East Coast Mainline

As I don't drive a car, I do drive people mad, so I have been a life long user of Trains. Even when it was nationalised and the service was poor, I loved the experience most of the time. Even when I had to commute to work by train, my experience was never as bad as others seem to have.

When the rail network was privatised, I could see improvements, and now the service is actually very good, with new trains, better facilities and a reliable timetable. I don't want to give the impression that everything is rosy as the cost of rail travel has become horrendous. However, I feel that the railways has become a service that has become far to easy to criticise. Often I find that it is the people who do not use the trains that are the loudest critics.

Unlike other forms of transport, it is possible to meet and talk to people who have been doing wonderful things. As an example I met a woman who had just returned from working as volunteer in Africa. Also occasionally it would be possible to meet people across the social class. The best example of this I was on a train talking to a young woman when one of her parents neighbours came along the carriage and stopped to talk to her. The fact that this neighbour was also the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, Nigel Lawson just made the situation rather surreal. As the Chancellor seemed to think that this young woman and I were Boyfriend and Girlfriend, I have often wondered if that encounter ever caused a comical misunderstanding.

Therefore I do try and keep alert to any news regarding the railway. Yet the announcement that the government is taking over The East Coast Mainline, my main link to the capital, as the franchise operator was not making enough money and wanted to renegotiate the fees paid to the treasury.

Since the collapse of the Banks, every industry or area of commerce has assumed that the Government will bail them out. But as the Railways cost the Tax payer three times more than the network did when it was owned by the nation, reducing the one point four billion pounds fee to the government would have been a travesty of justice. As simply the company, National Express, was in effect asking the taxpayer to subsidies its profits.

Based on the information we were given at the time, on the whole I did think that the Banking system had to be saved. However now the fall facts have slowly emerged, my opinion has changed, and would have been different then had all the facts been made public then. But that leaves us the British taxpayers and the country as a whole with some serious nation debt problems. Therefore, no business can or should expect the Government to bail it out.

With the massive subsidies that the train companies have received and are receiving, they have become lazy and are relying on these subsidies to boost profits. The East Coast Mainline was and remains the most profitable part of the network, and always was a licence to print money. As the company was only expecting one percent growth year on year rather than the ten percent they had forecast, they no longer liked the deal they had agreed. Remember that they would still have made a profit and that one percent return on five billions is still fifty million pounds over five years.

Personally I think that the Government should keep the East Coast Mainline in public hands as that could be used as a bench mark that shows how much the privatised train companies are ripping off the taxpayers, and over charging the passengers. The railways are important and the need to have lower carbon footprints from transport, the trains will play an important role in the future too.

The government does not do business and commerce well, if they did the dogs dinner that is privatisation of the rail network would not have occurred. However, in this case it should retain this line, run it profitably and be even tougher with the other companies when their franchises come up for renewal. This will drive down costs, and with reduced fares expand passenger numbers.

If only I had the chance of meeting the Chancellor of the Exchequer now...