That's just weird.
Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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That's great in a bad way.
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Wrong enemy in that advert. Cheap attempt to cash in on anti-EU sentiment in a new way I guess.
Yeah really odd stuff, well it's actual pretty awful. I still can't get over the two German lads watching the semi final from 2010, it's like really shit Back 2 The Future .
Surprised the referee that disallowed the Lampard goal didn't also buy a share in the railways.
Really not the way Momentum should be trying to win people over. Little better than UKIP with that ad.
That's terrible. It's also really hard to follow whatever point it's trying to make. How does the privatisation of rail companies in the Uk benefit people who live in other European countries?
It's a strange argument that evil European companies skim profits off our railways to subsidise ticket prices on their own, not actually beyond the bounds of believability. The prices here are a scandal compared to abroad. Unpleasant tone to the strange ad though.
I thought the point was that the European railways aren't privately owned like they are in the UK?
It is weird that their public railways run franchises on our privately owned one. Or something like that.
The point isn't that hard to grasp is it? State owned companies in Europe are skimming money off the top and getting huge subsidies so why not just do it ourselves?
The xenophobic angle is unpleasant. But apparently that's what political discourse in this country is now.
It's still amusing to see Nick has posted the article though given how much he bitterly complained that far worse things were being called xenophobic during the Brexit campaign. Apparently it's fair game if he agrees with the political posistion of the person being a xenophobe...
How does that work?
And what the feck are they on about when they UK tax-payers subsidise EU fares even if they don't get the train? That has to be a shot at the whole EU project, which has feck all to do with trains at any level.
The whole thing's a hot mess. Xenophobia aside, the content is completely baffling. I guess that's this whole post-truth era we're living. Relying on dim arseholes to share party political content with unpleasant undertones via social media, without ever having to bother making a coherent point about your policies.
"Privatization bad. Europeans skiving off us. Gotcha. Let's tell all my mates!"
I certainly can't grasp that bit in bold. Explain it to me like I'm five.
They're basically trying to say that the UK rail system should be run more like the excellent European ones but don't want to alienate the Litttle Englanders so are using tortuous logic to simultaneously covet the way they run their rail networks, while portraying the evil EU as being partly responsible for English people being ripped off by private rail companies.
The whole thing is typical of the conflicted drivel from Corbyn's camp about Europe that saw them make such a hash of the Remain campaign.
The whole thing is typical of the conflicted drivel from Corbyn's camp about Europe that saw them make such a hash of the Remain campaign.
Looked pretty accurate to me, the UK's private rail companies receive £3.5b+ in government subsidies every year (which is coming from taxpayers regardless of their rail usage) and pay back around £1b of that but still pay their shareholders dividends every year. The bulk of those rail operators are overseas companies who can bid lower than UK operators because they can build their expertise in and leverage their services against their national public operations. In fact South West and East Coast are the only UK operators that pay back more to the government than they take in subsidy and East Coast is still publicly owned.
http://actionforrail.org/private-ra...c-subsidies-to-fund-pay-outs-to-shareholders/
I don't see the xenophobia angle either, all I see is a sarcastic jibe at our useless government at their wasteful best and the money grubbing nature the privatizations they laud as a great success really harbour whilst our government tries to blame our declining services on the evil EU. Yes, Europeans are laughing at us and rightly so, we pay more both directly in fares and indirectly through subsidies than any other EU country for a system that we would struggle to even call second rate these days.
http://actionforrail.org/private-ra...c-subsidies-to-fund-pay-outs-to-shareholders/
I don't see the xenophobia angle either, all I see is a sarcastic jibe at our useless government at their wasteful best and the money grubbing nature the privatizations they laud as a great success really harbour whilst our government tries to blame our declining services on the evil EU. Yes, Europeans are laughing at us and rightly so, we pay more both directly in fares and indirectly through subsidies than any other EU country for a system that we would struggle to even call second rate these days.
It's just a classic left-wing argument isn't it?
