The Brexit Thread

[Greenlander]

Associated British ports manages the following ports:

Ayr
Port of Barrow
Barry Docks
Cardiff Docks
Fleetwood
Garston
Goole
Port of Grimsby
Hams Hall
Port of Hull
Port of Immingham
Ipswich Dock
King's Lynn
Port of Lowestoft
Newport Docks
Plymouth
Port of Port Talbot
Silloth
Port of Southampton
Port of Swansea
Teignmouth
Troon)
The holding company is registered in Jersey and 33.3% owned by Borealis Infrastructure,(Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System) 33.3% by Anchorage Ports LLP, 23.3% by Cheyne Walk Investment Pte. Ltd (a nominated investment vehicle of GIC a sovereign wealth fund established by the Government of Singapore and 10% by the Kuwait Investment Authority.

It's gone from a company just outside the FTSE-100 with a share price that barely moved (IIRC usually around £4/share) to a vehicle that funds foreign pension schemes. There have been advantages as the change has actually resulted in more investment in infrastructure and proper union recognition.

Locally if the extra ferry sailings come to pass it'll be the first positive Brexit news as we'll need extra dockers. Most of the additional Brittany Ferries' traffic will flow through Poole though where they've got the most capacity.

BF have had more than their share of handouts from the French government over the years mind.

[Lang Spoon]

Interesting that 56% of Brits support re-nationalisation of rail - anyone who's travelled on Iarnród Éireann can tell you that State ownership is far from utopia, in and of itself.

There’s good wifi. And free. Apart from that Irish rail is pretty shit. 35 miles electrified. And trains to Dublin from surrounding towns like Balbriggan are far less frequent than the equivalent in Scotland (2 trains per hour AT PEAK compared to 4 for my similarly distant hometown to Edinburgh).

I’m definitely agnostic on rail renationalisation. Regulating the buses outwith fucking Edinburgh and London is far more urgent.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/stilldelvingh/status/1080815611100446721?s=21

[Sporting]

Interesting that 56% of Brits support re-nationalisation of rail - anyone who's travelled on Iarnród Éireann can tell you that State ownership is far from utopia, in and of itself.

Aren't they nationalised in Switzerland and Germany? And having travelled in those countries by rail, they seem to work pretty well (correct me if I'm wrong!).

[Lang Spoon]

Yep, though the Germans are introducing competition. But like Ireland the UK is car crazy and the treasury historically very averse to rail investment.

Also, the track infrastructure is nationalized in the UK, and is the most dysfunctional part (at least in scotland, Network Rail UK has been pure pish on electrification)

[Nefertiti2]

also Ireland has a population of 4.7 million on an island with a population of 6.5 million.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/cathynewman/status/1080904237826027520?s=21

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yep, though the Germans are introducing competition. But like Ireland the UK is car crazy and the treasury historically very averse to rail investment.

Also, the track infrastructure is nationalized in the UK, and is the most dysfunctional part (at least in scotland, Network Rail UK has been pure pish on electrification)

Yep. Network Rail's had a few issues here too. Great Western Mainline Electrification is like our Edinburgh Trams- arriving late and much curtailed (it won't reach us now, nor Swansea). Investment hasn't been too bad the last 15 years by our historic standards, but we ask fare payers to pay more towards the railway than most places. Some interesting figures on taxpayer contribution/subsidy/whatever you want to call it here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies#Europe

The Scottish Government seem to have negotiated a good deal on the Scotrail contract, and rightly didn't terminate it like Labour wanted. I don't know if it's complicated to devolve a Scottish region Network Rail, I don't see why not.

[ad hoc]

I'm not seeing the grift, at least from the initial reporting. Like I say, the point about "company never operated ferries, doesn't own any ships" which prompted the whole thing is entirely separate from whether the specific people managing the company are in fact appropriate people to be doing so with government money. I'm not saying the procurement process was good, or even that these people won't turn out to be grifters. Just that I find articles like this baffling. If they had been given either of the other contracts I would be up in arms too. But they weren't. They were given the contract to do the thing the company was set up to do. It's an entirely different situation to the Puerto Rico Whitefish thing, despite superficial similarities.

You see a company that was set up for the sole reason of operating ferries. I see a company that was set up for the sole reason of accessing the vast funds being made available by the government to try and deal with the shit they themselves have created

[Tubby Isaacs]

Interesting that 56% of Brits support re-nationalisation of rail - anyone who's travelled on Iarnród Éireann can tell you that State ownership is far from utopia, in and of itself.

