Len - the tories wanted to set up franchising on the trains out of a genuine desire to create a marketplace, competition and economic freedom - never heard it was the EUs fault before but then I don't read the Daily Mail!
[cite]Posted By: seriously_red[/cite]Len - the tories wanted to set up franchising on the trains out of a genuine desire to create a marketplace, competition and economic freedom - never heard it was the EUs fault before but then I don't read the Daily Mail!
If it appeared in the Daily Mail it was simply because the paper was reporting the facts. Please see link.
Funny how the German network is still run by various branches of Deutsche Bahn and still works fine, eh?
Did you vote for the Tories in '92? You got the privatisation you voted for. Voted for Labour in 2001 or 2005, or the Tories in any other election since then? Well, again, you got the privatised, fecked-up network you voted for.
Oh, and the French and Belgian railways, while I'm at it (which each have a 1/3rd share in Eurostar) - they don't seem to be affected by any EU rules...
"If it appeared in the Daily Mail it was simply because the paper was reporting the facts." Coincidence - happens once or twice a year ! lol
A "fact" is not a causal link. No other country has separated / sold off elements of the network in the way this country did - and none of them forced TOCs to lease rolling stock from 3 companies which were sold for pennies later sold on to the banks for fortune - The tories saw the RMT dinosaurs in their sights and thought that creating a marketplace would take them out. The EU says that countries shouldn't bail out their airlines but the Italians are still at it - more fool them - and the Irish have only recently learnt that a national "flag carrier" is a pain in the ass. Let's face it Railtrack was "the wrong kind of privatisation" as far as our trains were concerned.
Just because the EU pass a directive doesn't mean you have to follow it nor does it mean it's always a bad idea. And as for the French designating about 25 sectors of their economy as areas affecting national security, i.e., not available for foreign takeover...another EU directive being faught at a local level
And the train-driving unions have actually done very well out of privatisation - because they've been able to play the companies off against each other, and get higher wages for their members.
I'm no advocate of privatisaation and agree that it is not the ONLY way of separating the accounting function of the Operating and Maintenance Companies.
However it is an undeniable FACT that Britain had to separate the accounting function of the Operating and Maintenance companies because of the EEC Directive, although they had a choice as to whether to privatise or not as I stated above, so I am not wrong in saying that the present state of our railways is EU (EEC back then) driven since they had to do SOMETHING.
I am not disputing the directive as I do not know but when I read a book about the crash of Railtrack (driven by the safety costs and poor performance after Hatfield) there was no mention of this.
However I disagree that the situation is EU driven - the drivers were the free marketeers and anti-union element - the tories liked to raise cash from share sales AND take people off the government payroll (even if you have to give away the business or subsidise it for years to come) neither of these objectives is EU driven. We agree the government could have pulled the sale or pilotted one section - their problem was that the rail unions would have tried to derail a pilot for equal and opposite dogmatic reasons.
Personally I go for the DLR solution - low maintenance, high tech, no drivers etc...
I am not disputing the directive as I do not know but when I read a book about the crash of Railtrack (driven by the safety costs and poor performance after Hatfield) there was no mention of this.
However I disagree that the situation is EU driven - the drivers were the free marketeers and anti-union element - the tories liked to raise cash from share sales AND take people off the government payroll (even if you have to give away the business or subsidise it for years to come) neither of these objectives is EU driven. We agree the government could have pulled the sale or pilotted one section - their problem was that the rail unions would have tried to derail a pilot for equal and opposite dogmatic reasons.
Personally I go for the DLR solution - low maintenance, high tech, no drivers etc...
As my link does not appear to work I've copied and pasted a couple of relevant directives from the directive whish was dated 29 July 1991:
....."Whereas, in order to render railway transport efficient and competitive as compared with other modes of transport, Member States must guarantee that railway undertakings are afforded a status of independent operators behaving in a commercial manner and adapting to market needs;
Whereas the future development and efficient operation of the railway system may be made easier if a distinction is made between the provision of transport services and the operation of infrastructure; whereas given this situation, it is necessary for these two activities to be separately managed and have separate accounts;....."
I'm not arguing about whether privatisation is good or bad I'm just making the point that a lot of bad stuff in our country occurs because of EU demands which is exacerbated by the incompetence of our own officials in implementing those EU demands.
