gave me a lift back to the station. The grad-students had polished off the sarnies etc (and looked somewhat shame-faced when this rather Nansen-ed Geordie rocked up).
I got a good offer though. I went to Nottingham instead. I had seen enough Norfolk already.
I was somewhat hungry by this point (note above) and at one of the changes I bought a BR “Brunch Muffin”. Well, that put the fucking tin-lid on my excursion.
BR were shite. Utter shite. My only recent experience of nationalized rail is Poland and fuck me behind the arras (and elsewise) they have to be experienced to be believed. You walk into a (privately owned) bar or restaurant or whatever in Poland and the service is excellent. But at Krakow station (I’d been on the sleeper from Prague) and I was greeted with indifference bordering on hostility. She pulled the shutter down on me. I was only asking where the taxi rank was.
I know this is a bit of a ramble but the state kills things. Sometimes literally.
The railways don’t need nationalisation, they need tarmac, lots of it, and lorries and coaches shifted off the main roads onto them.
Failing that, they need full automation. A lot of metros run without drivers and just have “conductors”. The DLR has been running for 25 years without a driver/guard, it only seems to fail when an IRA bomb goes off under it.
Try getting either of these options past the unions that fund Corbyn et al, and see how far you get.
Southern Rail problems are to do with (a) high levels of staff “sickness”, especially during the Olympics/Euros/World Cup, etc, and (b) squabbles over who should close the doors, and (c) reluctance to work 24/7. All these could be resolved by getting rid of most of the expensive human element the commuter has to fund, but they’re also the one’s paying union dues and the appropriately named Mick Cash’s six-figure salary.
The railways were nationalised for political reasons and given an unwieldy and unworkable structure – an attempt to integrate public transport that actually disintegrated it (the British Transport Commission – a bureaucratic paradise suitable presided over by an ex Perm Secretary and then by a General). BR latterly was much better run than people give it credit for, and enjoyed greater independence from the Ministry of Transport (whatever it was calling itself that month). Now, the same sort of tosspots whose predecessors gave us the original nationalised structure are busy trying to micromanage from Whitehall (plus Edinburgh, soon plus Cardiff), displaying their usual brilliance (major cock-ups on letting franchises are the tip of the iceberg).
‘A person who imitates what was done in the past in the sure belief that it will turn out differently this time…’ is likely to be employed as a university administrator in Australia (from my experience).
I am told that Einstein held that if a beam of light is fired off and one person chases after it and another person does not – the light gets away from both people at-the-same-rate. In short the distance (the distance) between both people and the light is always-the-same (it increases at-the-same-rate) even though the distance between the two people is increasing as one runs after the light and the other does not.
Draw that on a piece of paper – with lines with arrows at both ends of each line and numbers on them. The line between person A and person B – and the lines between both people and the light (all in the same direction remember). The number on the lines between person A and person B and the light always has the same number (the number gets bigger as the light gets away from them both – but the distance number gets bigger at-the-same-rate for both people), but the number on the distance between the two people does not stay the same (as one person runs away from the other) – and it is all in the same direction.
If that is all true – then, fair enough, British railways are private and nationalising them would greatly improve everything. Now I am just going to go for a ride on my unicorn.
No doubt Keynesian “economics” works as well.
I often wonder if one of the reasons that I have quite different political views to a lot of my generation is that my parents were older and I didn’t make an appearance until they were in their 40’s, which meant they were working adults through the 60’s-70’s while having vivid memories of post war rationing. When I was old enough they were not shy about explaining, in detail, the reality of how it was during those decades.
Paul Marks
(special relativity)
If that is all true
Tests of special relativity
Modern searches for Lorentz violation
Yes it is. The alternative is that your computer, TV and GPS are powered by black magic and all scientists of the world in the last 100 years conspire to hide it.
then, fair enough, British railways are private and nationalising them would greatly improve everything.
I’m sorry, but what is the logical connection between the former and the latter?
Its true that Einstein was communist, but he always kept his physics and his politics and economics strictly separate, never tried to derive one from another.
Is it coming from Paul Johnson’s history of 20th century, where he starts with Einstein and blames him for all evils of the century?
I fail to understand why Paul’s lack of comprehension of Special Relativity (admittedly a difficult and counterintuitive concept) has any bearing on nationalizing the railroads or, for that matter, on Einstein’s famous quote about definition of insanity.
