Phil Wall, Pontypridd – Bring Back British Rail

The poorest suffer; the richest grow richer.

Phil Wall, Pontypridd + Share

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This is a really important cause to support.

Sharmilla Beezmohun, London
Working hard to make the stations look ‘pretty’ whilst service gets worse.

Alina Popa, Reading
Our railway network is a national embarrassment.

Tim Jokl, Manchester
It’s a disgraceful service from Wales to Manchester and at rugby internationals from Arriva Trains.

Terry Delbridge, Abergavenny
Greed has become the norm, time to start running the railway for the benefit of the people and not some greedy corporates.

Carmen Bell, Nelson

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Dawn Foster writing for Jacobin Magazine on why Britain needs to re-nationalise its railways 🚆 Bring Back British Rail! Join our passenger-led campaign founded in 2009 bringbackbritishrail.org ...

Britain Must Take Back Richard Branson’s Awful Trains

jacobinmag.com

In 2017, pundits were shocked by Jeremy Corbyn's call to renationalize rail — and the broad public support that greeted it. You only need to board one of Richard Branson’s rolling torture chambers to see why.

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I caught a train in China, three weeks ago. I travelled from Beijing to Shanghai, a distance of 819 miles. I sat in the 16th carraige of 16, first class and it took five and three quarter hours. On the ticket it gave the price, 933 Yuan (about £105), the car 16, and my seat. There was nobody standing. Every time we stopped, the very long train fitted perfectly in the station platforms. The speed was shown on the wall, mostly well over 300 kilometres per hour. China Rail IS NOT a privatised railway

Branson and all the other train operators put profit before service , if you look in the rest of the world train travel is the cheapest form of travel we have it so wrong , I love a train journey but just can’t take out a mortgage every time I want to go some where

Unfortunately It's gone to far too ever be possible to recreate the BR of professional Railwaymen and women. Like every industry that's been privitised. Lost the skills and experience of the professional team. And replaced by Anyone who has worked with professional proud BR staff will fully understand. The rest like everything else you haven't a clue. The future of the railway is Not very well. Unfortunately. Driverless train because it is safer I can see.

Nottingham to portsmouth, change at London. What with delays, changing stations, some of them minor stations before London & 1 local rail strike. Took me 18hrs & 5days pay lost for being 2hrs adrift. I was in the royal navy. The year was 1977. British rail no thanks. This wasn,t the 1st time either.

Better tell Branson GET IT SORTED OR LOOSE CONTRACT!

And WHO will be paying for Nationalization of NATIONAL GRID and now RAIL SERVICES and perhaps BRITISH STEEL cause "comrade" Corbyn wants to lend another £100bn if TAX PAYERS WITH VOTES ALLOW IT....we shall see!

I think the writer isn't a train traveller

Whilst I am all for renationalisation, I really cannot fault Virgjn West Coast. I’ve used them quite a bit and mostly been happy with punctuality and friendliness of staff.

How many commenting here actually use trains on a regular basis, I.e. as commuters or regular travellers ? I used Virgin between Birmingham and London as a daily commuter for around five years with little problem and at an average cost of £38.00 return without restriction.

I travel by train 4 or 5 times a week and I think Virgin is the best by far. It's the only service where you can get a breakfast. All train have delays especially around Milton Keynes, so you have to get used to it. One question I want to ask, if the rail network return to public ownership will trainline still get discount tickets?

in general i agree but have to say as a partick thistle season ticket holder living in cumbria i get a great service . from carlisle to glasgow central. cheap trains (£13/14 return clean , punctual and loads of room.

And British Steel !

One fact most people don't know is Branson contracted out the maintenance of his Pendolino trains to a French company called Alstom who are now making hundreds of UK staff redundant.

What's wrong with Virgin Trains? You can get a deal from London Euston to Dublin for £47 using them. An excellent travel day for those who don't want to fly where it costs £25 just for your bag.

I live on west coast main. Use the Virgin service fairly regularly to and from London and it is great. Using Northern Rail or TPE to get to Manchester or Barrow or Leeds is a NIGHTMARE!

Branson got too big for his boots ! The staff at the sharp end are amazing, it's the director level who just ain't got a clue about running a rail company ! Branson has no idea about the railway system and yes Re Nationalise the whole network and companies back into one big business

The trouble with nationalisation is that the tax payer will spend billions bringing the system up to scratch only for the Tories to flog it to their friends for nothing if they get back in power.

It's cheaper to hire a car than buy a ticket for most journeys. That CANNOT be right.

