How Much is a Corbyn?

antrobus

Masomnia wrote: »

This people's QE business all sounds a bit Zimbabwe if you ask me....

Or a bit Venezuelan.:)

Masomnia wrote: »

...Also doesn't it imply that he'll be looking to take back the bank of England's independence?

Yes it does. Which would be a tad incompatible with Article 130 of the Lisbon Treaty.

antrobus

vivatifosi wrote: »

Alistair Campbell was on R4 yesterday. He said the problem with Corbyn is not so much where he stands on things economically, but the fact that he will have to lead a party in which he is known as a rebel. How can you force people to follow a whip when it's something you consistently didn't do yourself? Which goes back to Gen's point about voting against the party over 500 times.

As was discussed before in the thread that was moved.:)

Corbyn has rebelled against the Labour whip 533 times. Probably something like 90% of the PLP think Corbyn is crackers to one degree or another. Quite what's going to happen when Corbyn moves some Opposition Day motion calling on the government to do something or other, and almost the entire Labour PLP takes no notice and just sits on their collective bums I do not know.

Perhaps the only question will be, will the split in the Labour Party be real or virtual?

BobQ

cells wrote: »

I dont expect it to happen but if the state was to try and steal assets the owners of the assets quite naturally will try to minimise their losses.

Were I told 5 years in advance that my business was going to be forcefully nationalised (rather than bought out at a price I was happy with) what I would do is stop all but critical maintenance and investment so what they get is a run down plant. I would also put prices up if that were possible and it likely would be.

however consider that a lot of the big companies are heavy on debt probably to minimise this sort of risk. so i dont see how corybn or anyone else could pay little to nothing for the assests as say the £100B worth of assets have £50B of loans on them. That means the banks would need to write down £50B and the rest of the economy would suffer with a banking crisis or recession

I do not expect it to happen either and my comment about "treason" was intended to be tongue in cheek. The cost is an issue I agree, and it is one that Corbyn can ignore if he does not expect to win the leadership or an election.

BobQ

martinsurrey wrote: »

Also, by hook or by crook, we take a £20b company off the French, do you think they are just going to shake their fist and laugh or do you think we might find £20b of UK company assets in France nationalised by them, who pays for that, UK workers and shareholders (many of which are pension funds).

then Airbus, pulls out of the UK, taking 10,000 direct jobs and 100,000 inderect jobs and £500m of R&D a year (why would they stay if the UK Gov is in the business of just taking what it wants?)

it all gets very messy if you don't play nice.

If it were to happen that way there might well be repercussions. But were it to happen it would be done by regulation and changes to operating models.

Surveys show that people do not think rail privatisation has worked. It has certainly had some positive benefits but overall it has not delivered competition. Also energy privatisation has not worked, while we have a competitive model, we also have a cartel with six suppliers behaving remarkably the same way as each other. There may be alternative changes that can be introduced, of which re- nationalisation is one, but change is needed.

Rail privatisation has not met its stated aims of driving prices down by competition and preventing the state from having to subsidise services. All it is doing is subsidising a private company to provide one of the most expensive railways to use in the world. Subsidies skew the market and should be removed. If that means the services become uneconomic it should be for Government to decide if they are needed.

Energy is a different matter, but we need to have a different model, one that separates generation from retail supply. Power stations should be Government Owned and Contractor Operated, let the energy firms compete to supply energy from state owned power stations.

CLAPTON

BobQ wrote: »

If it were to happen that way there might well be repercussions. But were it to happen it would be done by regulation and changes to operating models.

Surveys show that people do not think rail privatisation has worked. It has certainly had some positive benefits but overall it has not delivered competition. Also energy privatisation has not worked, while we have a competitive model, we also have a cartel with six suppliers behaving remarkably the same way as each other. There may be alternative changes that can be introduced, of which re- nationalisation is one, but change is needed.

Rail privatisation has not met its stated aims of driving prices down by competition and preventing the state from having to subsidise services. All it is doing is subsidising a private company to provide one of the most expensive railways to use in the world. Subsidies skew the market and should be removed. If that means the services become uneconomic it should be for Government to decide if they are needed.

