Christmas train strikes

[Darthwazette]

AIBU to wish the train strike situation could just be sorted out?

Theyve just announced strikes right over Christmas. My family were coming to stay with me and now they can’t. I’ve had to cancel so many visits and trips since these strikes began. I wish they’d just reach an agreement already.

What pay demands have been made that are "unreasonable"? Do tell us how much.

@Iamthewombat
Do you realise that both of these things drive gilt and bond yields down?

As i said, you don't have a clue as the above statement you wrote proves.
You also came out with a load on inaccuracies on pension funds.. which another poster also pointed out too.

I explained to you how gilts and yields move (and usually by tiny amounts) not you.

The money this Govt has wasted both on fraud, PPE and testing, dwarfs what the public sector unions are demanding..... the Truss debacle alone cost the UK £30bn.

Like i said, read up on Gilts/Truss/Pension funds before coming out with utterly ridiculous comments because atm you are coming across as rather mis informed.

"i am a wombat" probably is a good description of you.

Back for more, are you? Keep entertaining us with your unique economic insights.

As you can't dispute what i said, other that with insults, i will move on from your idiocy & ignore you.

Great! Can we resume the proper debate now? Also, look up ‘irony’ in a dictionary.

I wish it would be sorted out as it isn't solving anything as it is.
I am ex rail and support their reasons. But I think they could highlight them more effectively. Remind people of what happened at Hatfield.

@Alexandra2001 you were asking the other day about hydrogen trials in Germany. I've just come across a reference to a report commissioned by the state of Baden-Württemberg. Over 30 years hydrogen was found to be more expensive than both conventional electrification and battery power.

On the Westfrankenbahn for example, battery power would cost €506m, conventional electrification €588m, hydrogen a whopping €849m. Most parts of the WFB are only served once an hour, anything with a more frequent service would quickly tip the balance from battery to conventional electrification. The only lines where hydrogen does have a future are those where trains only run every few hours (remote parts of Scotland, Wales and Northern England).

Politicians need to stop fooling themselves that bionic duckweed will save the day (for those not familiar with "bionic duckweed", it's a euphemism for the way that promises of imminent new technology are used as an excuse for deferring investment indefinitely). Conventional electrification is the only way to decarbonise the bulk of the network.

My friends wife runs a very popular child minding service. She was due to visit elderly family over Christmas but the rail strikes have put paid to this.
She has 4 children in her service whose father is a striking railway worker. She issued the family with a notice of cancellation of service from the new year.

There are no other child minders with free slots in the area. Did she overreact? Or was it justified. (She will have no trouble filling the 4 slots)

@DdraigGoch Ah thankyou, the story here is always that hydrogen might be an answer to ever increasing energy prices, be that trains, lorries, cars and even planes.

Well when her train gets cancelled because the staff have had to take unpaid leave, she'll have shot herself in the foot, won't she?

I presume that she is self-employed and free to put her fees up in line with rises in the cost of living, unlike the workers who have had an enforced pay freeze for several years amid high inflation.

She sounds like an idiot, completely unprofessional and childish?

What a ridiculous over-reaction. I hope her clients walk with their feet and find someone else.

Unfortunately decarbonising our national infrastructure will require lots of infrastructure investment. Nuclear power stations, tramways, new railway lines (yes, including HS2), and railway electrification. The Treasury hates this, so politicians will grasp at any new technology that comes along (usually pushed by someone after a research grant), just to defer having to authorise the spending on the infrastructure we need. The French have many nuclear power stations, the Japanese have a comprehensive high speed network, most European cities have tramways, and the Swiss have electrified every last mile of public railway.

What have we accomplished? Actually finished, not just done one route.

I was born in Bristol which has a long list of abandoned schemes to its name. The tram scheme was abandoned, electric trains switch to diesel at Swindon and the Portishead line reopening has been talked about since my dad was young - it'll still be years before that reopens.

