Full Rail Nationalisation....

If a party included this in their next manifesto would you be more inclined to vote for them?

 

No, but then that's bad argument because I'd probably be voting for the party that says they would implement this anyway (unless it was the Greens).

 

Why wouldn't you vote for the Greens? More left wing than New Labour.

 

No it wouldn't sway me at all but full nationalisation of the utilities would certainly have my interest (unless it was the Greens).

 

Again, why not the Green's?

 

I just think they are a bit of a one policy party. I'm sure you could probably prove me wrong on this though.

If I'm honest, I don't know much about them. I might look into this a bit more shortly. Would you seriously say that they are more left wing than Labour?

 

Bunch of hippies.

 

Yes I would. Not hard like.

 

The Tories are more left wing that 'New Labour'. OK I'm stretching it a bit but you get the idea.

 

Take your point

 

I'd vote a party that wanted to nationalise all public transport and the utilities. That's less likely than Stephen Dawson being the next Redders.

 

Even my free-market capatilist friends think we should re-nationalise public transport. Vote winner.

 

So, assuming a government has the balls to nationalise the railways, the next question is how?

How do you legally nationalise something without the current operators of the service suing the pants of the government? Is this possible without costing a lot of money with in "compensation" or legal costs etc?

 

I'm more of an ideas man, Redstar will fill you in with the details

 

Easiest solution is to wait until a contract runs out and take it over.

 

Wouldn't that be illegal - i.e. giving preferential treatment to the nationalised operator?

Don't get me wrong, I don't know, and I hope it is an easy issue to solve.

Next, we need woodhead tunnel open but that is just a personal thing.

 

Weigh any potential compo costs against what its costing the taxpayer now

Absolute scandalous that we have to keep bailing the private companies ous out because we can't let our infrastructure go down the pan while the profit makers just keep enjoying, well, making a profit.

 

Don't think so - they wouldn't be giving anyone preferential treatment, they just wouldn't be opening it to tender and I don't think they'd be under obligation to do that. I could be wrong though!

 

The truth is it can't - thanks to the way the Tories privatised it - keeping the tracks and stations seperate from the train opeerators so they can charge stupid fees to run trains on the tracks.

The operators are party to long term contracts and so should those contracts disappear then it'd be chaos, costing stupid money and knackering the system up.

Why they couldn't cut loose the old British Rail Board but stipulate a minimum provision on certain lines is beyond me - but then their mates wouldn't have made so much money that way and the network would have expanded which is what they didn'tw ant.

 

All the trains lines are run as franchises. Every x years they come up for re-tender, so you get the situation (like now) where an incumbent loses the line to a rival offering the government more money (VirginTrains/FirstGroup). The government would have to start a TOC (train operating company) and then just award itself the other franchises as they came up for re-tender. The new West Coast franchise is a 15 year deal, so it would take at least that long to come into effect.

I believe that the East Coast line was taken back under government control a few years ago, but don't know if it was re-tendered.