Virgin trains are the only ones id defend.. theyve always been cheaper, faster and more reliable then london midlands for me

You could buy a ticket from any station to any where not just Great Western on one track

Riddled with factual errors... poorly researched and badly written.

Brandon's Virgin is the best of train lines. West coast much improved If you want to knock privatisation of rail look at Northern or Arriva.

Literally no competition so how is it fertile ground for enterprise? Regulation is pointless it's essentially organised racketeering.

GWR trains are bad too. Very uncomfortable seats. The one I went on went from Penzance to Paddington, no buffet service, the toilet wasn't working (new train) and there were no seat reservations. The seat I had reserved was a forward facing seat, but the actual seat was backward facing at a table, so didn't mind that someone was sat there. These are apparently built by Hitachi.

Branson's trains are a joke. They're ludicrously expensive unless you book weeks in advance. He doesn't deserve a railway. He's a complete cut throat.

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Bring Back British Rail shared a post.

3 weeks ago

Great to see our friends at We Own It ripping to shreds the Rail Delivery Group's new proposals on today's news. We need a re-unified railway run for people not profit! Join us at bringbackbritishrail.org

We Own It
The rail industry thinks more competition will solve the crisis in our railways. They're wrong. ...

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Read more about the Rail Delivery Group proposal here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48096549

Surely they should be called the railway dividend grabbers

If I had my zealous views that rail privatisation works, what would the answer be ? It would have been complete figments of my imaginations.

https://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2019/05/13-new-gwr-iets-under-fire.html

The biggest problem with British Rail was successive governments weren't interested in it, particularly as a public service.

No public service runs well if it's privatised. Too many chiefs competing with one another and very little in the way of actual service provision. I do remember BR and it was better than this crippled system.

Ah yes, competition. I'm London based, so only one franchise goes through my station. It's clearly not that type of competition. It must be the other type where a potential franchisee will attempt to underbid the competition and then profit (Have less cash left to improve the service). It does sound attractive, the idea that those who don't travel on trains don't have to fund them, but once again, the franchisees are running at a profit or dumping them back on the public purse. So if a franchise can be profitable, surely it can be profitable in public hands. We have a situation currently where only unprofitable lines are paid for from taxes.

Well said we want it back in Public hands (OURS ) not the French, German or Dutch state

I'm sure there will be free market fanatics and "libertarians" screaming their empty little heads off about how the state should never be allowed to run anything and how incompetent governments are. Well, they have had their chance to "prove" how much better the unfettered free market supposedly is at running our railways. What they have consistently overlooked is the fact that true competition cannot and does not work as advertised on our rail network. Why? Because all privatisation actually did was to split up the network into a bunch of regional monopolies. There are hardly any instances where you can choose between train operators to take you from one station to another, and even when you do find a token example, there is no real difference in pricing anyway. The same is true for the bus network, where for any given area, there is usually only one company operating buses - so you can only choose between operators by moving from one county to another.

What you want is someone like Elon Musk running the railways but not in the private sector.

What she said was precise and accurate. Bring back British Rail, but properly funded (we could just give it the money we’re currently giving the franchises) and let it get on with running the railways.

In this interview they allowed the guy from the franchisees to suggest, unchallenged, that more freedom to them was the answer to our expensive not fit for purpose rail system, sure let's allow an obviously flawed group of operaters to have even greater autonomy, he also quoted how well some foreign railways are run, well once again he was unchallenged by the interviewee who failed to mention that many of our European partners actually do run UK railway franchises at great profit to them from UK taxpayers, I do not profess to know the answers to a modern honest good value railway but it's obvious that a public transport system should not be governed by profits and shareholders, as it is at present where profiteers can bid for franchises as with Virgin, take millions of tax payers money to help run them, then when it becomes less profitable, drop it leaving the UK tax payer once again with the bill, a Tory mantra!

We want proper rail transportation bring back BRS

"I wasn't alive when British Rail was operating". Wow, definitely feel old now!

She nailed it!!

Tired argument from the presenter using anecdote as history rather than knowing the facts and gets shut down by informed young woman.

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4 weeks ago

Want to understand how privatisation has ruined Britain's bus network and how re-regulation can help make things better? Watch this brilliant new documentary from our friends at the Association of British Commuters, and join Better Buses for Greater Manchester and Get Glasgow Moving campaigning in two of our biggest cities. Watch the full film at: abcommuters.com/buses

Association of British Commuters
**EXCLUSIVE** After thirty years of privatisation, is it time to bring our buses under public control? Our new documentary discusses Greater Manchester's bus crisis and suggests that bus regulation could set a precedent for the entire country... Watch now: abcommuters.com/buses ...

