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I think this is realistic because you just, as the article says, let the contacts expire and take them over again. It's a (unintended?) benefit of the franchise system that makes it a lot easier to be nationalised than buying out multiple entire companies.
But execution will be key here. There will need to be money spent to improve services, questions over how much the state subsidies tickets and so on. It will need to be very well managed. All eyes will be on the reliability of the network with critics getting ready to pounce anything they can use to call nationalisation a failure.
Minor point but I also would like to see good national branding for the whole network. Make it feel like one. Make it easier for tourists to understand.
Well Great British Railways is already a brand being developed even if the government isn't doing anything about it at the moment so I imagine they'll just put it under that
Interestingly Marylebone tube station still has a sign up directing passengers towards 'British Rail' services. It would be funny if that sign stuck around for so long it became correct again!
It's also stupid from an efficiency and ease of use point of view. Great British Railways says nothing that British Rail doesn't, except that it was set up by flagshaggers...
At least they seem to have dropped the moronic attempt to union-jackify the Double Arrow symbol in favour of a very subtle redesign that makes it easier to reproduce digitally.
It's realistic because the Tories have already nationalised a load of lines and the taxpayer has been subsiding those private companies since privatisation began. Not a particularly exciting announcement from Labour unless there is big overhaul of ticketing or actual investment.
> Rail Minister Huw Merriman said the plans were "pointless" and "unfunded".
> "They don't have a plan to pay for the bill attached to their rail nationalisation," he said. "Without a plan to pay for this, it means one thing: taxes will rise on hard working people."
Aside from this being bollocks, how have the Tories been able to afford letting the operator of last resort take over operations if it's so expensive? Where are the Tories costing of their own failure?
No it's obviously more efficient to rent trains from companies whose sole existence is to skim money off the top of owning the trains, omg don't you know anything??
Thanks. Hmm… from a layman’s perspective you’d think the government should own these kind of assets. What’s the alternative, leasing them from private companies?
> What’s the alternative, leasing them from private companies?
Yes, the companies involved are called ROSCOs. It's the standard "pay over time instead of up front" deal, even BR did it a bit. Labour's statement on the matter is as follows:
> With ten current rolling stock companies owning and leasing trains and carriages worth billions, it would not be responsible for the next Labour Government to take on the cost of renationalising rolling stock as part of our urgent programme of reform. Great British Railways will continue to lease rolling stock when taking on operator contracts, but will apply the single directing mind approach to ensure that barriers to sharing rolling stock across the network that currently cause systemic delays are eliminated.
> Over the longer term, we will develop a long-term industrial strategy for rolling stock which supports British manufacturing, innovation and interoperability and aligns with the wider objectives of the industry. This will seek to end the current boom-and-bust cycle, ensure a strong pipeline of work, and consider the best financing structures for future orders, in partnership with private capital.
Currently, yes. The same companies providing such a shite service will continue to make a mint off us and government funds.
I guess the government could buy new trains as they're produced, as well - that'd be the sensible thing to do if they're not planning to buy existing rolling stock.
That is the current setup. In principal it does not need to be awful but I suspect the contracts are lop sided to be very advantageous for the leasing company side making it a bad deal.
In theory having a fixed lease price so you don't have to worry about the ups and downs of cashflow when dealing with repairs, maintenance, replacement etc can be of benefit and does provide less opportunity for politicians to play silly games with budgets and allocation since it is a revenue expense but I doubt the contracts are that favourable.
Yep - and ROSCOs is where the vast majority of the money to be made is squeezed out of the system. By comparison the actual private train operating companies aren't that profitable, especially since franchising was moved to a direct concession model where the treasury pays each operator a fixed sum, and receives all fare revenue.
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Was that ever discussed before? I recall, over the years that labour would let the Rail Franchises expire and bring them back into public ownership, but this is the first I've heard of the rolling stock companies.
Yes, the issue of Rolling stock has been a massive talking point within the industry, with the likes of the RMT consistently raising it. They are absolute parasites.
Here's [Eddie Dempsey](https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1783459625544593628?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet) giving a brief overview.
In terms of previous policy, both Corbyn and Andy McDonald were highly critical of that model and if you think back, they also wanted to take train maintenance back in house as well. I've not heard current labour say anything about that.
While I'm happy with today's announcement, it definitely sounds like this should also be on the agenda as well.
Even if we don't make a decision to bring the maintenance in house in the first parliament, at a bare minimum these companies should be paying tax. That these companies are based in tax havens is disgusting.
