More rip off fare rises

[1H was 2E]

Well, I like rapidly rising railfares no more than the average citizen (whoever he or she may be). But I'd sure as hell rather live in a country where goods and services (other than a very few connected with necessary social support, such as public-service health and education) are paid for by those who exercise choice to use them, rather than by all of us, including those who do not. And I DO use the railways.


auldreekie

Sound principle but doesn't apply to passenger rail's competitor, the bus/coach. The road tax on a bus is less than on my car. It weighs about 10 times as much and a typical annual mileage is, again, about 10 times mine. For stage carriage use (that's in effect everything but private hire) most of the tax they pay on their fuel is 'rebated' - returned to them. Their infrastructure is provided either through local or national taxation - e.g. my council built a bus station for the bus companies to use. Mine, like many, provide the information at bus stops, not the bus company. The bus company provides no product information or infrastructure itself - yet when I complained to the bus company about false information on the screen at a bus stop they told me to contact the council and became angry when I insisted it was their problem. And, when, for example, a bridge they use wears out, they don't have to provide a business case for its replacement. Remember the Callender and Oban closure (rockfall); if this had been on a road the council would have cleared it without question. Most road improvements, enabling motor buses to be successful, was on local rates, and the biggest ratepayer in many towns/villages was the railway. Investing in their competitor. There are many similar arguments re road vs rail freight.

[auldreekie]

Er. Remind me-- do vehicles other than buses use the road in question? I'd be surprised if they do not. In fact that is an argument in favour of an appropriate level of taxation (or whatever you might call it) for vehicles engaged in making a profit out of the common-user good constituted by the road.


auldreekie

[1H was 2E]

In fact that is an argument in favour of an appropriate level of taxation (or whatever you might call it) for vehicles engaged in making a profit out of the common-user good constituted by the road.


auldreekie

Indeed it was so intended. And I'd left the reader to work out that if that happened, perhaps coach fares (and road freight rates) might increase. Perhaps more people might find rail cheaper than road. If this resulted in more rail users, the extra income generated might mean smaller (or even 0) increase in rail fares.

[Mickey]

Deleted

[Bill Bedford]

Let see now, in those far off days beer was 1/6d a pint, so Mickey's ticket ticket cost 2 1/2 time the cost of a pint.

Today I pay £3.50 for a pint in a pub, so today's ticket price of £10.50 is 3 times the price of a pint.

The calculation that really need to be done is comparing the price of travel with wages, but then we all know that wages have been declining as a proportion of GDP since the eighties. And maybe this is the real problem if people's income is in a relative decline, then products with a fixed cost, such as railway tickets, beer or mars bars look to be more expensive.

[auldreekie]

DO we all know that wages have since the 1980s been declining as a proportion of GDP? I did not, and I tend to pay some attention. How are "wages" defined for the purpose of this comparison? (I ask, since I observe that an increasing proportion of the population appears to take its remuneration as "salary" - and quite a few as "benefit"- so that a focus on "wages" in the numerator may well reflect those social tendencies rather than any meaningful economic fact...)


auldreekie

[giner]

Let see now, in those far off days beer was 1/6d a pint, so Mickey's ticket ticket cost 2 1/2 time the cost of a pint.

1/6d a pint in 1967? Wish I'd lived where you did, Bill. A pint of Flowers Keg (the finest rotgut of the day) was 2/4d a pint in 1965 in my neck of the woods.

[Boris]

London prices Giner, I had a pub in Wakefield in those days and Mild was 1/3 , Bitter 1/6

[Bill Bedford]

DO we all know that wages have since the 1980s been declining as a proportion of GDP? I did not, and I tend to pay some attention. How are "wages" defined for the purpose of this comparison? (I ask, since I observe that an increasing proportion of the population appears to take its remuneration as "salary" - and quite a few as "benefit"- so that a focus on "wages" in the numerator may well reflect those social tendencies rather than any meaningful economic fact...)

We know that the numbers of skilled and semi-skilled worker have declined, partly as a result of a general decline in British industry and partly as a result of automation. And that is before we take in to account the outsourcing/contracting scams whose purpose was always to reduce the incomes of the workers involved.

[Mickey]

Deleted

[strang steel]

The scam is how companies will use shorter trains in order to make sure the services are packed, and then put up fares as a way of milking the passenger, rather than add extra carriages.

[auldreekie]

DO we all know that wages have since the 1980s been declining as a proportion of GDP? I did not, and I tend to pay some attention. How are "wages" defined for the purpose of this comparison? (I ask, since I observe that an increasing proportion of the population appears to take its remuneration as "salary" - and quite a few as "benefit"- so that a focus on "wages" in the numerator may well reflect those social tendencies rather than any meaningful economic fact...)

We know that the numbers of skilled and semi-skilled worker have declined, partly as a result of a general decline in British industry and partly as a result of automation. And that is before we take in to account the outsourcing/contracting scams whose purpose was always to reduce the incomes of the workers involved.

That's yet another set of arguments, whose relevance to the pricing of railfares I find very hard to follow.

Incidentally, I utterly deplore the way in which decline in demand for skilled and semi-skilled workers has been handled. I take the view that this phenomenon, alongside the parallel one of increased automation, has been grossly mismanaged in this country. What I mean is that I think that FAR more effort and investment ought to have been made in encouraging and training the displaced workers to have an active role in the design, implementation and running of automated processes (not necessarily in the ones from which they have been displaced by automation). Industry, government, vocational trainers, and the communications media are all at fault in this debacle, which I am inclined to think reflects disgracefully on all of us as a nation....


auldreekie

[earlswood nob]

Evenin' all
When I left school in 1964 bitter was 2s3d (11p) a pint in Surrey, now it's £3.20 plus. I couldn't believe it when visiting cousins in the west country during 1968 and gave a pound note to the barman for six pints and he gave me a ten shilling note for change.
Earlswood nob

[auldreekie]

We've all been there (those of us who are far enough past it, that is).

It MIGHT perhaps be worth reflecting, however, on the levels of income today compared with the halcyon days of comparison. My first weekly wage packet in 1964, granted as an unskilled "holiday job" labourer, was about £10. Some of the middle-aged men on the gang in which I was working were keeping a wife and family on that. Today, so far as I can see, the student holiday norm is to go on to benefit, which runs at rather a higher level (of which I am unaware since I have had the mixture of good fortune and determination never to take advantage of the concession). My starting salary in a professional job in 1967 was £840 per year (including London weighting). The present-day equivalent would be of the order of £25,000 or perhaps rather more.....

So it would be just a tad unreasonable to expect beer prices, railfares, etc not to have leapt by comparable amounts.


auldreekie

[earlswood nob]

Morning day on a dripping day in Surrey
You must have felt rich in 1964 with £10 a week. My first wage was less than £500 per annum, but I was a sponsored student and getting paid a lot more than those on grants. I seem to remember finishing the course in 1967/8 on over £800pa. Exam results led to a jump to almost £1000pa, exceeded a few months later, and I felt rich.
If there were approx 8 pints to the pound locally in 1968 (not the 12 as in the cheaper areas) and earnings were £1000pa, then earnings need to be £26000pa today to match the £3+ pint, and my pensions are a bit less than that. So I consider myself worse off than I was as a freshly qualified worker.
I cannot understand how youths seem happy to exist on benefits. A near-neighbour who works at the Post-office tells of a youth sent from the Job Centre for training as a delivery postman, and the lad is not interested and makes mistakes that my friend thinks are deliberate, so he gets found unsuitable and put back on benefits.
End of minor tirade as I might get some modelling done today as its raining again
Earlswood nob