@DdraigGoch

mmm i wonder about car electrification, just 7 years away.. we wont build new nuclear power stations by then, yet the sale of new fossil fuel cars will be banned.... i doubt we will even get the charging infrastructure in by then either.

Prices of fossil fuel cars are going to rocket.

Then as you say electrification of rail...

Like everything in the UK, wait till there is a crisis then do something (often very little) about it.

She sounds like a reactionary twat, but since she's self-employed she can do as she likes.

The kids are better of not being educated by a political bigot, so best they part ways.

*off

We should have built nuclear power stations twenty years ago. Then we wouldn't be in hock to a fossil fuel whose price is governed largely by a genocidal dictator. The Major and Blair governments have a lot to answer for. It's almost too late now.

Andrew Adonis was one of the few good Transport Secretaries we've had. One with a vision to modernise our infrastructure. Just after he took office, he bought a two-week All Line Rover and spent a fortnight travelling around the UK, seeing what it's really like. Sadly he went out when Brown lost the 2010 election. Patrick Mcloughlin was OK, but Sir Humphrey doesn't like it when a minister gets too on top of their brief so he was reshuffled off.

Regarding your last sentence, it was actually a crisis that spurred the Swiss into their electrification programme. They have no coal reserves of their own so were heavily dependant upon German supplies. In the First World War Germany limited its exports in order to prioritise the war effort so the Swiss were forced to look into electricity (their topography helps with hydro power). In their haste they even installed pantographs and electric heating elements onto a couple of steam shunting engines during WWII to conserve coal.

We should have built nuclear power stations twenty years ago Asolutely agree, but would YOU have made that decision?

No-one was prepared to take the risk following Chernobyl and Fukishama. Organisations like Greenpeace, were (and still are) against, pushing for renewable only.

This is a good industry quote: “The decision not to proceed with nuclear power generation was a cross-party decision in the 1990s”, says Andy Renton, a principal at Castletown Law who has worked in the nuclear energy sector since 1992. “Politically, no one would go anywhere near nuclear in the early 1990s because of Chernobyl. No politician wanted to be associated with it because public perception was it is very dangerous and is going to kill us and our children.”

Obviously I speak with the benefit of hindsight, but it's clear that fossil fuels have killed far more than nuclear accidents. There has been plenty of time since to sort that out. The Brown government did start looking at further nuclear power stations but government machinery moves at such a glacial pace that we have only started building one of them, 14 years after the white paper.

In other news, the Financial Times is squarely blaming the government for blocking deals.

www.ft.com/content/f181e88b-777e-4285-902c-55f925213fd8

I'm old enough to remember Three Mile Island really well. What a shit show that was. At one point - Homer Simpson alert - it was even suggested that an operative missed seeing a coolant valve malfunction because his overly large belly partially obscured his view of the control panel he was supposed to be monitoring.

Public confidence was shattered. The film The China Syndrome was released at around about the same time (one of those weird co-incidences) and Jane Fonda campaigned against nuclear power stations.

It's the human error rate and the safety of secondary systems that he public have to see improve. While everything seems to be done of a shoestring, that's going to be tricky.

Well she's not completely free to put her costs up. Has to be competitive etc. And still pay increased costs herself due to inflation. Not so great being self employed as you suggest

She may fill them easily but not so if she's more expensive than other CMs.

Sounds like there's a shortage so she must have some headroom.

In any case, workers are paying substantially increased costs despite a three year pay freeze

Or if she gets a bad reputation for letting people down at the last minute.

I mean if she thinks she's got the higher moral ground here I'm struggling to see it. She sounds very petty and not someone I would want looking after children.

Magically, there’s always enough money for shareholders.

Im pro-union, always been in them, think they’re utterly necessary. I do wonder though sometimes how the strikers’ family finances stack up against those of the likes of Mick Lynch. It’s freezing, Christmas is coming, there’s a massive cost of living crisis and they’re losing days and days of wages while the union boss struts the picket line on full pay. Maybe there should be a proper incentive on the union to deliver or reimburse members.