Now you're conning yourself. I've used the railway service in a number of European countries, including Britain, France, Spain and Ireland. Ireland is the worst, but not far behind Britain, France and Spain are miles ahead in my experience, certainly the main lines anyway.
UK General Election - 12th December 2019 | Con 365, Lab 203, LD 11, SNP 48, Other 23 - Tory Majority of 80
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We get the government we deserve.
Part of the problem is that people have convinced themselves that life can't get any worse for them. It has gotten a lot worse for many and still can get a lot worse again.
Idiot Trump overdoes it:
Donald Trump said:
I thought the same Steve when I saw that quote earlier but then I saw that Channel 4 focus group above and realised it will be perfectly adequate for many!
That's actually a very good, albeit frightening point.
To me, that screams we want the NHS and there is nothing to see here. Only Trump could cock that up. However, there are millions that will look at that quote and feel satisfied!
Just of out of interest, how often do you use the trains in the UK, and which lines?
I am on the Swiss and Italian railways daily and also use French and German trains a fair bit. They're generally little better than the UK and in some cases worse, but like i said upthread they all have excellent high speed lines that mask deficiencies in the regional network. In the UK we don't want to build high speed railways.
The point is, most on this thread think nationalisation is going to result in some utopian transport network, when in reality little will change.
I mostly use Thameslink and Heathrow Express to/from airports now, but when i lived in the UK I would be on Thameslink, Southwestern and Virgin West Coast mostly. Oh and Transpennine Express for a few years.
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Don't even know where to begin with that clip. That level of stupidity deserves nothing but contempt.
I do like the way that the guy is observing them in the same way you might look at a family of chimpanzees in the zoo.
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Just passed the Swinson battle bus parked up on Albert Embankment, just down the road from parliament. Not exactly pushing into the regions.
Or a Tory - that discovers that being kind feels good but understands that you still need to generate the wealth before you can give it away.
How anyone can still spout that NHS line is staggering. Plus that one guy who thinks 'Boris will give you an honest answer' straight after they've been discussing him lying to the queen
But yay democracy.
Twitter: A source close to Chuka Umunna emphatically denies any plans to replace Jo Swinson before the election.
Says ‘the campaign has been disappointing but it’s too late to do anything about it now’
Says ‘the campaign has been disappointing but it’s too late to do anything about it now’
How anyone can still spout that NHS line is staggering. Plus that one guy who thinks 'Boris will give you an honest answer' straight after they've been discussing him lying to the queen
But yay democracy.
I suspect there is also a fair amount of bigotry mixed in there too which they daren't voice being on TV. The demographics of that focus group are quite telling.
I dare say, but crikey, these people really think they've got one over the 'elite'.
Unfortunately she is simply not strong enough. She tries too hard to be sincere but it has been a poor campaign.
Haha. "Not going to affect me mate. It's the billionaires that will suffer....which is why I'm voting for the party of the rich at this next election."
At what point in the future when all this is done and they look back and go "we were lied to" (because they will) can we just tell them to go swivel?
What should he have said then? 'We want the NHS lock stock and barrel?' You'd have said 'See, told ya'That's actually a very good, albeit frightening point.
To me, that screams we want the NHS and there is nothing to see here. Only Trump could cock that up. However, there are millions that will look at that quote and feel satisfied!
Or what if, by some miracle he had said absolutely nothing. He'd have been 'not wanting to say because it was definitely on the table'
Trumps said it, Johnson's said it, every Tory says it. To sell it would mean certain death. Everyone knows that to be an absolute, so why would they even contemplate it?
Just stumbled upon this on reddit. For anyone who is still contesting the fact that there is a clear media bias against Corbyn, here's the proof.
Idiots. The only one that comes away with any credit is the one who called Boris out on lying to the queen.
I've been thinking about it and it seems that lying is a clear and blatant strategy by the entire Conservative party during this campaign.
I mean they know that they will very rarely get called on it (see that story on the BBC and calling out lies) and even if they do it doesn't matter because mud sticks. In the same way the likes of The Sun can print some absolute nonsense on it's front page and then write a retraction in a small column on Page 7, two weeks later. By then the damage is already done.
I mean they know that they will very rarely get called on it (see that story on the BBC and calling out lies) and even if they do it doesn't matter because mud sticks. In the same way the likes of The Sun can print some absolute nonsense on it's front page and then write a retraction in a small column on Page 7, two weeks later. By then the damage is already done.
Corbyn needs to learn to answer this question better and fast because it will no doubt come up again on Friday. Quite why he can’t just own this and apologise instead of having it forced out of him I’m not too sure. He does not come across well in this clip.
