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Monday's Letters: What a ridiculously expensive way to run a railway
THE sudden demise of the East Coast railway route under National Express is no surprise whatsoever.
The Conservative Government under John Major made a huge mistake with its privatisation of the British Railway system.
Breaking up British Rail into 26 different train-operating companies and creating separate companies for the upkeep of the track, stations, road transport, ferries, hotels, and the carrying of freight was a non-starter from day one.
The Government has been putting even more taxpayers' money into the private companies than it invested in the old British Rail. Look where the best, most efficient, most punctual, most clean, most user-friendly national railways are: Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Japan. All totally state-owned and run. We have a fragmented, very complex system with a totally bizarre ticket pricing policy.
More and more people want to travel by train, but our Government and the train-operating companies actually discourage use by unworkmanlike policies. The companies are supposed to be independent but have to go cap in hand to the Treasury to get funding for more carriages, newer locomotives and other basic necessities.
The service that GNER was providing on the route was good and most passengers were pleased with their efforts. Unfortunately, their parent company went bust and their franchise bid of 1.3bn was far too much. Our Government then accepted the utterly unachievable figure of 1.4bn in premiums from National Express.
Surprise, surprise, after barely 18 months it has failed and National Express just walk away with a penalty payment of 72m to the Government. What a way to run a railway. People with real railway experience and know how are quietly chuckling: "I told you so!"
From: David Quarrie, Lynden Way, Holgate, York.
From: David Reed, Long Tongue Scrog Lane, Huddersfield.
THE Yorkshire Post (July 2) reveals the absurdity of the East Coast franchise deal.
As you point out, National Express was committed to paying 395m to the Government in the last year of the franchise just for the right to run trains – well over 1m a day.
This is a simple transport tax and must be paid to the Government before a pennyis spent on the huge costs of rolling stock, fuel, manpower, and all the other costs of running a railway, then plus profit to the operator
This means that the 17 million passengers a year on the East Coast line would each have been paying 23 a journey straight to the Government.
Even if the assumed wildly optimistic 10 per cent annual growth in passenger numbers had occurred, each passenger would still have been paying transport tax of 14 a journey. Add all the other costs and it is clear why fares need to be so high.
The Government claims to want to attract people to rail but in practice imposes punitive charges to prevent this occurring.
From: Declan Austin, Marston Road, Tockwith, North Yorkshire.
IF the Government is stuck for a name for their newly aquired railway company they may want to consider National Debt East Coast. It should minimise the rebranding costs.
Tag will be burden for sheep farmers
From: Pat Mangion, marketing manager, Ritchey, Masham, North Yorkshire.
IN response to Chris Benfield's article, "Disaster fears after Yorkshire trials for barcoding of sheep" (Yorkshire Post, June 12), I fear the article may be somewhat misleading.
Our company supplies and distributes a wide portfolio of agricultural products, as well as manufacturing and supplying livestock identification tags. As such, we are very much involved in the debate surrounding the impending legislation for electronic identification (EID) tags in sheep.
The article referred to the barcoding of sheep. However, the EU legislation, which comes into force in January, actually requires sheep to be tagged with an ear tag containing a transponder, as opposed to a tag which carries a printed barcode.
The technology behind an EID tag is that the transponder emits a signal which can be read by a device.
Farmers will not be required to have any sort of reading device on the farm. However, they must ensure that sheep born or identified after December 31 and not intended for slaughter are double tagged with one standard visual tag and an EID tag. It is likely that a pair of these tags will cost 1-1.50.
Defra has already admitted that the cost of sheep EID will outweigh any benefits. There has also been a great deal of scepticism about whether the system will deliver its traceability objectives, given that no plans have been announced for setting up a central database for information handling.
While it might be supposed that Ritchey – as a seller of EID sheep tags – supports the compulsory ruling, this is not the case. Our business relies on a vibrant UK agricultural industry. We feel that EID might prove to be the last straw for some sheep farmers. Already suffering the effects of rising input costs and poor returns, they will simply sell their flocks.
Many other EU countries have been declared exempt, due to having a breeding flock below 600,000 in number, and New Zealand producers have not been required to adopt a similar system.
