2015 General Election

[BigT]

Well I'll take your word for it MP but I can't believe anyone who has sat in piss for 3 hours on a British Rail train seriously wants to return to that..

 

[Dar]

Personally I can't wait for it all to be over so I can go back to complaining about the government and how they aren't who I voted for or how they aren't doing what I voted in to do.

 

[Martin]

These graphs are all off the YouGov website, showing support for nationalisation and price setting,

 

[Poisson]

You may point out BR was bad, which in many ways it was, but it was only bad due to being poorly run. A properly run railway would be interesting and for the love of Wardley please let them scrap Pacers

 

[Jonathan]

I hate to break it to you, Tom, but Porterbrook - one of the ROSCOs (rail stock owning companies) - are planning to refurbish their fleet of Class 144 Pacers so they can have a service life beyond 2020.

 

[Poisson]

Refurbish them with Semtex

 

[Sam]

Well I'll take your word for it MP but I can't believe anyone who has sat in piss for 3 hours on a British Rail train seriously wants to return to that..

Yeah, because the way that trains are run definitely wouldn't have changed in a quarter of a century, piss-on-seats is all down to whether they are privately or publicly run. (!)

There is no evidence to suggest that a properly run, renationalised railway wouldn't be as good as the publicly run and owned SNCF and Deutsche Bahn which are, err, two of the best railways in the world. Rather than the extortionate shambles that it is today thanks to the miracle of the market.

 

[AstroDan]

As much as the Green Party may seem ideologically a good option, I request that anybody who is considering a vote for them actually reads their policies in full because some of them are very drastic and quite frankly I have now been put off them.

 

[Poisson]

Everything is too drastic, we need times of less lurching 'left' and 'right'. We need a centre party that isn't the spineless Lib Dems and are actually centre of the political spectrum

 

[Sam]

As much as the Green Party may seem ideologically a good option, I request that anybody who is considering a vote for them actually reads their policies in full because some of them are very drastic and quite frankly I have now been put off them.

What policies specifically? I've just had a read through their 'mini manifesto' and I can't find anything that I'd disagree with (except nuclear power), or that I would have thought would be disagreeable to any left-wing person.

Everything is too drastic, we need times of less lurching 'left' and 'right'. We need a centre party that isn't the spineless Lib Dems and are actually centre of the political spectrum

Is that meant to be ironic? I only ask because one of the major themes in politics over the last 25 years is the phenomenon of the two main parties constantly moving towards the centre. Politics is arguably more 'centrist' now than it has ever been.

 

[Poisson]

Explained myself poorly, I was aiming for something with less of a 'stigma' as such as Tories (cuts to public sector and backing private) and Labour (Trade union influence). Basically what the Lib Dems could be, with a government that encourages the private sector in certain areas but with strict control but keeps things of importance public (power and transport for example)

Now, I should be doing Maths instead of politics

 

[Martin]

Labour (Trade union influence).

You say that like it's a bad thing. Not that the unions have much say in Labour any more any way. Miliband doesn't want them, they increasingly don't want him.

 

[BigT]

I wouldn't trust our current bunch of hapless politicians to run a bath let alone a railway or power company.

 

[Dar]

What policies specifically? I've just had a read through their 'mini manifesto' and I can't find anything that I'd disagree with (except nuclear power), or that I would have thought would be disagreeable to any left-wing person.

There's lots of nice words in the mini manifesto that fall apart when you look at the actual policy documents. I want to vote for them for the 'fair society' they promote, but I can't put aside the 55mph maximum speed limit on main roads, or the 20mph on built-up roads, or the fact that taxis are considered public transport, or the land value tax that farmers and other land owners would have to pay to the local community(?). They want to stop animal testing, but that's a vital part of most medical research!

 

[Martin]

I doubt if the Greens got in they'd be able to put a lot of their transport policies in to effect. Especially not lowering the national limit to 55, people just wouldn't accept it. Most people don't stick to 70 so imagine if they tried to enforce 55? Wouldn't happen.

I'm all for a land value tax though.

 

[Adam]

Another Green Party policy I'm strongly opposed to is the proposed tax increases on alcohol & tobacco. Fair enough if they did decriminalise drugs I'd not really be that arsed about either as much as I am now (disclaimer - drugs are bad, mmkay) but both of them are already incredibly taxed anyway, it should be the major corporations who deserve heavy taxation within the alcohol and tobacco industries, not the common person. (And subjectively speaking tobacco is ridiculously over-taxed already)

 

[Sam]

I wouldn't trust our current bunch of hapless politicians to run a bath let alone a railway or power company.

You know that nationalised utility and transport companies aren't run by politicians but by civil servants, right...? You do know that Angela Merkel doesn't redesign the Deutsche Bahn timetables from Berlin to Leipzig herself...?

 

[DiogoJ42]

Greens will never get my vote.

Nor will the blues, the reds, the yellows... I'm left with very little option at the moment. Hey, what about those purple guys - OH WAIT.

 

[Martin]

Weirdly enough, a huge amount of our public transport is indirectly owned by the German state. Arriva's parent company is Deutsche Bahn.

And Abellio is a branch of the Dutch state transport company.

 

[BigT]

Weirdly enough, a huge amount of our public transport is indirectly owned by the German state. Arriva's parent company is Deutsche Bahn.

And Abellio is a branch of the Dutch state transport company.

And a lot of our power companies are owned by the French government as well.

You know that nationalised utility and transport companies aren't run by politicians but by civil servants, right...? You do know that Angela Merkel doesn't redesign the Deutsche Bahn timetables from Berlin to Leipzig herself...?

Yes I was obviously speaking hypothetically but who exactly would give the mandate?
I'm interested to know what this massive advantage public ownership would bring? Current tariffs are largely set by the government, http://www.stagecoach.com/media/insight-features/the-facts-about-rail-fares.aspx?frommobile=true and the few times I have used a train lately it has been on time and reasonably clean.

Also this Government is trying to develop and build a 21st century railway to rival those on the continent, it's called HS2 and has been widely belittled and condemned by those on the left.
You can't have it both ways.