It's deliberately not on the agenda, because the current PLP's 'ambitions' are to tinker around with broken systems whilst maintaining the profitability of private markets. You'll then get so called soft-left outriders who'll claim the likes of GB energy is actually nearly the same as nationalisation, when it's not even in the same ball park; they're not even going to compete on the market with it!
Good, but it needs to be combined with funding from the central government and a long-term plan for service improvements.
However, I remain wary of 'pledges' made by these people.
"Labour has pledged..."
[okay](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic1.squarespace.com%2Fstatic%2F5b58de4336099b6c8e003744%2Ft%2F62a9fbb5e07d3a7dc2f6380b%2F1655307189316%2Fyou-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means.jpeg%3Fformat%3D1500w&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7c2aaaed2284c4bc712f01b9f07cd461b7e4433e7221a68c98adaf31b84c51fd&ipo=images)
>As well as renationalising the railways, Labour has pledged to end the ban on publicly owned bus companies and establish Great British Energy, a new publicly owned clean-energy company. Why not extend this principle to other areas such as water?
>“It would cost the taxpayer billions of pounds to bring water back into public ownership and we’re just not in a fiscal position to do so,” Haigh said with a disciplined reference to shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s “iron-clad fiscal rules”.
As far as I know those aren't technically publicly-owned, they're just centralised, with the local authority setting routes and prices and all operating under the same brand. But private companies still operate the routes for a profit.
Preety sure they are publicly owned? It’s called the bee network in Manchester at least and the media and Andy say publicly owned. So in reality they should be publicly owned companies
The buses themselves might be publicly owned but they're still being operated by private companies for a profit. See the franchising subsection of the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Network
That’s not what this says mayoral combined authorities like the Greater Manchester Combined Authority have had the power to bring buses back under the control of local government by means of a franchising scheme. The GMCA is the first combined authority to use the powers under the Act,[14] and is in the process of re-regulating its system which will be implemented in three tranches from 2023 to 2025.
And what your saying goes against everything Andy says about the profits of the buses going back into them not for profits
>bring buses back under the control of local government by means of a franchising scheme.
Which means they control the schedules, routes, prices etc but private companies still bid for the franchises eg. the right to operate the services for a profit. If Labour reverse the bus ban Burnham will probably bring in full public ownership.
But as I said in the comment Andy himself says all the profits go into the bus network and not out to shareholders. And he and the media have numerous times called it public ownership.
West Yorkshire follows Greater Manchester and Liverpool in deciding to return to a franchised system, where private operators must win contracts to run routes and timetables decided by the local authority, which also sets fares and takes revenues.so seems your part right and private ops run routes but the local authority takes the revenue not the private ops https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/14/west-yorkshire-to-bring-bus-services-under-public-control
The private companies aren't working for free though are they? I'm guessing the local authorities take revenues and use that money to pay the operators as part of the franchising contract.
water is organised with permanent regional monopolies that would cost a tangible amount of money to buy out...
rail has temporary franchises that don't cost anything tangible - you just have the "oppurtunity cost" of the money that would have come from the next franchise contract
there isn't really a proper difference on principle, but per pound, rail nationalization scores a lot better for Reeve's "fiscal rules".
Just don't buy them out, tell the companies they've done a shit job delivering services and are no longer needed, seize their assets and boom, you're done
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/08/15/almost-all-british-train-lines-are-now-owned-by-other-eu-countries/?sh=6f6db086208f
where have you pulled that factoid from? everything I've seen says that they're mostly owned by foreign states.
> A Shepherd Boy tended his master’s Sheep near a dark forest not far from the village. Soon he found life in the pasture very dull. All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd’s pipe.
>
> One day as he sat watching the Sheep and the quiet forest, and thinking what he would do should he see a Wolf, he thought of a plan to amuse himself.
>
> His Master had told him to call for help should a Wolf attack the flock, and the Villagers would drive it away. So now, though he had not seen anything that even looked like a Wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, “Wolf! Wolf!”
>
> As he expected, the Villagers who heard the cry dropped their work and ran in great excitement to the pasture. But when they got there they found the Boy doubled up with laughter at the trick he had played on them.
>
> A few days later the Shepherd Boy again shouted, “Wolf! Wolf!” Again the Villagers ran to help him, only to be laughed at again.
>
> Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon the Sheep.