But if you want an introduction to the subject here’s a good place to start.
“Average.” Um, no. “Average” does not mean “exactly half above the average and half below.” That is the median.
Example. I know four people. Three have IQs of 160. One has an IQ of 80. Average IQ for the four = [(160 x 3) + 80] / 4 =
Oops, wrong button, sorry.
[(160 x 3) + 80] / 4 = 140. But 3/4 of the people have IQs over 140, and only 1/4 has an IQ under 1/40.
“only 1/4 has an IQ under 140.” Sorry again. :>(
Getting back to railways- can’t you have the Government owning the rail-roads, like it does other roads, but having the train companies licencing the right to use the railroads and stations, by putting their trains and services on it?
Julie, I’m not sure to whom your comment is addressed, but in everyday parlance ‘average’ is taken to mean ‘mean’ and re-reading my own comments I can’t see anything that conflicts with your point: ‘most people’ or ‘more than half’ is simply >50.00% of a population and I explicitly referred to the ‘mean’ to differentiate from the ‘median’, which would be the peak of the standard distribution I mentioned. Would it have been clearer if I’d said ‘normal’ or ‘Gaussian’ distribution?
I accept your example was simplified to illustrate a point, but four people wouldn’t be a large enough population and they certainly don’t conform to the standard (or normal or Gaussian) distribution that I made a specific condition of my comment.
Alisa, sorry if you’re already bored with this point, but one more foray: you are willing to credit the knowledgeable and exculpate the ignorant on the basis that “the acquisition of knowledge always has an active element to it”. I’ll inevitably sound harsh by asking, but isn’t laziness a fault?
No problem at all, Nemo.
Laziness is indeed a fault, but inaction is not always the result of laziness: if I failed to take action in pursuit of a certain piece of information due to laziness, it necessarily implies that I knew there was that more-or-less specific piece information to be pursued – IOW, it was a type of “known unknown”. Otherwise, my failure to pursue the literally infinite amount of information out there (on any particular subject) can only be attributed to true and total ignorance.
Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker!) Gray, August 15, 2016 at 5:25 am: “Getting back to railways- can’t you have the Government owning the rail-roads, like it does other roads, but having the train companies licencing the right to use the railroads and stations, by putting their trains and services on it?”
IIRC, that was the original privatisation scheme except with RailTrack, not the government, managing the lines, and companies leasing the use from them. This was contrary to the original scheme that created the railroads, where the same company built the line and ran the trains on it. There were criticisms at the time of separating line and usage ownership. My impression back then was that some of those criticisms had content, but it’s a long time since I’ve examined the area.
An important difference is that competing companies can use the same road, hardly being aware of the fact, whereas it is not so trivial for two competing companies to run over the same railway line.
Alisa, I can’t help but feel that in practical terms, any accused will categorise their own ignorance as the ‘unknown unknown’ variety and perfectly excusable. I don’t think we’ll get much further pursuing the philosophical aspects but in the everyday world if democracy is to function it requires an informed electorate, and an awful lot of people will be happy to excuse their own ignorance and simultaneously blame the politicians they ignorantly elected.
That’s not to raise the politicians, just to say that every time I think they deserve a dancing lesson – the Tyburn Jig to be exact – I remember that they were elected and either the electorate are sovereign, and thus responsible, or they’re not. Too many seem to claim the right to choose, enjoy the benefits of their choice, then declaim the eventual responsibility for their choice. They’re basically lying to themselves when they vote for freebies, knowing deep-down that they’re not really freebies at all, then get angry when they turn out not to be freebies. It’s fundamentally dishonest and dehumanising, even more so when they expect others to shoulder the burden of the debt they chose.
Tony Blair gets blamed for a lot of things – by me as much as anyone – but he was only a manifestation of people’s desire for the lies he offered, and I think an awful lot of people know that, deep in their hearts, but will bluster self-righteously at even the suggestion. As for Blair, so for Obama and any other number of mendacious hacks. At least Mussolini got the trains to run on time (had to get it back on track somehow!)
It’s a mistake to measure intelligence and stupidity on a linear scale anyway. I do well in traditional intelligence tests but have met many who are intelligent in other ways and have come to recognize my own stupidity (not just ignorance) in some areas. Often, intelligence in a field is an acquired attribute, the result of long periods immersed in a field.