In my opinion the state of the railways is a good tangible example of that which is why I made the point and attempted to back it up with the link to the directive.
As you say not everything that comes out of the EU is necessarially bad. What is bad though, in my opinion, is that the elected Government of this country is powerless to do anything about directives from an unelected European Commission if it wishes to remain a member of the EU. It has to implement these directives irrespective of whether they are in British interests or not.
The book you read may not have mentioned the EU dimension because they may not have known about it. The 3 main political parties have connived for over 30 years to try and suppress knowledge of the EU influence in our affairs. UKIP has it's faults but deserves credit for exposing this scandalous abuse of democracy.
We all know that the Tories are pro EU federalism.
Also Bob Crow RMT union wants the railtrack services to be merged again as one service. So to say that the Unions are making money out of this is a bit ott.
independent operators behaving in a commercial manner and adapting to market needs
That's how SNCF are run in France, so you don't need to privatise to get high quality transport.
The Tories privatised cause they needed the cash, end of
I'm not defending privatisation! This is what I wrote..."The Tories, under Major, decided that this would best be done by privatising the railways".
My point is that THEY HAD TO DO SOMETHING because the EEC directive left them with no choice! However in doing something they chose to privatise giving rise to the mess we have today! It was the EEC directive that made them do it though hence my original assertion that it's the EU's fault.
[cite]Posted By: LenGlover[/cite]pete_tong1 wrote: ..."We will moan when the new EU income tax arrives".....
we already have one EU tax. It's called VAT.
Spot on Lenny. It amazes me when people say that don't want to be controlled by Europe - WHEN WE ALREADY ARE!!!
You wait til we lose our zero-rates on food, books, etc - then people will really wake up and smell the coffee. It's coming, make no mistake. Our government - of whatever political persuassion at the time - wont want it, but there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
Welcome to the EU Superstate. Be sure to wipe your feet on the way out.
The idea of a thoroughly eurosceptic government bowing to Brussels on this one didn't sound right to me so I've looked it up...
Europe did indeed pass directive 91/440 but it required ONLY an accounting mechanism (like any sane operations director needs) in order to provide fair recharges and a free market for international freight traffic - which I hardly think applies to the Sidcup line !!!
It was the government who decided they wanted separate legal entities all over the place - (which I believe led to Hatfield) and which also meant they could blame Brussels if (when) it went tits up
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1998-003a.htm
"Rather the difficulty of the railway reform was its radical and experimental character, which created considerable uncertainty and risk for political leaders. Thus, the 1991 Directive provided an important resource for the government to legitimate its risky undertaking: ”The directive was preparing the way for what we would like to do anyway”(21). To conclude, although the British reforms went far beyond the legal requirements set out in the Directive, the latter served as added legitimisation for implementing a radical reform which had the blessing from Brussels.
I am now going to spend the next few days researching a European directive to tell the board to buy a f@cxx??ng striker (not an RMT one please)
Comments
rugged is a compliment! i was going to say bald
*runs for cover*
If it appeared in the Daily Mail it was simply because the paper was reporting the facts. Please see link.
http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/state_aid/legislation/91l237_en.html
Did you vote for the Tories in '92? You got the privatisation you voted for. Voted for Labour in 2001 or 2005, or the Tories in any other election since then? Well, again, you got the privatised, fecked-up network you voted for.
A "fact" is not a causal link. No other country has separated / sold off elements of the network in the way this country did - and none of them forced TOCs to lease rolling stock from 3 companies which were sold for pennies later sold on to the banks for fortune - The tories saw the RMT dinosaurs in their sights and thought that creating a marketplace would take them out. The EU says that countries shouldn't bail out their airlines but the Italians are still at it - more fool them - and the Irish have only recently learnt that a national "flag carrier" is a pain in the ass. Let's face it Railtrack was "the wrong kind of privatisation" as far as our trains were concerned.
Just because the EU pass a directive doesn't mean you have to follow it nor does it mean it's always a bad idea. And as for the French designating about 25 sectors of their economy as areas affecting national security, i.e., not available for foreign takeover...another EU directive being faught at a local level
However it is an undeniable FACT that Britain had to separate the accounting function of the Operating and Maintenance companies because of the EEC Directive, although they had a choice as to whether to privatise or not as I stated above, so I am not wrong in saying that the present state of our railways is EU (EEC back then) driven since they had to do SOMETHING.