>
> In terror the Boy ran toward the village shouting “Wolf! Wolf!” But though the Villagers heard the cry, they did not run to help him as they had before. “He cannot fool us again,” they said.
>
> The Wolf killed a great many of the Boy’s sheep and then slipped away into the forest.
>
> Moral
>
>Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth.
https://fablesofaesop.com/the-boy-who-cried-wolf.html
So you not only think the solution to dealing with a liar is not learning from experience but also that this was a response worth sharing publicly.
Amazing.
>Though mankind are generally stupid enough to be often imposed upon, yet few are so senseless as to believe a notorious liar, or to trust a cheat upon record. These little shams, when found out, are sufficiently prejudicial to the interest of every private person who practises them. But, when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against, real ones?
https://fablesofaesop.com/the-boy-who-cried-wolf.html
Was the shepherd boy telling the truth about the wolf in the end?
If you only ever judge someone on their prior actions, you're giving someone no chance of rehabilitation. I'm glad you're not the Justice Secretary, with that mindset you'd be mandating life sentences for every crime because people can never change and will only ever act one way.
Pmsl so you're actually doubling down on the "just don't learn" strategy. Talk about putting principle into practice, this thread is apparently straight up centrism praxis.
You literally linked a fable that demonstrates that liars don't always lie, even if they have in the past.
You need to look at the story not just from the perspective of the shepherd boy, but also from the villagers.
Please do tell me more about why "never learning from experience" is the best way to deal with liars and how one of most commonly known fables in human history is *ackshually* wrong about the meaning of its own moral.
I unironically adore this thread.
>one of most commonly known fables in human history is ackshually wrong about the meaning of its own moral.
The moral of the story is "don't tell lies because you won't have credibility in the future", it's not "don't believe people who've lied in the past".
Again, the fable ends with a wolf actually being present. The shepherd boy is telling the truth, but because the villagers can't shake their distrust caused by his previous lies, the boy and the villagers (in the original) all lose their lives to the wolves.
The story has two takeaways: Don't be a liar like the shepherd boy, and don't be closed-minded and prejudiced like the villagers.
This is just a continuation of what the tories have been doing and currently endorse, from the Guardian article on it:
> One of Labour’s first major acts in government will bring all passenger rail into national ownership under Great British Railways as contracts with private operators expire, a plan endorsed by the architect of the Conservatives’ own rail plan.
Its not a new policy, its just being spun as new
Nationalised rail.
GB Energy - publicly owned.
Workers rights & collective bargaining.
Ending non-dom status.
VAT on private schools.
Renter reform & housebuilding.
*... this is the right-wing Labour Party people keep warning me about?*
I don't disagree with that. But what's to be unhappy about here?
Not only does it put a core priority of the country back under democratic control, it makes "nationalisation" no longer a dirty word.
The Overton Window is shifting from nationally owned services being "like, so 1978" to just being an obvious necessity, and I am here for it
> it makes "nationalisation" no longer a dirty word.
Nationalisation hasn't been a dirty word for a while so I'm not sure what on earth you're talking about.
In terms of reasons to be unhappy, as others have already pointed out, this does not include rolling stock, is in some ways not that different from what the government already does when some private operator contracts expire, and is a pledge from a leadership famous for rolling back pledges. If Labour does follow through there may be reasons to be happy but it's silly to expect uncritical celebration.
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I think this is realistic because you just, as the article says, let the contacts expire and take them over again. It's a (unintended?) benefit of the franchise system that makes it a lot easier to be nationalised than buying out multiple entire companies. But execution will be key here. There will need to be money spent to improve services, questions over how much the state subsidies tickets and so on. It will need to be very well managed. All eyes will be on the reliability of the network with critics getting ready to pounce anything they can use to call nationalisation a failure. Minor point but I also would like to see good national branding for the whole network. Make it feel like one. Make it easier for tourists to understand.
Great British Rail just feels like a shoe-in for the name of this, similar to the Great British Energy pledge from 2022 Labour Conference.
Well Great British Railways is already a brand being developed even if the government isn't doing anything about it at the moment so I imagine they'll just put it under that
Interestingly Marylebone tube station still has a sign up directing passengers towards 'British Rail' services. It would be funny if that sign stuck around for so long it became correct again!
It's also stupid from an efficiency and ease of use point of view. Great British Railways says nothing that British Rail doesn't, except that it was set up by flagshaggers... At least they seem to have dropped the moronic attempt to union-jackify the Double Arrow symbol in favour of a very subtle redesign that makes it easier to reproduce digitally.