Energy is a different matter, but we need to have a different model, one that separates generation from retail supply. Power stations should be Government Owned and Contractor Operated, let the energy firms compete to supply energy from state owned power stations.

surveys show that most people haven't got a clue about the difference between railtrack and the operating companies.
surveys show that people don't know who sets prices, who determines how many trains run etc..
If subsidies were removed price would go up as the whole system doesn't pay its way.


Although I'm not against, why does separating generation from retail supply improve anything or make the total cheaper?

how can retain supply have competition as there is only one cable to my house : do you mean competition in marketing and billing services? (i.e. basically just like now)

why would the common ownership of all generation reduce price (obviously no point in internal competition)

michaels

As far as I can see energy market deregulation only doesn't work for people who are too lazy to shop around on price.....

michaels

antrobus wrote: »

As was discussed before in the thread that was moved.:)

Corbyn has rebelled against the Labour whip 533 times. Probably something like 90% of the PLP think Corbyn is crackers to one degree or another. Quite what's going to happen when Corbyn moves some Opposition Day motion calling on the government to do something or other, and almost the entire Labour PLP takes no notice and just sits on their collective bums I do not know.

Perhaps the only question will be, will the split in the Labour Party be real or virtual?

I was told in that thread by a true beleiver that Corbyn actually represented true labour party values and the 85% of MPS who disagree should therefore leave the party....

martinsurrey

well rail travel is a bit of a funny one if you look at the data

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/73093/rail-trends-factsheet-2010-11.pdf

The use of the railways held steady for 50 years under the government at around 20billion passenger miles per year (and given the rising population, that is less per person per year).

As soon as the private sector was involved this has climbed year after year after year, to today, were we are are at nearly 40 billion passenger miles.

The government subsidy per mile travelled has halved since 2010, so we're getting a lot more bang for our buck

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rail-subsidy-per-passenger-mile

Why the sudden increase in miles travelled if the service is so significantly worse than it used to be? Trains are more punctual, more frequent, and safer, we now have the second safest Railway in Europe (shakes fist at Luxembourg).

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/rail/market/doc/swd(2014)186_final___en.pdf

we are also some of the MOST satisfied people in Europe with our railways (tables 12a, 12b 12c d e f g (we're in the top 5 for all)

we are most satisfied with accessibility (13c d e f)

all in all, compared to a lot of European publicly run railways we're doing a good job.

one of the main problems we have is we make the most use per mile of our railways (table 9a), this leads to overcrowding.

as for prices, we run a scheme more like airlines, if you book in advance ours are some of the cheapest in Europe, but if you buy on the day, some of the most expensive.

not saying its perfect, but we certainly are a lot further forward than we were 25 years ago under British Rail.

CLAPTON

martinsurrey wrote: »

well rail travel is a bit of a funny one if you look at the data

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/73093/rail-trends-factsheet-2010-11.pdf

The use of the railways held steady for 50 years under the government at around 20billion passenger miles per year (and given the rising population, that is less per person per year).

As soon as the private sector was involved this has climbed year after year after year, to today, were we are are at nearly 40 billion passenger miles.

The government subsidy per mile travelled has halved since 2010, so we're getting a lot more bang for our buck

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rail-subsidy-per-passenger-mile

Why the sudden increase in miles travelled if the service is so significantly worse than it used to be? Trains are more punctual, more frequent, and safer, we now have the second safest Railway in Europe (shakes fist at Luxembourg).

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/rail/market/doc/swd(2014)186_final___en.pdf

we are also some of the MOST satisfied people in Europe with our railways (tables 12a, 12b 12c d e f g (we're in the top 5 for all)

we are most satisfied with accessibility (13c d e f)

all in all, compared to a lot of European publicly run railways we're doing a good job.

one of the main problems we have is we make the most use per mile of our railways (table 9a), this leads to overcrowding.

as for prices, we run a scheme more like airlines, if you book in advance ours are some of the cheapest in Europe, but if you buy on the day, some of the most expensive.

not saying its perfect, but we certainly are a lot further forward than we were 25 years ago under British Rail.

so if the government took the railways over, passenger numbers would collapse and overcrowding disappear

surely a success?

BobQ

michaels wrote: »

As far as I can see energy market deregulation only doesn't work for people who are too lazy to shop around on price.....

and what about people who are incapacitated through age or otherwise?

I think it does not work for many more because however many times you change the big firms use the same methods to keep prices higher than they need to be. At any one time one is better than the other but they are all making too much profit.