Nemo, the comment was specifically NOT addressed to you. You’re not the one who made the claim based on a misunderstanding of the word “average” = “mean.” And in my example, sample size has nothing to do with it. You can have the average of two values just as well as the average of thousands or millions or gazillions.
You can certainly have a set of numbers of which the average is far above the value of most of the numbers in the set. {1,1,1,1,1,1000} for instance. 1005/6>>1. You are quite right, as a sheer definitional and arithmetic proposition.
Just as you say, it was a pure-and-simple example based on nothing but the foundational definition of “average” or “mean.”
I was only trying to point out the confusion between the average (mean) and the median.
Julie, thanks for clarifying. Just as an admin point, I read most of this stuff on an Kindle Fire, so lose a lot of site(s) functionality; is there any way of knowing who is responding to whom that I may be missing?
Nemo, not in a case like the present instance. I purposely didn’t name any names, not wanting to embarrass the perp. :>(
In general, since we don’t — thank the Great Frog! and Perry and Alec and any other PsTB — have “threaded” comments, I don’t think there is any way to know whether a comment is specific to a certain early comment, except by reading the comment and at least skimming through the earlier ones.
(PsTB: Proper plural, “Powers That Be.”)
Richard, it seems a linear scale is appropriate, given that we seem to have hijacked a post about railways (joke). Anyway, continuing your train of thought, I share your doubts; for all that I’m confident in many areas, the one thing about which I’m most confident is that I’m not omniscient and fear of appearing foolish is a great motivator to precision. Even the difference between intelligence and intellect isn’t entirely clear-cut to me: I tend to think of intelligence as knowledge – probably due to my military background – and intellect as processing power, though that becomes unreliable when there’s a whole class of distinctly unimpressive people out there called ‘intellectuals’.
That’s why I try to just take each person as I find them, remembering that not only is a stopped 12-hour clock right twice a day, but it’s also the most accurate sort of clock.
Of course they will – but some of them would be lying. Our discussion is theoretical, and as such assumes perfect knowledge of each individual’s reasons for action or inaction – which is seldom, if ever the case in reality.
Your points about people voting for freebies are valid in many cases, but not all – it’s not always as simple as that. We live in representative democracies, and so with the exception of an occasional referendum, we essentially vote for package deals – which necessarily involves some tradeoffs. That is not to say that all these tradeoffs are wise on balance, but my point is that often people will vote for a representative who offers freebies not because of that, but because he is seen as preferable on some other, unrelated issue (such as security, or civil liberties, or other issues not directly related to economics) which the voter deems important enough.
Words to live by. That is why I use the word ‘stupid’ as sparingly as I possibly can – although I must admit that even I am forced to use it, occasionally… :-O As to definition, I guess it’s a bit like pornography: hard to define, but everyone knows it when they see it – although that does not mean we will all see it in the same people, under similar circumstances.
Alisa, you obviously have a far more optimistic or forgiving view of human nature than I do; my experience is that people are rarely as rational as you portray them and often – usually – downright hostile when you subject their views or actions to cold reason. An awful lot of people seem to allow pride to uphold their opinions; I did it myself at least once – about thirty years ago on a flight in the States, but I was a young Liverpool supporter who’d never even heard of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
I think your analogy to pornography holds true in so many ways, not least of which is the willful dishonesty about its true nature . But of course Robert Mapplethorpe’s work is Art*.
*Ironic capitalisation
I am not familiar with yours to comment, but mine is very far from optimistic. Forgiving – yes, very much so. Otherwise I would have been forced to go on a killing spree or cut my own wrists long time ago :-O
My only point was to show that there are all sorts, some often residing within one person, believe it or not 😀
I believe you, I really do. And that’s not just my Killing Spree/Suicide Prevention Strategy. I think my view on human nature is best described as ‘detached’; I had to edit my last comment before hitting Post because it was all ‘they’ and ‘their’. I didn’t pick my pseudonym for a cartoon fish, that’s for sure.
Detached just about nails it.
Very true. And I definitely don’t just “believe” it, I know it to the marrow of my bones, through intimate personal nano-secondly contact with one. 🙁
But why the sad face, Julie? Embrace your alter-ego – I embraced mine long ago almost to the point of suffocation 😀
LOL1 🙂 😉