We're all getting ripped off and paying more than we need to because the only reason Abellio (for example) exists is to turn a profit. Therefore it would be cheaper for all of us to just run it ourselves and not give the money away. The examples they picked are all, I think, true. They are state owned rail companies in France, Germany and the Netherlands whose international branches that run the franchises so not only are we stupid enough to pay more than we need to we're stupid enough to let our neighbours profit off of our stupidity.
I thought (and still do think actually) that the tone they were going for wasn't 'Europeans are evil for doing this' but 'Europeans are laughing at us for how stupid we're being by letting them make money at our expense'. I'm sure it was supposed to be a light hearted jest at us rather than a 'us vs them' thing, but then they included that football scene and it definitely misses that mark and becomes xenophobic at that point.
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Over here in the Netherlands, everybody hates the Railways and they're anything but cheap. In terms of ticket prices it looks like we're slightly better off though.
I didn't understand the video either at first. But apparently you have the Dutch National Railways, which is an Ltd, yet all the shares are somehow owned by the State.
Back in the 90's they semi-privatised it by stopping all government subsidies, inspired by the British model. This is seen as the source of some massive problem. For example there was the Fyra-debacle, they wanted to build a high speed network, but they ended up buying shite trains so everything fell apart and they stopped the project. Costs: 11 billion of tax money, and there might be more to come.
Anyway, The Dutch National Railways has a daughter company callled Abellio:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abellio_(transport_company)
And the criticism is that Dutch National Railways use profits from Abellio's franchises to keep their ticket prices relatively 'low'.
I didn't understand the video either at first. But apparently you have the Dutch National Railways, which is an Ltd, yet all the shares are somehow owned by the State.
Back in the 90's they semi-privatised it by stopping all government subsidies, inspired by the British model. This is seen as the source of some massive problem. For example there was the Fyra-debacle, they wanted to build a high speed network, but they ended up buying shite trains so everything fell apart and they stopped the project. Costs: 11 billion of tax money, and there might be more to come.
Anyway, The Dutch National Railways has a daughter company callled Abellio:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abellio_(transport_company)
And the criticism is that Dutch National Railways use profits from Abellio's franchises to keep their ticket prices relatively 'low'.
Come on, lads. You're describing a different video. How many times do they need to say "thank you" for you to accept that the point being made here is that EU train-fares are cheap because people in the UK are being ripped off? This isn't about making people jealous of the cheap fares on the continent, it's about making other EU countries share the blame for the extortionate prices in the UK. Like I said, the whole thing is a hot mess but that message gets home, loud and clear.
Now you could be onto something here. Although it's a testament to how terrible their argument is that it took this long for any of us to work out what the feck they're talking about. It does sound like an unusual situation, though. You'd have to wonder how many other UK franchises are owned by daughter companies of national railway companies.
The second point they're making still makes no sense . "Even if you don't get the train you're subsidising EU train fares" Well ok, that's a point about UK tax-payers money going to other EU countries. An entirely different argument, which has issues way beyond rail networks. And, if anything, the privatisation of utilities is a good thing if you're worried about your hard-earned money being misspent by the Government to benefit people living in other countries.
It literally says what he said in the video.
'The profits go to making our railways cheaper'. 0:44.
Are you sure its us watching a different video Pogue?
It was a touch nationalist, but mostly in advancing the cause of railways nationalisation. Moves toward the latter are a set objective of the leadership as we know.
All i have done here is post a story and its related video, for the purpose of discussion. Nothing more, nothing less. Often, i'll post my stated opinion on a matter, but not always. In large part my complaints centred around people being misrepresented or disparaged without justification, something which you appear to be doing here for no apparent reason.
All i have done here is post a story and its related video, for the purpose of discussion. Nothing more, nothing less. Often, i'll post my stated opinion on a matter, but not always. In large part my complaints centred around people being misrepresented or disparaged without justification, something which you appear to be doing here for no apparent reason.
