The wacky world of Lib Dem policy

TGF UKIP

Fraser, I don't usually watch Question Time or the equally silly Andrew Neil programme that follows, but I think I'll make an exception if you are on with Cleggover or Bonkers Baker any time soon. Should be fun all round, especially for you and except for them.

DW

And if you are on QT Fraser, annihilate Labour's economic policy....you've got the Brownies - use them....don't sit back. You were too gentle the last time.

David Lindsay

Why are cars conservative and trains not?

Why are the Tory-minded so obsessed with dependence on foreign oil (whereas trains can be run on electricity generated in this country)?

Or with breaking up old, established communities by means of vast modern roads?

Or with tearing up the countryside in order to put those roads on them?

Among many, many other things.

The road network is not "just there", you know. Every inch of it depends on vast amounts of action (i.e., expenditure) by central and local government, without which it would simply collapse.

Which brings one to the obscene "privatisation" of the railways, with the profitability of these supposedly private companies guaranteed absolutely by the taxpayer.

Those companies' shareholders have already been more than compensated enough out of public funds: renationalisation should proceed immediately and at no further expense.

If a socially necessary service cannot survive except at public expense, then it belongs in public ownership. That was why the Tories nationalised electricity in the 1920s.

New Zealand has just renationalised her railways. We should follow suit, not for the first time taking our lead from that, one of the countries on earth with which we have most in common, not least including a Head of State.

mart

Fraser, very entertaining. Two points, if I may.

First, why does anyone try to view the railways as something other than a public service, funded from general taxation? Tickets can be charged for, at a reasonable rate, obviously. But the railways are a public service, as is evidenced by the subsidies. The angle I would like to see covered is, do we need more of them? And if so, does the cost match the benefit?

So much hot air (ho ho) is expended on the subject of reducing private car use, but public transport does not provide an adequate alternative. The only way this will change is by increasing the quantity of public transport available.

Secondly, and warming to my theme of cost / benefit, I have to say I didn't understand your point:

"... roads repay their construction costs in economic wealth generated several times over, unlike rail: hence, the word "investment"."

Does this calculation not vary from road to road, and from line to line? I am surprised that you made such a generalisation in that statement. Are there any details out there that provide the background for an interested reader?

Linda Jack

Totally agree with the last two comments. I think Fraser, the person living in Wacky World is you! The logical conclusion of your argument is to abandon public transport entirely and make room for the all powerful car - no notion of the economic cost of congestion for example. You belong with the dinasaurs for whom the market and their right to do whatever they want whereever regardless of the consequences for others is King. You will be like those currently being burnt by the credit crunch - refusing to listen and ultimately drowned by your own complacency!

GeoffH

It's amazing that 60 years on from the disastrous nationalisations and their subsequent 40-odd years of failure, waste, poor service, inadequate direction and general failure that there are still hopeless romantics advocating yet more doses of this snake oil.

Bernard

I didn't know that dinosaurs had kings? Also, I imagine it must be rather awful to be burnt whilst drowning. You poor things.

J H Holloway

Oh dear. The Metropolitan, train-loving, public sector has appeared in force. There's a reason why the rail network is kept lean and reasonably efficient.

Private transport is a mind-boggling way of raising tax. 'Allowing' people to provide their own transport generates around £40bn per year in direct taxes, never mind the savings on providing transport for the masses.

It is amazing that the rail subsidy is just £5bn (although in 2006 the DfT said it wanted to reduce the £5 billion annual rail subsidy by more than £1 billion).

The subsidy for Ken's expanded bus service in London is over £615m - an amazing proportion of what's need keep the rail running nationally.

The point is that mass public transport is not only hugely expensive, it is also traditionally subsidised as people couldn't afford to pay the full cost of the service provided.

Private transport, by contrast, sees the Government netting taxes, as well as seeing huge economic benefits from people being able to travel to work that's further away than a bus ride.

I've also heard a whisper that Gordo doesn't care to subsidise commuting services, because it's effectively a bung for middle-class 'white flight' types who have left the city and then want a cheap travel card to get to work.