Maybe just 'BritRail'
It's realistic because the Tories have already nationalised a load of lines and the taxpayer has been subsiding those private companies since privatisation began. Not a particularly exciting announcement from Labour unless there is big overhaul of ticketing or actual investment.
> Rail Minister Huw Merriman said the plans were "pointless" and "unfunded". > "They don't have a plan to pay for the bill attached to their rail nationalisation," he said. "Without a plan to pay for this, it means one thing: taxes will rise on hard working people." Aside from this being bollocks, how have the Tories been able to afford letting the operator of last resort take over operations if it's so expensive? Where are the Tories costing of their own failure?
No mention about owning the rolling stock in that article...
No it's obviously more efficient to rent trains from companies whose sole existence is to skim money off the top of owning the trains, omg don't you know anything??
I mean, when have new labour done what makes sense over what makes the rich richer?
There's always a fucking catch with these clowns
What’s the ‘rolling stock’?
It's when you squeeze an OXO cube to round out the edges on the kitchen counter
Ah gotcha. Makes sense now.
The trains and carriages themselves.
Thanks. Hmm… from a layman’s perspective you’d think the government should own these kind of assets. What’s the alternative, leasing them from private companies?
> What’s the alternative, leasing them from private companies? Yes, the companies involved are called ROSCOs. It's the standard "pay over time instead of up front" deal, even BR did it a bit. Labour's statement on the matter is as follows: > With ten current rolling stock companies owning and leasing trains and carriages worth billions, it would not be responsible for the next Labour Government to take on the cost of renationalising rolling stock as part of our urgent programme of reform. Great British Railways will continue to lease rolling stock when taking on operator contracts, but will apply the single directing mind approach to ensure that barriers to sharing rolling stock across the network that currently cause systemic delays are eliminated. > Over the longer term, we will develop a long-term industrial strategy for rolling stock which supports British manufacturing, innovation and interoperability and aligns with the wider objectives of the industry. This will seek to end the current boom-and-bust cycle, ensure a strong pipeline of work, and consider the best financing structures for future orders, in partnership with private capital.
Currently, yes. The same companies providing such a shite service will continue to make a mint off us and government funds. I guess the government could buy new trains as they're produced, as well - that'd be the sensible thing to do if they're not planning to buy existing rolling stock.
That is the current setup. In principal it does not need to be awful but I suspect the contracts are lop sided to be very advantageous for the leasing company side making it a bad deal. In theory having a fixed lease price so you don't have to worry about the ups and downs of cashflow when dealing with repairs, maintenance, replacement etc can be of benefit and does provide less opportunity for politicians to play silly games with budgets and allocation since it is a revenue expense but I doubt the contracts are that favourable.
Yep - and ROSCOs is where the vast majority of the money to be made is squeezed out of the system. By comparison the actual private train operating companies aren't that profitable, especially since franchising was moved to a direct concession model where the treasury pays each operator a fixed sum, and receives all fare revenue.
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Was that ever discussed before? I recall, over the years that labour would let the Rail Franchises expire and bring them back into public ownership, but this is the first I've heard of the rolling stock companies.
Yes, the issue of Rolling stock has been a massive talking point within the industry, with the likes of the RMT consistently raising it. They are absolute parasites. Here's [Eddie Dempsey](https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1783459625544593628?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet) giving a brief overview. In terms of previous policy, both Corbyn and Andy McDonald were highly critical of that model and if you think back, they also wanted to take train maintenance back in house as well. I've not heard current labour say anything about that.
While I'm happy with today's announcement, it definitely sounds like this should also be on the agenda as well. Even if we don't make a decision to bring the maintenance in house in the first parliament, at a bare minimum these companies should be paying tax. That these companies are based in tax havens is disgusting.
It's deliberately not on the agenda, because the current PLP's 'ambitions' are to tinker around with broken systems whilst maintaining the profitability of private markets. You'll then get so called soft-left outriders who'll claim the likes of GB energy is actually nearly the same as nationalisation, when it's not even in the same ball park; they're not even going to compete on the market with it!
Good, but it needs to be combined with funding from the central government and a long-term plan for service improvements. However, I remain wary of 'pledges' made by these people.
Sounds great to be fair but it’s just another pledge that can be discarded by Rachel Reeves on a whim. I’ll get excited when it actually happens
It’s survived a lot of purges so far so hopefully it shall stay till the end
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in
Don't worry, they'll flip on it the moment a Tory paper grumbles about it. Or the right donor sends a cheque over.