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I'm not the one trying to claim that they're laughing at the UK for privatising railways. They're not laughing at you, they're thanking you. I'm still not convinced there's any logic in this, that one Dutch company aside. And even then, it's kind of mental that a video about the evils of privatisation is based around an example of a private company allegedly using its profits to keep prices down for people using national rail services!
I mean you sort of are. Only that your argument is that you're saying that Momentum are doing it in a 'evil, plotting, foreigner' sort of way, but we're saying that it doesn't seem like the tone they were going for based on the videos vibe.
It's a weird video, and they get the tone hopelessly wrong (especially at the end), but I do think the argument (as I see it) underlying it is valid enough.
Anyway, im not going to defend it too much because I agree with you that that's how it comes across. I just think what they were trying to do was less bad.
You just seem an incredibly odd candidate to start bringing attention to issues of xenophobia in the political sphere because you were completely happy to give it oxygen when it suited. If you posted a story 'for the purpose of discussion' about Leave xenophobia during the referendum I'll happily apologise, but if memory serves you were completely silent and, in fact, defended it.
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It probably is aiming to appeal a bit to the UKIP type protest voters but if anything it's highlighting how our government rips us off and doesn't care where the profits go and at least it's doing it with truth and a bit of humour rather than seeking to blame Johnny Foreigner for the state of the 6:57 from Portsmouth.
Aside from Abellio, linked with the Dutch National rail system we have Arriva, owned by Deutsche Bahn, Govia which is part owned by Keolis a subsidiary of SNCF and part shares in some services by the likes of SNCF and Ferrovia of Spain as well as the MTRC from Hong Kong.
As far as the argument over public vs private ownership goes, I'd personally rather see it re nationalised and run well for the benefit of the UK commuters and businesses but wouldn't trust anyone in the current government to run a piss up in a brewery and sadly suspect that we're so far down the rabbit hole with privatised services that there's no way back. That said, I'd also argue that we are that entwined in Europe that there's no way to extricate ourselves without fecking over our entire economy but it seems I'm in the minority on that one so who knows where things might go, maybe if Theresa and Boris do manage to sink us with Brexit Jeremy might appear electable and Momentum might get their wish to see the rail service back in public hands although my feelings of victory will be tainted slightly by being forced to move back to the 1930s..
That's exactly what it's doing. Johnny Foreigner gets cheap train tickets because you're being ripped off. Looks at those smug Europeans. You're paying for their tickets.
Railways are one big mindfeck in general, trying to understand them might be a waste of time.
From what I gather though, the counter arguments in this case were that Abellio only makes 'tens of millions' of profits. In this article it even says 3.64 million pounds:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/201...ritish-train-companies-revenue_n_8003970.html
So 3.6 million pounds of profits flow back to the Netherlands in this scenario, while the state owned railwails have a yearly turnover of 5 billion euro. So technically they're correct, realisticly the claims are completly empty.
Then there's the problem that other foreign companies are active on the Dutch rail network too (and I assume it's the same in other countries), so the market is just mixed up in general.
The real problem is still the privatisation. I don't even know what it means. In the UK it means rail services being provided by private companies, yet I also read the government is still funding those services, apparently they still own actual trains and are financially responsible for employees in some form.
Over here privatisation means the State owns all the shares of the Railways, yet the Railways get no subsidies and they can run it like a normal company. But when the idiot managers make the wrong decisions and create 11 billion worth of debt because of a failed project, it's still being paid for by tax money and upping the ticket prices. And the end conclusion of all kind of research-commissions and parlementary debates is none of this would've gotten so out of hand if the Railways had simply remained a state enterprise.
Like I said, a proper mindfeck.
Yeah, it's all enormously complex. The whole misbegotten idea seems to be about making a viral video to take a pop at the Tories for privatising trains while people are smarting from ticket price hikes. This could easily have been done by comparing the crazy Uk prices with the cheap tickets (and efficient services) in countries who have nationalised services. It's the way they try and simultaneously appeal to the eurosceptics that turns it into a such a mess. I guess that's a price they're willing to pay to pander to those traditionally labour voting Brexiteers who want to blame the EU for all their problems.