I am not disputing the directive as I do not know but when I read a book about the crash of Railtrack (driven by the safety costs and poor performance after Hatfield) there was no mention of this.
However I disagree that the situation is EU driven - the drivers were the free marketeers and anti-union element - the tories liked to raise cash from share sales AND take people off the government payroll (even if you have to give away the business or subsidise it for years to come) neither of these objectives is EU driven. We agree the government could have pulled the sale or pilotted one section - their problem was that the rail unions would have tried to derail a pilot for equal and opposite dogmatic reasons.
Personally I go for the DLR solution - low maintenance, high tech, no drivers etc...
As my link does not appear to work I've copied and pasted a couple of relevant directives from the directive whish was dated 29 July 1991:
....."Whereas, in order to render railway transport efficient and competitive as compared with other modes of transport, Member States must guarantee that railway undertakings are afforded a status of independent operators behaving in a commercial manner and adapting to market needs;
Whereas the future development and efficient operation of the railway system may be made easier if a distinction is made between the provision of transport services and the operation of infrastructure; whereas given this situation, it is necessary for these two activities to be separately managed and have separate accounts;....."
I'm not arguing about whether privatisation is good or bad I'm just making the point that a lot of bad stuff in our country occurs because of EU demands which is exacerbated by the incompetence of our own officials in implementing those EU demands.
In my opinion the state of the railways is a good tangible example of that which is why I made the point and attempted to back it up with the link to the directive.
As you say not everything that comes out of the EU is necessarially bad. What is bad though, in my opinion, is that the elected Government of this country is powerless to do anything about directives from an unelected European Commission if it wishes to remain a member of the EU. It has to implement these directives irrespective of whether they are in British interests or not.
The book you read may not have mentioned the EU dimension because they may not have known about it. The 3 main political parties have connived for over 30 years to try and suppress knowledge of the EU influence in our affairs. UKIP has it's faults but deserves credit for exposing this scandalous abuse of democracy.
That's how SNCF are run in France, so you don't need to privatise to get high quality transport.
The Tories privatised cause they needed the cash, end of
Also Bob Crow RMT union wants the railtrack services to be merged again as one service. So to say that the Unions are making money out of this is a bit ott.
I'm not defending privatisation! This is what I wrote..."The Tories, under Major, decided that this would best be done by privatising the railways".
My point is that THEY HAD TO DO SOMETHING because the EEC directive left them with no choice! However in doing something they chose to privatise giving rise to the mess we have today! It was the EEC directive that made them do it though hence my original assertion that it's the EU's fault.
Spot on Lenny. It amazes me when people say that don't want to be controlled by Europe - WHEN WE ALREADY ARE!!!
You wait til we lose our zero-rates on food, books, etc - then people will really wake up and smell the coffee. It's coming, make no mistake. Our government - of whatever political persuassion at the time - wont want it, but there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
Welcome to the EU Superstate. Be sure to wipe your feet on the way out.
The idea of a thoroughly eurosceptic government bowing to Brussels on this one didn't sound right to me so I've looked it up...
Europe did indeed pass directive 91/440 but it required ONLY an accounting mechanism (like any sane operations director needs) in order to provide fair recharges and a free market for international freight traffic - which I hardly think applies to the Sidcup line !!!
It was the government who decided they wanted separate legal entities all over the place - (which I believe led to Hatfield) and which also meant they could blame Brussels if (when) it went tits up
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1998-003a.htm
"Rather the difficulty of the railway reform was its radical and experimental character, which created considerable uncertainty and risk for political leaders. Thus, the 1991 Directive provided an important resource for the government to legitimate its risky undertaking: ”The directive was preparing the way for what we would like to do anyway”(21). To conclude, although the British reforms went far beyond the legal requirements set out in the Directive, the latter served as added legitimisation for implementing a radical reform which had the blessing from Brussels.
I am now going to spend the next few days researching a European directive to tell the board to buy a f@cxx??ng striker (not an RMT one please)