Our belief is that compulsory sheep EID will be just
another burden, further disadvantaging the UK sheep industry.
Justice for pensioners
From: Jean Lorriman, Huddersfield and District Pensioners' Organisation, Waterloo, Huddersfield.
IT WAS good to read your Michael Parkinson feature (Yorkshire Post, July 2) about his efforts to draw attention to the plight of the elderly through his own personal experience looking after his mother. Thank goodness we have celebrities who are not afraid to support less glamorous causes.
British pensioners suffer the worst social and economic justice in Europe and perhaps the support of respected celebrities is the only way to bring about change.
Clearly most of our MPs have been too busy with expenses manipulation, second home maintenance and second jobs to give a fig about the state of their constituency pensioners' standard of living.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg's recent utterance in a televison interview that he thought the pension was about 30 a week says it all – but I wonder how many MPs know the exact sum or all the involvement of the documentation if you want to apply for Pension Credit? They would if they had to live on it.
True cost of Royal Train
From: Brian Waddington, Dukes Wharf, York.
I AM intrigued how a calculation of the cost of the Royal Train is made. The Yorkshire Post (June 30) indicates that a trip to Yorkshire by Prince Charles had cost 27,000.
Presumably this is an existing train, drawn by an existing locomotive and crewed by a qualified driver and other railway employees. I would also expect that when not assigned to the Royal Train these people and assets are working elsewhere.
On this basis the only additional cost would be the fuel used for the journey. One must therefore assume that some enormous cost per mile is assessed to cover depreciation of track and train and the general costs of running a railway.
It would seem that someone, somewhere is levying a very large charge on the Royal finances to cover such services. Unfortunately, this income does not seem to help to reduce the cost of rail travel to the rest of us. However, it makes a nice headline.
Starting in the same way, that was BBC news
From: Mark Wilson, Headingley, Leeds.
MY 11 and 14-year-old sons Frankie and Tommy are very critical of TV presentational style, especially Look North.
From Alan Partridge they understand the ridiculous "epithet inversion" technique for an intro to a story.
At its worst, this involves simply repeating some dramatic accusation or cry of pain eg, "You're killing me and you're killing my family" (dramatic pause), followed by, "Those were the words of..." or, "That was a 59-year-old Leeds woman's response to..."
But by far the most common device – in fact every story on Look North was introduced like this last night – is a simple inversion
of the second part of the sentence with the first. Thus, "Passengers on trains into Sheffield yesterday were stuck for over two hours due to flooding of the track" becomes, "Stuck for two hours on a flood track. That was the fate of passengers on trains into Sheffield yesterday."
I suppose the editors have come from newspapers and don't realise that dramatic headlines sound stupid when they're read out. I imagine it was the same with early films when actors used to projecting for the stage encountered the much more intimate medium of the film camera. But they've been making news programmes for 50 years now.
It makes for the most lamentable and predictable TV. Why not aim a little higher, BBC Leeds?
We need early General Election
From: John Abbott, Newland Avenue, Hull.
TREVOR Bromby (Yorkshire Post, June 26) thinks David Cameron is silly to want an early General Election.
Yet if you thought you could do better than New Labour (who couldn't after what they've done to the economy these last 12 years), obviously you would want to make a start on clearing up Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's mess as soon as you could.
David Cameron and George Osborne know how big a mess they'll inherit. For Mr Bromby and others to want – out of misguided partisan loyalty – the mess-making to continue just shows how much we actually need a General Election, sooner rather than later.
Harsh lesson
From: Colin Cawthray, Elmete Drive, Roundhay, Leeds.
CHILDREN'S Secretary Ed Balls says he is prepared to intervene in the running of struggling schools if their standards are not good enough.
I wouldn't allow Ed Balls to manage a car park, let alone children's education.
After all wasn't he Chancellor Gordon Brown's right-hand man at the Treasury for all those years and look at the financial state we are in.
Why wait?
From: AW Briglin, Sefton Street, Hull.
I WOULD like to know why some of our thieving politicians have not yet been charged with fraud and larceny when it is patently obvious that they have stolen public money, for example, claiming on mortgages which never existed. Paying this money back doesn't absolve them of the crime. Any ordinary member of the public would already have been charged and possibly jailed, so why this delay?
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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