I wouldn't disagree with that Pogue, although the Take Back Control tagline at the end did give me a giggle. In my opinion it does a fair job of highlighting how as a a country we feck ourselves over and then try to blame everybody else but sadly is so close to a lot of the UKIP/Leave type campaigning that most will miss the point and just hate the Germans instead.
Ah yes, that was the other aspect of it that irritated me. The classic 'pretend a small number is actually a big number to piss people off' technique.
They'll be writing it on a bus next.
This is exactly it. Labour is worried that it's too far left in the current climate, hence these kinds from videos.
Blimey, I was so distracted by figuring out how the railways work that I didn't fully grasp that Momentum is actually a left-wing pro Labour group. Fighting demagogy with more demagogy, that's the way to go.
Gave it oxygen? Defended it? So you have decided to double down on your nonsense. And apparently my character is not fit to discuss or speak out against discrimination on this forum as well. What a fine place the CE has become since June.
It ain't just the CE Nick, it's the whole of the UK yet you still drivel on like you were doing us all some great service pushing for Brexit. There may be two sides to the schism but there was only one side holding an axe on the 23rd of June so why cry about the divide?
If it helps you to sleep easier at night then fine, but we both know what you have said and done on here and it certainly is not calling out xenophobia and it certainly is defending it when it suits you.
This is what you sowed. You can't expect others to forget that.
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A follow-up piece from the New Statesman concerning the railway privatisation ad:
Why I made the TSSA film about rail privatisation benefiting foreigners
http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...bout-rail-privatisation-benefiting-foreigners
I believe it was the best long term decision for the country, those living here now and in the future. I, and others, should be able to hold that viewpoint in the same way as many others on here. I can also regret the decline in respectful discourse on this forum, which is reflected elsewhere in British politics as you say.
I feel the need to blunt here. You are talking out of your ass, Fletch.
However those people who know me best away from the Caf, would require no such clarification in any event. *shrugs*
Unlike some hereabouts, i still believe that there exists plenty f common ground, topics which transcend both the EU and the Westminster consensus of recent times. Nor is it my intent to hold over other posters their support for Remain.
Why I made the TSSA film about rail privatisation benefiting foreigners
http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...bout-rail-privatisation-benefiting-foreigners
I believe it was the best long term decision for the country, those living here now and in the future. I, and others, should be able to hold that viewpoint in the same way as many others on here. I can also regret the decline in respectful discourse on this forum, which is reflected elsewhere in British politics as you say.
I feel the need to blunt here. You are talking out of your ass, Fletch.
However those people who know me best away from the Caf, would require no such clarification in any event. *shrugs*Unlike some hereabouts, i still believe that there exists plenty f common ground, topics which transcend both the EU and the Westminster consensus of recent times. Nor is it my intent to hold over other posters their support for Remain.
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Corbyn is changing his approach to the media it seems.
http://www.politico.eu/article/revealed-jeremy-corbyn-labour-plan-to-copy-donald-trump-playbook/
http://www.politico.eu/article/revealed-jeremy-corbyn-labour-plan-to-copy-donald-trump-playbook/
He's continually turned down appearances in the media though. Even turning down liberal stations/shows. He's like the anti-Mandelson.
If he had a strategy to engage with the media at all it could surely only help.
The problem with the Labour Party in two tweets -
London Labour Mayor
Jeremy Corbyn's campaign manager
Ideally if the Labour Mayor could get in line and back the workers, that would grand.
London Labour Mayor
Jeremy Corbyn's campaign manager
Ideally if the Labour Mayor could get in line and back the workers, that would grand.
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This is a very complex issue for Labour. On the one hand our history and links with the labour movement in the UK means that we're closely tied to the Unions in a largely positive way. Trouble is, it raises the concern that we'd be too close to the Unions if we ever get in power. Blair handled that particularly problem by having (intentionally or not) a rather cool relationship with the unions. However you get the impression that any union proposing a strike against a Corbyn led Labour Government would get the deal they wanted real quick.