The Lone Groover

Tyrannosaurus Rex - King of the Tyrant Lizards

London Calling

I have a cunning plan Baldrick...

Air Tax.... No I'm not talking about Flying, I'm talking about Green Tax on breathing, God I'm clever, just think of all the Tax we could collect from the

Obese, bigger lungs = more Tax...

10p a breath seems fair, don’t you think?

20p if your poor.. we’re going to rake it in...

And so to work...contact Clegg for me, he seems like a nice chap with no ideas...

Rob

Private transport is a mind-boggling way of raising tax. 'Allowing' people to provide their own transport generates around £40bn per year in direct taxes, never mind the savings on providing transport for the masses'

Yep, that's because its mind bogglingly expensive at £6400 pa per average car. And politicians wonder why they can't fill £10k per year jobs?

The cost of PT (taken in terms of subsidy + revenue) is around £250 per household per annum, slightly less than the motoring figure don't you think?

Most journeys are less than 2 miles anyway, and could be had for free if people could be bothered to walk and towns weren't planned on the need to have cars..

Lee Jakeman

If "the politics of envy" has defined a generation of Labour policies, then "the politics of wishful thinking" is what has defined a generation of Liberal politicies.

Paul

The Tories ruined the railways and created the most expensive system on the planet by building in the high franchise costs which are paid to the banks - circa 30% p.a. return on the rolling stock they lease.

Don't you think you are a tad unrealistic by just bashing Clegg and Baker and saying nothing about what you'd do instead.

The fact is there is a need for improved rail services for poor sods like me ho have to travel up to London from Sussex everyday to keep our financial economy going - certainly no thanks to the Tories who caused the trains to be inflexible through the way they instigated privatisation.

J H Holloway

Rob

'The cost of PT (taken in terms of subsidy + revenue) is around £250 per household per annum, slightly less than the motoring figure don't you think?

Most journeys are less than 2 miles anyway, and could be had for free if people could be bothered to walk and towns weren't planned on the need to have cars..'

The PT subsidy is very low, but then you might wonder why all the money extracted from drivers can't be used to prop-up PT. I guess the Government uses it for other things. Like the way all of a year's income tax goes on 'social support'.

As to the 2 mile journey thing...well I just don't believe that's the case anymore. UK has the longest car commuting times in the EU at 45 mins. Suggests the average non-PT journey is 12 miles or more.

And continental-style towns would be great...but that's just never-never land. Was in Gothenburg the other day. You can park directly in front of the opera house, but many used the floating car park on the river instead. Intelligent stuff.

David Lindsay

There is nothing metropolitan about me, J H Holloway. Nor am I primarily employed in the public sector: I do have a tutorship at one of the Durham colleges, but that is as far as it goes.

Does anyone fancy explaining how it is conservative to base transport policy (vastly expensive transport policy, I might add) around dependence on foreign oil, around tearing up the countryside, around physically splitting settled communities, around discrimination against young families and the elderly, and around encouraging a less sociable and courteous pattern of behaviour?

J H Holloway

Mr Lindsay.

Lovely. How is working at Durham College not the public sector? Is the educational sector complete free of Government money?

My point stands and - with apologies from a technical/aesthetics graduate of three Polytechnics - you have a classic Ivory tower view.

The Conservatives have not configured any particular transport policy. It is the market. My father worked on the roads for 40 years, driving a truck. My brother is salesman doing 30,000 miles per year. My other brother has a business which requires extensive travel to clients around the country.

My wife, though, works at one of the London Palaces and did 3000 miles in her car last year, and chalked up one flight to Austria.

Transport chocies simply fit the job. I would love to tutor the brightest and best in such amazing surrounding, travelling up from the capital by train. What a joy that would be.

You appear to be very fortunate. Most people have much more hard-pressed - in terms of travel - working lives. And the transport system in this country reflects that fact.

J H Holloway

Mr Lindsay.

My point stands and - with apologies from a technical/aesthetics graduate of three Polytechnics - you have a classic Ivory tower view.

