Here is a real life freight pilot.
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Interesting video Fran.
He does a lot of videos, and IMHO that is one of the better ones. I don’t always like “his style” but don’t doubt his information. Like all YT he needs to grab viewers at first, but is not IMHO overly sensational. Mostly.
Mentour Pilot is great in all of the videaos I have seen.
Kelsey, 74Gear, was a FO on a 3 crew long haul when that vid was made, and is now a Captain, but still makes videos.
Back on topic…Trump and the US military… defenders of the US Constitution and free speech.
Difficult to tell sometimes, but it is OK to laugh, cynically/bitterly, at that one.
The rich getting richer just by being rich brings back memories of a good few years ago regarding people who were “names at Lloyds”. Just in case there are some folks on here who don’t know what this meant, essentially if you had assets you could guarantee the value of those assets to Lloyds that could be used in a time of need. So, if you had assets over a certain sum you would become a “name” and each year you would receive a commission from them. The commission would be dependent on how much you were prepared to pledge. Your home was virtually safe as Lloyds had enough funds to cover most emergencies. So for no payment or doing any work you would receive substantial income from Lloyds. Absolute winner - as long as you were wealthy enough. The only drawback was that your potential losses (however unlikely they would seem as it had never happened before) were unlimited. You would need to pay a percentage of the loss, depending on how much you had pledged.
Unfortunately during the 80’s a number of large claims started to be made against Lloyds in respect of asbestos and other man made catastrophes. Lloyds had to call on the “names” to contribute which of course outraged them. After all, why should they need to pay for other peoples mistakes 
Numerous court cases followed, needless to say they lost. But an example of the rich thinking they have a God given right to get wealthier at everyone else’s expense.
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/factbox-whats-in-a-lloyds-name-idUSL20588817/
I do remember that now you jogged my memory.
The attitude is somewhat reminiscent of the privatisation of the water companies.
When they were sold off we were told that there would be much more investment in infrastructure.
It hasn’t happened. Money has been borrowed at the same time that dividends have been paid out to shareholders. Now the companies are in danger of going bust. And we cannot do without fresh water and sewage disposal. They cannot be allowed to cease activities.
So bail them out.
Privatisation of profits and the tax payer subsidises losses.
We are in the realm of UK politics and global economics, now but as a principle:
Pure communism does not work well.
Pure capitalism does not work well.
There needs to be a mix of the two. Roads, power, water, and of course health are needed by the country and should be owned or at least overseen by the state. Consumer goods are mostly better off privately owned/controlled.
Some other flaws in capitalism are explored in an excellent book “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism”. Whether you think it is all correct or not, the arguments and examples are eye opening.
Adam Smith and his invisible hand were an interesting concept, but many of his assertions have been proved wrong. We are not rational actors who know our best interests. When we do know what is best for us, we sometimes act incorrectly.
If you are interested then “Predictably Irrational” is another eye opener. It is both an interesting work on the psychology of behavioural economics, and good fun.
Totally agree with you in this respect. The sell off of the water supply system was as near to a criminal act as you could possibly get a government to do. Regarding the power supply, in Scotland we have little to no fossil fuel generation and actually export the excess electricity we generate. However we are still tied to the system regarding the price being dictated by the fact that some generation needs to come from gas. So, as long as there is one gas powered station in operation, we are tied to these high prices. You have the bizarre situation whereby the customers of SSE who were previously supplied by the North of Scotland Hydro Electricity board being charged exorbitant rates despite all their power coming from hydro systems that were built over the last 100 years. You would think that they would at least get a discount.
Yes that is a very peculiar situation. Born of a hybrid public/private ownership.
If the system was owned 100% privately then the gas powered stations would simply close down as being uneconomic. The system would then fall over.
Private companies do not care whether or not a service is provided to a country. Especially foreign owned ones. Look at the Chinese owned steel plants!
Their “job” is not to provide a service. It is to provide profit for shareholders. Full stop.
And of course we have had a windfall for generating companies. Oil and gas prices increasing (Russia sanctions etc) has led to an overall increase in elec prices, and those who provide green elec have been given more money although their costs have not risen a single penny. That is not good or clever investment by them, it is a windfall. It shoud be taxed as such and so subsidise the increased bills of all power users.
Again the private companies got a bonus, but the paying public got bigger bills.
There can be competition in the supply of phones and internet, BT being privatised made sense. There is no real competition in the supply of gas to your house. That is not a suitable for being private.