I'm sure Ireland could have invested more in the past, but I think in fairness it's probably quite hard to run a viable (not just in fares, but in terms of what taxpayers will stump up) in lots of Ireland. It says here that in 2008, the Irish government was paying over 900m Euros as "subsidy", for not all that much rail travel. I make no comment on the efficiency of the Irish nationalized rail company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_subsidies#Europe

I don't know how difference a big investment programme in non-Dublin would make.

[Wouter D]

Aren't they nationalised in Switzerland and Germany? And having travelled in those countries by rail, they seem to work pretty well (correct me if I'm wrong!).

German rail is shit*. Swiss is really good, though.

*I'm not just saying that because the Guardian says it; I have travelled to a conference with German rail twice, and got stranded in shitholes twice. In Erkelenz they at least arranged replacement buses, but in Hatzenport the station manager saw the throngs of irate passengers, thought "screw that", and fucked off home. To make matters worse, no companies delivered food in Hatzenport, because it was, as mentioned before, a shithole.

[Nefertiti2]

German rail isn't shit. you were unlucky

4.395 Euro is the cost of an annual pass for all German rail and all public transport

That's less than the cost of a 30 mile annual commute inthe UK.

[Wouter D]

German rail isn't shit. you were unlucky

4.395 Euro is the cost of an annual pass for all German rail and all public transport

That's less than the cost of a 30 mile annual commute inthe UK.

So your sole arguments are that German railways are cheaper than and not quite as shit as UK railways?

You're not going to convince me this way. Excellent railways are the ones in Japan and Switzerland. Good service is in Canada and South Korea. Many other countries (such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, China, even Egypt, and possibly a few other countries that I'm forgetting about right now) deliver decent service. German and English railways rank all the way at the bottom of the list.

[Nefertiti2]

your sole argument seems to be that you got on two bad trains.

[ursus arctos]

The quality of service in Germany has declined, but saying that it is on the UK's level is ludicrous. Yes, Switzerland is the European gold standard, but Germany is still better than France, Italy or Spain (to use EU Nations of roughly comparable size and geographic challenges).

I can only imagine what you would make of North American rail service.

[Tubby Isaacs]

If those subsidy figures upthread are accurate, Germany's service shouldn't be declining. Wouldn't it be better if commuters paid more and the difference was put into investment?

[Nefertiti2]

No.


Looks as though the Express thinks Sajid Javid is a serious candidate for new Tory Leader.

https://twitter.com/jlsinc/status/1080600898613719040?s=21

[Tubby Isaacs]

I know that figure is from 2014, but I'd be surprised if it was that different now. One thing Germany is careful about is avoiding "feast then famine" funding.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I know this isn't the train thread, but one for Spoony. Something upbeat sounding about Network Rail in Scotland. No idea if it's justified.

https://twitter.com/DavidHorne/status/1080737635449081857

[Kowalski]

So your sole arguments are that German railways are cheaper than and not quite as shit as UK railways?

You're not going to convince me this way. Excellent railways are the ones in Japan and Switzerland. Good service is in Canada and South Korea. Many other countries (such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, China, even Egypt, and possibly a few other countries that I'm forgetting about right now) deliver decent service. German and English railways rank all the way at the bottom of the list.

I have used trains in France, Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Germany and Italy and their services were fine from my brief taste, I would imagine that a tourist in Britain would gain a very different impression of British train travel.

On the north Wales coast roughly a third of the trains I've tried to catch in the last year (about 2 a week) have been late. Their condition is often less than perfect, for example the trains that they used to ferry people between Manchester and north Wales over Christmas were old and horribly overcrowded, I may have have a really nice chat with a Nigerian fella that was travelling to Bangor but that's another story.

You don't need to be a genius to see the awful effect that profit maximisation in a market economy has played in our railway system. 20 years ago I paid about £4 to travel from Rhyl to Llandudno, now I pay about £9 to use exactly the same trains.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That reflects twice as many people using trains as 20 years ago, and the government wanting them to pay the full cost of their fares and more (where possible).

Any new trains due?

[Nefertiti2]

That reflects twice as many people using trains as 20 years ago, and the government wanting them to pay the full cost of their fares and more (where possible).

Any new trains due?

"The government wanting them to .."

come on Tubby you can do better than this.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Some are due, in 2022. I'm not helping here, am I?

And it looks like numbers at your stations have fallen the last few years. That isn't good at all. But my brother-in-law was in charge of the signalling upgrade on the line. Hope that it improves.

[Tubby Isaacs]

"The government wanting them to .."

come on Tubby you can do better than this.

I was responding to "profit maximization". It is, but it's driven by the government. It wouldn't likely be all that different if the government ran the trains, if it wasn't prepared to subsidize tickets more. Which I think they definitely should, of course I do.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/singharj/status/1081208536573595651?s=21