The Conservatives have not configured any particular transport policy. It is the market. My father worked on the roads for 40 years, driving a truck. My brother is salesman doing 30,000 miles per year. My other brother has a business which requires extensive travel to clients around the country.

My wife, though, works at one of the London Palaces and did 3000 miles in her car last year, and chalked up one flight to Austria.

Transport choices simply fit the job. I would love to tutor the brightest and best in such amazing surrounding, travelling up from the capital by train. What a joy that would be.

You appear to be very fortunate. Most people have much more hard-pressed - in terms of travel - working lives. And the transport system in this country reflects that fact. We can't all live near work, or near a tube station. And most of us never will.

Madasafish

Dependence on foreign oil argument has a point... but is of course an economic misfact.
What do railways run on? Electricity.
And electricity in the UK is more than 75% generated by:
Gas: mainly imported
Coal: mainly imported.

Fraser Nelson

Linda, I would respectfully disagree with the "logical outcome" - I'm with mart in saying railways should be seen as a public service that will always be a net minus for the taxpayer. I am arguing for honesty in this proposition, that's all. My point is semamtic, to distinguish between "spending" and "investment" - the confusion of the two has been responsible for much mischief in the last decade. The LibDems seem to think new railways will somehow pay for themselves, obv nonsense. The only ones that do connect cities to airports and charge a bomb. Mart, you're right some roads are a public service and dont recover their cost of building or maintenance. But the argument about new roads is couched in terms of "investment" because almost always it's for business purposes. I'm all up for a battle of ideas in transport, which is why it's a shame the LibDem ones seem to be fall apart so easily. I actually agree that Tory privatisation of rail was an expensive disaster: a monopoly will be run badly, no matter whether the state or Virgin is in charge. I'd like to see more regional airports built and for the plane to take the strain. And given that aircraft produce less greenhouse than either rice production or farting cows, I'd like the environmental impact of this to be put into perspective. But this final point is, I fear, too much for any political party.

Fergus Pickering

Was not one reason for the privitisation of the railways to reduce the power of the rail unions, which it has effectively done. If that really is true then I'm all for it. I used to travel by rail in the seventies and the unions made that a very dodgy proposition indeed. Things are much better now.

HJ

Why is it always assumed that transport is inherently a good thing and that therefore it must be subsidised? If it's economically essential, why won't users pay the full cost?

Why should I subsidise people to commute to well-paid jobs in London, for example? Perhaps it would be more economically efficient to work locally or move to London without the subsidies.

It is always claimed that road users pay more in taxes than is spent on roads. However, this ignores the fact that the roads are a valuable asset owned by all taxpayers and that the government should try to get a reasonable return from this asset by charging road users (through fuel taxes or whatever) in order to make a reasonable return for the owners (all taxpayers and not just road users). If they don't do this, they are encouraging excess road use at the expense of the general taxpayer.

Transport users should pay exactly the costs (plus general taxation, such as VAT) of their use of transport equipment and infrastructure, including a return on the asset value.

mart

Fraser:

"My point is semamtic, to distinguish between "spending" and "investment" - the confusion of the two has been responsible for much mischief in the last decade."

Spot on! The public (or should I say the media on their behalf?) have been strikingly incurious over the last decade about the new political language. It is as you say: the word "investment" has been used as a euphemism for "spending".

However there is a philosophical subtlety here.

There are occasions when spending IS investment. Most education spending is investment in our people and their material prospects, for example.

But also the building of new capacity (road or rail) can be seen as investment insofar as it opens opportunities not existing beforehand.

The key (for me anyway) in deciding whether it's investment is whether the thing produced by the spending lasts and produces benefits disproportionate to the outlay.

And finally a note in response to some of the dismissive comments. Hopefully Fraser has proved the point in his response already. You don't need to be left-of-centre in order to make arguments in favour of public provision of road and rail. We need road and rail, but private enterprise could NOT build and maintain the network without public money.

We need therefore to tax and spend to achieve these parts of our civilisation. The interesting and (proved by the government in the last 10 years) vital question is how to do the right thing with the money - not simply how much money to take.