As if by magic…Moorhouse is talking about water today, after a Guradian article yesterday.
Another fiddle/sleight of hand?
Ofwat investigating ‘rip-off’ cost of water firms’ infrastructure works | Water industry | The Guardian
https://youtu.be/wdjzJ9dCxnc?si=n-8Wg-dfHhAnE_UA
Tend to agree with your sentiments re control or public ownership of vital utilities. Would you do the same with the railways?
If I can jump in. When they privatised the railways I thought that it was probably a good decision. I thought that private enterprise would have better integrated things like freight. However, experience has shown that we are probably worse off now than we were then. The problem I have is that whilst private control over the railways has been, by and large, a bad thing I don’t trust the government to do it any better.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
BR as it was back in the day not a roaring success, but then the privatised railm has not been great either.
Good rail costs money and continually penny pinching is not the way to go. Just as in road transport buying the cheapest trucks, the cheapest oil and filters, etc will come back to bite you.
Governments (all parties) tend to look at the next election and go for short term savings.
In an ideal world we would have some sort of national long term plan agreed on…but we live in the real world, not an ideal one.
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I don’t know if that is a good enoiugh reply for @Gateshead ?
I am not a politician seeking election and don’t have an answer to everything, but admit to gobbing off alot about some things!
On balance I think the rail should be in the nation’s ownership. It works fairly well for Germany, France, Japan, etc so why not here too?
Is the UK such a basket case that we cannot run our railway whilst many other countries can? I don’t think so. We should be capable of it too.
One of the biggest problems we have here in the UK in respect of rail is the geography of the nation. Go north and west of Birmingham and your faced with mountains. There is very little space to add extra track so high speed running is limited and freight is a no-no during the day. We’re always getting told that the electricity produced by renewables during the night is surplus to requirements (until we build enough battery storage plants) so why not allow the railways to get it for free (or at least heavily discounted) overnight. Bring this cost down and you might start to do some good.
HS2
It was often derided as costing a fortune to just cut a few minutes off a passenger route, but was so much more.
By putting in a second line it would have enabled more freight to run on the existing line.
Proposed by Labour and started by Tories it looked like a good long term project.
Now look at it. By penny pinching and short term-ism by more recent Govs it is now a shadow of what it could and should have been.
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Rail makes more sense in longer routes for general cargoes.
Transferring loads on and off trains takes time. That fixed time is less important if part of a long journey, but is significant as part of a short one.
Moving boxes from Tilbury to Glasgow on trains makes sense. To Brum less so. To Manchester and Leeds it make sense if quicker than by truck, so HS2 in it’s truncated form is not much good.
Rail will never be any good for short journeys. Other than moving volumes of stone around then there is very little freight that could be attracted to rail. For longer journeys then an argument can be made for it but I’m sure that costs of doing it are a lot more than moving it in fleets of trucks. The only companies that do it seem to use it as a way of demonstrating their green credentials rather than as an economic business solution. As we know though if the economics are right then freight movements would be more popular. It just seems crazy to me having all that capacity overnight and hardly using it.
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Most efficient way of moving goods is to handle it as few times as possible. Loading it onto a lorry then unloading it at the station then load8ng it onto a train then unloading at the final station then loading onto a lorry and then unloading a 3rd time at the delivery point is 3 times the work
I do not think there is a good or bad answer when it to comes to rail ownership / operating.
I am not a rail passenger myself but back in the day we had a coal depot at a rail head in Gateshead and were in daily contact with the shunters etc and never had any problems.
I think the later privatisation was a bit of a mish mash and destined to cause more problems than it solved
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It works well for Germany because their government is the majority shareholder in Deutsche Bahn, which runs several UK rail operating companies and so can invest the profits in the German network.
Yes. The Gov has a hand but ministers and politicians are not too deeply involved. It is there not to take money out of the system but is reinvested where needed. Prices are not inflated to syphon money out for private profit.
In the UK, Welsh Water is a not for profit organisation. Has that got any disadvantages I wonder? Not manged by politicos and not squeezing customers for extra profits.
Reward managers with bonuses for good performance in services, not for extraction of monies for share-holders.
Scottish Water is owned by the government and households aren’t metered. Even the business water rates are reasonable. I suppose it helps that we have plenty of supply and lots of natural reservoirs to call on though.
That’s certainly one of the big downsides. Maybe we just have to accept that rail freight is not for us here in this small island, no matter how attractive you make it.