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Renationalise all our infrastructure and our NHS! #ToriesOut

This has been Conservative party policy for over five decades. Cheaper fares and better services were never the aim, dividends for shareholders or private owners were.

Privatisation of the buses took them away from the many corporations who ran them successfully and put them all into the hands of Stagecoach and First National How is that leading to more competition?

Nottingham still has Nottingham City Transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottingham_City_Transport

This is why our village now has one bus a week.

Bring back nbc

Stagecoach have ruined every bus service in the UK that they've taken over.

If you want people to use public transport instead of all the cars out there, then make it cheaper. Its obvious its over priced.

i live on the outskirts of tunbridge wells & it is now cheaper for 2 people to get a taxi into town, rather than pay arriva's casual bus fares.

We need a properly funded intergrated public transport system in every town, city and village.

The recent legislation whilst allowing a degree of local regulatory control over bus services, specifically does not allow local authorities to own the operating companies. This is falsely/naively stated in the video. It "generously" allows local authorities to continue funding the same corporate carpetbaggers who've destroyed the public service ethos of the bus industry. Govt rate capping has seen local public transport budgets massively slashed, often to 0%. The Bus Services Act 2017 was never anything other than a paper tiger, intended to deceive.

It makes me so angry that public transport isnt better regulated/renationalised. Its obvious to anyone eho catches trains that all the profits are not going back into maintaining the stations or buying decent train stock. i rarely use trains because they're so expensive but i was shocked today at how shabby the bristol to bath trains and stations are now, despite the rising fares and increases in passengers. Bristol buses are mostly in good condition but seem massively more expensive than other cities. Parking in oxford and use of park n ride buses for family of 4 all day is £6. In Bristol it costs me £8 for me and my 8yrold to get a day rider ticket (inner zone) without parking.

No deregulation in London. I wonder why not ?

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4 weeks ago

Democratic public ownership now! Don't miss the free 2019 Rail Summit: For a People's Railway event, hosted by our friends at NOR4NOR this Saturday 27 April in Norwich 🚆In the week that Virgin trains demands the impossible with absolute deregulation to rail franchising, we say enough is enough. Privatisation has gone too far. Free market capitalism is destroying this planet and we need to look beyond the insane infinate growth business model to deliver the much needed coordination our essential public transport services need to stave off catastrophic climate change. This Saturday join us at our FREE event, the 2019 Rail Summit: For a People's Railway in Norwich. With facilitated workshops and headline speakers from across the progressive political spectrum including Rachael Maskell MP, Shadow Rail Minister and Clive Lewis MP, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Economics. Our new pamplet with foreword by John McDonnell is available at the event. For more info and to register visit: https://www.nor4nor.org/2019-summit (Registering helps us to gauge numbers and plan catering accordingly) Please share and spread the word! Norwich Labour Party Norwich Green Party RMT Norwich Branch We Own It Bring Back British Rail Co-operative Party Co-operatives UK The Labour Party Green Party of England and Wales Extinction Rebellion Extinction Rebellion Norwich Extinction Rebellion Colchester Extinction Rebellion UEA & NUA Sustainable UEA Railfuture The People's Assembly Against Austerity Transport Futures Action For Rail National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) Steve Hedley TSSA - Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association Trades Union Congress (TUC) Norwich and District Trades Council ...

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It's time to bring back British Rail Inter City.

For those going, due to engineering works there is a replacement bus service.

We need BRS

FB: remind me in 18 hours.

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4 weeks ago

This weekend in Norwich! Don't miss the 2019 Rail Summit: For a People's Railway hosted by our friends at NOR4NOR. A free day of talks, workshops, stalls and space to discuss what our future publicly-owned railway should look like and how we can make it happen.We've had twenty five years of privatisation on the railways and we've had enough. It's time to look forward to the future and how we nationalise the railways. Our summit features speakers from The Labour Party, Green Party of England and Wales, National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Trades Union Congress (TUC), TSSA - Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association and many more speakers and facilitators are now confirmed for our 2019 Rail Summit: For a People's Railway. https://www.facebook.com/events/291985401670445/ 0930 for a 1000 start. Speeches, facilitated workshops, supporters stalls and space to discuss and dialogue what a future, nationalised railway should look like and how we can all make it happen. Saturday 27th April. Please like and share this post and spread the word. Norwich Labour Party Norwich Green Party RMT Norwich Branch We Own It Bring Back British Rail Co-operative Party Co-operatives UK Transport Futures Railfuture The People's Assembly Against Austerity ...