Sorted out? How?



Apart from being divided into "sections", ready for those sections to be taken over by private companies, I don't see how.

I can't help but notice that my ticket from Leeds to Birmingham on the 8.11 on Monday morning has just arrived priced at £53.



The last time I used the service about six months ago, and previous to that, the price was always around £41, same service, same operator, same time train.



Thats not a bad price increase to get away with and I'll bet my seat is occupied again.

Just booked a Hull/London KX return.

Still only £20 when booked in advance and prepared to travel off peak.

Doesn't matter what time you book the Leeds/Brum route, its the same price, even the 03.15 train is the same price

(and I'm NOT getting up that early).



The other thing thats tweaking my tail is that my usual hotel is fully booked because the Conservative Party Conference is in town next week - bloody good news that is, my train arrives in Leeds from Darlington which means it'll be full of North Yorkshire landowners in tweed on their way to cheer on Panface - I'm having to stay in a poxy Travel Lodge out of town which has 83 reviews on Trip Advisor the best of which says "I suppose it was ok", look out for my Facebook updates on Monday

Back in the "bad old days" poor old Peter Parker had to run a railway with very low investment from the government.

He always said that if he was allowed to raise money in the same way that any company could, he could revitalise BR without the need to privatise.

Successive flavours of government wouldn't allow it.



Then it got privatised and loads of investment flooded in, in the form of subsidies, that could just as easily have been provided to BR without the need for loads of it to flow straight out again in the form of dividends and "profit".

On ticketing, the three months thing is wonderful – if you can book that far in advance. But I cannot often do that, so end up paying an incredibly varied range of prices. Crazy.



Robinson mentioned the French system – it's the only one outside of the UK that I've now had fairly extensive experience of travelling on, and it's brilliant.



Although I would say that the local services are also good and every bit as valuable as the big ones.



If you're interested, there's a little bit [url=http://thevoluptuousmanifesto.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/stage-6-la-tour-de-carol-to.htmlhere[/url about the effect of maintaining such small, local lines – and indeed, how it's funded.

I always thought, perhaps wrongly, that privatisation was introduced to allow for competition, and therefore customer choice. It was a surprise therefore to me that railways were privatised, as it's pretty impossible for competition on a route that is fixed on steel rails (all this praise for Virgin makes me think I'd love to use their trains between Sheffield and London, but I can't as East Midlands trains have the monopoly on that). A flawed model from the start for me and time to take back railway ownership.

It was rushed through by John major as well as he didn't think they would get it done before they lost the next election. He freely admits this himself. It was done for ideological reasons, not to give us choice.



The same is true with the utilities. While we can switch providers unlike with rail where we are stuck with the local franchisee the utilities are in effect a cartel whatever anyone says about the regulators powers.

Quite.

The London underground never made real profits when in private hands with different lines owned by different companies, and provided a much better transport system when eventually it was all linked up.

Competition and "the market" isn't always the best solution.

So what you're saying is, privatisation worked because it induced investment?



Not really an argument against my point that.

Not really, I read it as the same results could have been achieved if BR had been allowed to raise funds in the same way the privatised rail companies did.

But how would the BR lads get hammered in the Railway clubs if people wanted to make the railways work?