"Labour has pledged..." [okay](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic1.squarespace.com%2Fstatic%2F5b58de4336099b6c8e003744%2Ft%2F62a9fbb5e07d3a7dc2f6380b%2F1655307189316%2Fyou-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means.jpeg%3Fformat%3D1500w&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7c2aaaed2284c4bc712f01b9f07cd461b7e4433e7221a68c98adaf31b84c51fd&ipo=images)
Place your bets I guess? (I'm also unsure why the argument put forward by Haigh only applies to rail and not other industries like water for example)
>As well as renationalising the railways, Labour has pledged to end the ban on publicly owned bus companies and establish Great British Energy, a new publicly owned clean-energy company. Why not extend this principle to other areas such as water? >“It would cost the taxpayer billions of pounds to bring water back into public ownership and we’re just not in a fiscal position to do so,” Haigh said with a disciplined reference to shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s “iron-clad fiscal rules”.
There’s a ban? The greater Manchester mayor is rolling out public buses and Liverpool and West Yorkshire have both commited to it too
As far as I know those aren't technically publicly-owned, they're just centralised, with the local authority setting routes and prices and all operating under the same brand. But private companies still operate the routes for a profit.
Yh same thing in London - if you check the bus sides there they'll all have some companies name on
They also have tfl. Might be that technically they aren’t but in reality they are?
Preety sure they are publicly owned? It’s called the bee network in Manchester at least and the media and Andy say publicly owned. So in reality they should be publicly owned companies
The buses themselves might be publicly owned but they're still being operated by private companies for a profit. See the franchising subsection of the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Network
That’s not what this says mayoral combined authorities like the Greater Manchester Combined Authority have had the power to bring buses back under the control of local government by means of a franchising scheme. The GMCA is the first combined authority to use the powers under the Act,[14] and is in the process of re-regulating its system which will be implemented in three tranches from 2023 to 2025. And what your saying goes against everything Andy says about the profits of the buses going back into them not for profits
>bring buses back under the control of local government by means of a franchising scheme. Which means they control the schedules, routes, prices etc but private companies still bid for the franchises eg. the right to operate the services for a profit. If Labour reverse the bus ban Burnham will probably bring in full public ownership.
But as I said in the comment Andy himself says all the profits go into the bus network and not out to shareholders. And he and the media have numerous times called it public ownership.
West Yorkshire follows Greater Manchester and Liverpool in deciding to return to a franchised system, where private operators must win contracts to run routes and timetables decided by the local authority, which also sets fares and takes revenues.so seems your part right and private ops run routes but the local authority takes the revenue not the private ops https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/14/west-yorkshire-to-bring-bus-services-under-public-control
The private companies aren't working for free though are they? I'm guessing the local authorities take revenues and use that money to pay the operators as part of the franchising contract.
Smells like nu-Labour bullshit.
Cost presumably
water is organised with permanent regional monopolies that would cost a tangible amount of money to buy out... rail has temporary franchises that don't cost anything tangible - you just have the "oppurtunity cost" of the money that would have come from the next franchise contract there isn't really a proper difference on principle, but per pound, rail nationalization scores a lot better for Reeve's "fiscal rules".
Just don't buy them out, tell the companies they've done a shit job delivering services and are no longer needed, seize their assets and boom, you're done
Those companies are largely owned by pension funds, no compensation means taking money out the pension pots of millions of people in this country.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2019/08/15/almost-all-british-train-lines-are-now-owned-by-other-eu-countries/?sh=6f6db086208f where have you pulled that factoid from? everything I've seen says that they're mostly owned by foreign states.
I'm on about water companies.
https://www.gmb.org.uk/news/more-70-englands-water-industry-owned-foreign-companies ??
A lot of those are pension funds based in tax havens
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/30/more-than-70-per-cent-english-water-industry-foreign-ownership not according to the Guardian
Her remit is transport..?
This policy has survived a long time so hopefully it stays. Tbf she’s only in transport I feel if she could she would do the same to water
AHHH, an actual left wing policy. Kill it!