He doesn't come off great, but what type of interview is that? Repeating "Just say sorry" is verbal bullying, not journalism. What is the Labour party membership? Around half a million? Yet he's banging on about 130 cases that are yet to be dealt with. Anyone who isn't brain dead knows that there must be a process and that effective processes take time.
The problem I have with this is that it's a Channel 4 program and C4 are known to be against Brexit and against the Tories currently. So the intended audience for this program is essentially most people in this thread.
We all get exasperated by it and tell our mates and share it around in our echo chambers but the people who are in that video and the people like them carry on as they are. Nobody is challenging their nonsense there, it's just another ill informed echo chamber and absolutely nobody is going to change their opinion on any of that.
It's what the BBC should be doing and they should be challenging them when they say something that is entirely falsifiable.
I get what you're saying. I've discussed it at length with people from all over the political spectrum in work today and it's unanimous that Conservatives will be (or should be) face palming today after that quote. Nothing about it, or him, is genuine or believable at all. He's gone from saying everything is on the table, to you could hand it us on a platter and we wouldn't want it. He's been given a brief to back track and as he does with everything he's triple jumped past the mark.
I know people will find an issue with anything Trump says and in their eyes, he can't win, but what I'm suggesting here isn't a stretch. He's exaggerated comments to make a point and I feel it's done the opposite.
Regarding your last line, I've said it before but I don't expect to see wholesale chunks of the NHS sold off to the point that any man, woman or child on the street knows it's happening. That doesn't mean it won't be done. Also, Trumps said it, Johnson's said it and every Tory says it aren't compelling statements given there are a list of blatant lies I could reel off without blinking.
Enough people have corrected you. But my favourite was this link from @Ekkie Thump
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/fact...structure/quality-rail-infrastructure_en#2018
Because its a lose lose situation. Have you ever been in a situation where your being asked to apologise for something you haven't done and when the people your apologising to wont let it go even if you do.
There are some anti Semites in the labour party fact, and in other parties, and in the general public. He's gone above and beyond in terms of disavowing these people but the point is nobody cares about the antisemitism, or the Islamophobia in the Tory party or bigoted views in the wider populace, its a stick to beat him with to derail the campaign pure and simple. if it wasn't structural antisemitism allegations it would be something else.
Bar a leaked video conference in some smouldering dark cave adorned with skulls with all the media moguls surrounding a blood sacrifice on an obsidian round table chanting admission to fact its a smear job, there's nothing that can satisfy from an optics perspective.
I tend not to read links from people who dont post anything with them.
But anyway, here's another one for you that goes into far more detail. As i keep saying, the UK is pretty much middle of the road:
https://www.bcg.com/publications/20...-2017-european-railway-performance-index.aspx
I've already explained this upthread but high speed rail lines are the flagship projects of most big state railways in Europe. They're excellent and lead to impressive statistics. We don't have one, and that's not changing any time soon. As soon as you remove them from comparisons and look into non high speed and regional services, there is very little difference across the major countries. They're all subject to the same problems and delays regardless of who owns them. Nationalisation will make next to no difference, just as privatisation didn't back in the 90s. The most likely outcome of bringing them back under state control is that it will just cost more.
And yet at no point during the six rounds of trade conversations between the UK and US did the UK say it to the US
We'll see in a couple of months. Legislation will be put forward to say that the NHS must be protected from future trade agreements. The tories will then be telling us how it is folly to rule out anything in a negotiation and that remaniacs are ruining what would otherwise have been easy talks.
This really. I'm not a fan of his politics but I find the whole thing bewildering.
I was hoping you'd retort with that one. In that report the UK does come out 8th (Below France, Germany and even more amusingly Switzerland) but then that's solely because of its record on safety. For service (price and puncutality) it comes in joint 19th. That's joint 19th. In Europe.
Totally agree. He is a proven liar. Exaggerating his point so profusely looks bad.
They would've been better to not bring him over until after the election from a PR perspective imo.
Nice to see you didn't read that one either, unless you think how many freight trains we run is important.
Chuffed to bits with the train debate.
On this I agree with you. It appears to me that journo's are pulling the 'Are you going to apologise for.....?' out of their arses at every turn right now because it always provides a dramatic moment and all the papers pick up on it then next day.
I thought the same when Marr spoke to Johnson on Sunday following the terror attack when he asked him to say sorry to the British public for letting the guy out or something. He'd already reamed BJ good and proper but then decided to stick an apology request in for good measure - which I felt was too far.
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