Current Affairs The Labour Party
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BullensRoad
Player Valuation: £35m
Getting rid of the £2 cap on bus journeys is horrible. Not a bus person myself but increasing costs for those who rely on them is showing what Rachel Reeves always was.
Hope Andy Burnham stands up to her (and then Rotherham will as he's a journey man).
Hope Andy Burnham stands up to her (and then Rotherham will as he's a journey man).
How much have driver salaries gone up vs fares?
BullensRoad
Player Valuation: £35m
No idea, why?
There seems to be a habit of people expecting services to stay the same, or improve, without dipping into their pockets. It's the same down here, with TFL in debt to the tune of £15bn as fares were frozen despite revenues falling considerably and costs rising.
It's a bit like the water companies, as people complain about the sewer system being unfit for purpose, but also expect bills to be super low. There just seems a lack of comprehension, as those same people will bemoan investors getting a return, while simultaneously being quite okay with government "investors", ie those the government borrow money from, getting "dividends" to the tune of > £100bn per year.
BullensRoad
Player Valuation: £35m
The £2 cap increased revenues by 20%+ iirc
It also meant people could get to work at a lower cost and have a very strong understanding of their outgoings.
As a regular Londoner myself TFL is essentially the circuit board for London, that debt provides more value than cost.
You've mentioned the sewage/water companies who've been running at a loss yet still pay those shareholders a lot of money.
Any public service should be subsidised if it provides a socio/economic benefit.
Privatisation of these sectors has been a failure and everyone is suffering from it.
Do you have a reference for that?
Re the water companies, the cost of upgrading the sewer system runs into many tens of billions, but the water companies don't make anywhere close to that in profits. For instance, Thames Water made around £150m in profit last year, but the London "super sewer" cost around £10bn or something I think. It seems a stretch to suggest that public ownership would improve matters either. I mean the roads are fully under government control, and are in a right mess.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/driving-advice/rac-pothole-index-statistics-data-and-projections/ shows drivers are twice as likely to suffer a pothole-related issue now than in 2006. That's the government's job, so why are things so bad if the government are so good?
Universities are another area where the government have dropped the ball due to political factors. Such was the toy throwing when tuition fees were introduced, they haven't risen with inflation since, so universities are in a right mess financially, especially as governments also want to crack down on the foreign students who subsidise those toy throwers in this country. People want all sorts of things but don't want to pay for it.
BullensRoad
Player Valuation: £35m
It's all paid via the tax we pay, it might get better but I'm just just a tiny bit positive your party isn't in control anymore.
My party hasn't been in control for 100 years or so. My point is though that it's "not" paid for by taxes. The deficit in the last financial year was £120bn. You can count the number of times the government has spent what it actually raised in taxes on one hand over the last 30 odd years. We've grown very used to demanding more from governments than we pay in taxes, such that government debt repayments now are around £100bn a year.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
They are going to invest in puppets.
I've helped smuggle 1,000 Vietnamese people illegally into the UK
A self-confessed people smuggler who has helped transport over 1,000 Vietnamese people into the UK has defended his actions as the business is 'lucrative.'www.dailymail.co.uk
How are labour going about stopping this?
Funnily enough even this bloke calls them "illegals"...
Fertility rate in England and Wales drops to new low
Just over 591,000 babies were born in the UK last year - the lowest number in four decades
www.bbc.co.uk
Japanese village replaces young people with mannequins as population falls
Fewer than 60 villagers live in Ichinono - where people have attempted to address dreaded feelings of loneliness by stitching together a new population of puppets.
grandjoeblue
Player Valuation: £35m
Getting rid of the £2 fare cap which saves around 150m doesn't really align with Net Zero aspirations. The government aren't investing anywhere near enough to meet targets and to take away a fairly easy win doesnt seem logical.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
Be better off funding bus routes back into communities where services were taken away by Tory and Liberal Austerity.
Bus occupancy outside London is around 20-30% of capacity on average, with this figure edging up marginally from the Blair years. This feels like one of those "bring back the branch line" things that people assume is transformative but ends up with a lot of buses (or trains) going around practically empty. As it is, those with free passes make up around a third of all bus journeys.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
Be one measure in getting people out of their "individual" cars as much as possible. Not going to happen in UK. The choice of individual reigns supreme even over management climate change etc.
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