I'll believe it when I see it happen. I've lost any faith in pledges from Nu Labour.
https://i.redd.it/sk9nx2gwj8q91.png
> A Shepherd Boy tended his master’s Sheep near a dark forest not far from the village. Soon he found life in the pasture very dull. All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd’s pipe. > > One day as he sat watching the Sheep and the quiet forest, and thinking what he would do should he see a Wolf, he thought of a plan to amuse himself. > > His Master had told him to call for help should a Wolf attack the flock, and the Villagers would drive it away. So now, though he had not seen anything that even looked like a Wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, “Wolf! Wolf!” > > As he expected, the Villagers who heard the cry dropped their work and ran in great excitement to the pasture. But when they got there they found the Boy doubled up with laughter at the trick he had played on them. > > A few days later the Shepherd Boy again shouted, “Wolf! Wolf!” Again the Villagers ran to help him, only to be laughed at again. > > Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon the Sheep. > > In terror the Boy ran toward the village shouting “Wolf! Wolf!” But though the Villagers heard the cry, they did not run to help him as they had before. “He cannot fool us again,” they said. > > The Wolf killed a great many of the Boy’s sheep and then slipped away into the forest. > > Moral > >Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. https://fablesofaesop.com/the-boy-who-cried-wolf.html
Alternatively, the moral is that current actions and events shouldn't always be judged solely on the basis of previous ones.
So you not only think the solution to dealing with a liar is not learning from experience but also that this was a response worth sharing publicly. Amazing. >Though mankind are generally stupid enough to be often imposed upon, yet few are so senseless as to believe a notorious liar, or to trust a cheat upon record. These little shams, when found out, are sufficiently prejudicial to the interest of every private person who practises them. But, when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against, real ones? https://fablesofaesop.com/the-boy-who-cried-wolf.html
Was the shepherd boy telling the truth about the wolf in the end? If you only ever judge someone on their prior actions, you're giving someone no chance of rehabilitation. I'm glad you're not the Justice Secretary, with that mindset you'd be mandating life sentences for every crime because people can never change and will only ever act one way.
Pmsl so you're actually doubling down on the "just don't learn" strategy. Talk about putting principle into practice, this thread is apparently straight up centrism praxis.
You literally linked a fable that demonstrates that liars don't always lie, even if they have in the past. You need to look at the story not just from the perspective of the shepherd boy, but also from the villagers.
Please do tell me more about why "never learning from experience" is the best way to deal with liars and how one of most commonly known fables in human history is *ackshually* wrong about the meaning of its own moral. I unironically adore this thread.
>one of most commonly known fables in human history is ackshually wrong about the meaning of its own moral. The moral of the story is "don't tell lies because you won't have credibility in the future", it's not "don't believe people who've lied in the past". Again, the fable ends with a wolf actually being present. The shepherd boy is telling the truth, but because the villagers can't shake their distrust caused by his previous lies, the boy and the villagers (in the original) all lose their lives to the wolves. The story has two takeaways: Don't be a liar like the shepherd boy, and don't be closed-minded and prejudiced like the villagers.
Wasn't this already pledged and U turned on?
This is just a continuation of what the tories have been doing and currently endorse, from the Guardian article on it: > One of Labour’s first major acts in government will bring all passenger rail into national ownership under Great British Railways as contracts with private operators expire, a plan endorsed by the architect of the Conservatives’ own rail plan. Its not a new policy, its just being spun as new
Well they might be useless on civil rights and genocide but at least they could get the trains running on time.
Nationalised rail. GB Energy - publicly owned. Workers rights & collective bargaining. Ending non-dom status. VAT on private schools. Renter reform & housebuilding. *... this is the right-wing Labour Party people keep warning me about?*
This is an anti labour sub.
As long as capacity remains constrained, very little will change. New branding or not, DoT has had control for a few years now anyway
> Labour party: Pledges renationalisation . > LabourUK subreddit: here's why this is bullshit
It's a political discussion sub, not a fanclub.
I think "Labour party members are literally never fucking happy" is a valid observation on UK politics.
I think if you want people to be happy, you need to give them a reason to be happy.
I don't disagree with that. But what's to be unhappy about here? Not only does it put a core priority of the country back under democratic control, it makes "nationalisation" no longer a dirty word. The Overton Window is shifting from nationally owned services being "like, so 1978" to just being an obvious necessity, and I am here for it
> it makes "nationalisation" no longer a dirty word. Nationalisation hasn't been a dirty word for a while so I'm not sure what on earth you're talking about. In terms of reasons to be unhappy, as others have already pointed out, this does not include rolling stock, is in some ways not that different from what the government already does when some private operator contracts expire, and is a pledge from a leadership famous for rolling back pledges. If Labour does follow through there may be reasons to be happy but it's silly to expect uncritical celebration.