Max

We need nuclear power for energy indepedence and hybrid electric cars for much more fuel independence. It could be done in two decades. Watch "who killed the electric car" before you tell me the technology isnt available. California nearly did it twenty years ago.

mart

HJ:

"Why should I subsidise people to commute to well-paid jobs in London, for example?"

Choose another, more common, example, and I believe one would have to make the opposite argument.

Choose the example of a low-paid cleaner or office worker who has to take the bus from their town to their job in the next town.

They can't afford to pay the full costs of road building and maintenance, as well as the running costs of the bus. So in the scheme you describe they don't have a job. And thus can't pay for anything.

The provision of transport infrastructure is something that civilised countries do.

There's an alternative I suppose (and maybe there are others... and if so I'd genuinely like to hear them), which is to rely on the philanthropy of rich individuals for the provision of transport infrastructure. Something tells me the roads of the country would have to regress in quite a major way before that ever became our position. :-)

david

Din't the Adam Smith Institute propose, road pricing some years ago?

Nationalisation a failure? perhaps but look at what even the Daily Mail is now saying about our Energy companies.

Hysteria

Cars should be reserved for short (<200 mile) jousrneys - electric powered. Battery technology is just about there. This allows the personal use/space issue to be satisfied.

Longer journeys - except intercontinental - trains - mix of high speed and commuter - electric powered.

Commuting needs - some of them trains - plus small shuttle buses - electric powered

Liquid fuel reserved for intercontinental travel (eg airplanes)

Did you know that 92 mile square area of solar arrays with today's technology would provide 100% of the USA electricity needs?

Nano technology zero-loss cables to move electricity from North Africa to Europe......

All this of course requires - erm - investment!

Terry Finch

New rail services won't generate millions more than they cost?

What a load of dumb, uninformed, vindictive mememememe bile.

It's a strange world we live in where column space is given to negative, poisoned pieces rather than positive calls for a brighter future.

David Lindsay

J H Holloway, my tutorship is not my main job. Nobody's is. That's how Durham works.

Madasafish, we'll pass over how and why coal in this country came to be "mainly imported" when we still have a thousand year's worth of it under our feet (it looks like we might have far more oil than we thought, too).

What we need is nuclear power, providing independence from Arab oil and Russian gas, and providing high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs for the working class, just as the pits (among other things) used to. What's not to like?

Len Burch

Sense should tell anyone that one machine, set of wheels and metal track, carrying a large number of people, will be cheaper than a lot of separate vehicles, tyres, and fuel each used for a few people.

Has Fraser Nelson not worked out that rail is the cheapest form of transport in existence - when you properly apportion the costs and all the overheads for both road and rail? The cost of roads and maintenance, traffic- lights, road signals, police and so much else is paid for by taxes rather than directly by the traveller.

The ratepayers and taxpayers are subsidizing road travel.

Keith Barrow

Fraser, I find your views on the economics of modern railways as amusing as they are misinformed. The construction of high-speed railways in Europe and beyond has always been carried out on the basis of a sound cost-benefit ratio. High-speed rail is popular and profitable in France, Germany and Spain, there's no reason why it should not be the same here. Indeed, studies into the construction of a London - Birmingham high-speed line have shown that the economic returns on such an investment (and it is an investment) would be far in excess of the inital outlay. If you want to see the economic effects high-speed rail can generate, hop on the Eurostar to Lille, which has been transformed from a declining industrial city into a vibrant international business hub.
Building a high-speed line where one is certainly needed, improving existing infrastructure and selective reopening of closed lines where there is a sound business case for doing so does constitute reversal of the Beeching cuts. It is what is urgently needed to drag this country's inadequate and neglected transport infrastructutre into the 21st century. Britain needs a transport policy which favours a much higher capacity railway, not the short-termist, unsustainable and illogical expansion of the road network.

HJ

mart,

You are missing the point. If you subsidise transport, people will use more of it than they otherwise would. Basic economics. If price signals are distorted, so is economic decision-making.

I could argue that if the cleaner had to pay the full cost of transport, then the employer would need to pay cleaners more or go without cleaners because they couldn't afford to get to work. Either that or employ a local cleaner