In his regular blog for Caerphilly Observer South Wales East AM Lindsay Whittle gives his take on recent news.
Rail Services
During questions to the Transport Minister, I raised the issue of tickets prices on Arriva Trains services.
I am concerned that a return anytime ticket between Caerphilly and Cardiff Queen Street costs almost £7 – for a 15 minute journey – which is excessive.
With electrification of the Valley network on the way – which I welcome – I wonder whether this will be used as an opportunity to put up ticket prices further.
I asked the Minister whether she would support a public or not-for-profit franchise to so that price increases can be minimised.
In response, the Minister said that ticket prices do come up at meeting with Arriva and that it was important a service was provided that people could afford to use as well as been efficient and reliable. Pricing needs to be tackled.
Electronic Cigarettes
There has been controversy over plans by the Welsh Government to ban the use of e-cigarettes in enclosed public places and workplaces.
I was fully behind stopping tobacco being smoked in pubs, restaurants etc but the latest proposal by the Health Minister is premature and certainly does not have cross party support in the Assembly.
I’m not a smoker but if these e-cigarettes do not pump out any harmful substances then why ban them?
Cancer Research UK has said there just isn’t enough evidence to justify such draconian legislation or that using them indoors would make smoking tobacco seem normal. Anti-smoking charity, ASH also said it did not support the sort of ban proposed by the Welsh government but it thinks the e-cigarette industry should be appropriately regulated. I agree with that.
The Minister needs to have a rethink.
Healthcare Inspection Services
The care of some of our most vulnerable have hit the headlines recently. There have been some appalling failings.
I do not believe the Healthcare Inspectorate for Wales is fit for purpose and Plaid Cymru supports a merger of the healthcare and social care inspectorates.
The HIW has not focused enough on issues such as sub-standard hospital care, failing patients and relatives and I don’t believe there are any indication of improvements.
People deserve the best possible care but they have been failed not just by health boards but by the inspectors.
Wow! I agree with just about everything Lindsay says this week.
The subject of rail fares needs to be tackled as fares have risen far too much in recent years. I use the train to Cardiff as the service is regular, the journey short and I am lucky to live near a railway station. Reading this article started me thinking about when it was that I last went to Cardiff and I was surprised to realise that it was several months ago.
The main reason I have not used the service more recently is that of cost, I have talked myself out of a trip into Cardiff by thinking about the nearly £7 that this would cost, a sum that would give me 24 hours of train, tube and bus services in, supposedly expensive, London.
If the off peak fare were to be drastically lowered then the nearly empty trains that pass my house all day would be fuller and would earn more in ticket sales than they currently do. This sharp reduction in off peak fares could then finance a reduction in fares for those who commute on the, heavily used, trains at peak hours. As Lindsay says, prices need to be tackled before electrification.
There are two reasons for the cost being high:
1. The rolling stock is old requiring constant engineering. The trains are costly to maintain and the dirty, diesel-produced emissions the trains release equate to expensive pollution.
2a. The nature of rail travel prevents cheap tickets without public subsidies as the industry is too costly to operate. The unit cost of a train plus the overheads are at the point where a single train must carry hundreds of thousands of people at the current price point to pay for itself. In addition to this there are the costs of electrification and maintaining the rails.
2b. We can look at ATW and say they are making a profit, which they are, but the total costs includes costs after paying off loans and interest to creditors who lent money to buy new stock years ago. It is not a case of ATW having no overhead costs apart from operating and charging rip-off prices.
Train travel is quicker than cars in peak time but it will also always be more expensive than car+parking.
I accept the points you make Dean. In the bigger picture government is supposed to be trying to encourage us to use rail rather than road, I remember from long ago that a railway can carry 6x the freight or passengers as a road of the same surface area and has less environmental impact.
The point I am making is that if governments are serious about encouraging rail use they must make it both cheaper and more convenient than travelling by car. They seem to have managed it in France but this did not come without a deliberate investment of public money. In Britain we seem to pretend that lots of different companies are running the trains whilst in actuallity we are just permanently subsidising a flawed system.
The reason rail travel is so expensive, is that Arriva Trains are owned by the German Nationalised Railway Company. In Germany rail fares are at least a third cheaper than here. So the Germans do not give us thethe benefit of their efficiency, but use us as a cash cow, little investment, poor quality rolling stock and high prices, basic Capitalism.
Yes, all part of the European project. British foreign policy since the battle of Waterloo up until the 1970’s was to prevent domination of Europe by the emerging German state. Our half educated politicians have given up on that and Germany is taking full advantage. I can’t blame them, but do blame our own leaders.
German trains are very good, as John says they are subsidised, in part, by the Welsh.
It is only basic capitalism when Britain’s companies so easily sell themselves out or the government become obsessed with the idea of semi-market i.e. it is free market insofar as contracts. Rail franchising and nationalisation are useless.
With franchises there is no incentive to invest in newer stock as the trains could become surplus when their contract expires. The companies should buy the rails from the government and have sole responsibility for everything.
I don’t agree, British Foreign Policy before 1815, was to ally with all the nasty repressive regimes in Europe, it takes one to know one against the French who were promoting an ideal of Liberty,Equality and Brotherhood. Britain had as its allies the repressive semi feudal states of what would be Germany. Germany did not exist until Bismarck and 1870. Britain’s sensible policy, with the biggest navy in the world and an empire was to ignore Europe. It was only in the early 1900s with its naval plans was Germany seen as a threat by Britain, this lead to a series of treaties with France and Russia to contain Germany, one of the many reasons for the First World War. In reality we can, in my opinion, see the period 1933 to 1945, and the rise and fall of Hitler,as an aberration in the history of Germany. I quite like Germany and the Germans, what I don’t????like is the way they run our trains and overcharge us for using the!.
I like the Germans too, I even took the trouble of learning the German language well enough to read their newspapers in the original. I just don’t want them running Europe.
With regard to history the French talked of ‘Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood’ as a nifty slogan but John, do you really think the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte really believed in any of that?
Oddly enough, I do. Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian has an article suggesting just that. In fact on 1805 he said that on his invasion of Britain, he would have marched to London, proclaimed a republic,and the abolition of the House of Lords, who were the main opposition to liberty, equality and the sup,remacy of the people. Incidentally, all through the 19th century,France was seen as the main threat to Britain, when Bismarck was uniting Germany in 1870, Britain was building forts all around the coast, known as Palmerston’s Follies to prevent a French landing, St Catherine’s Island in Tenby being one of them, they must have worked, because the French didn’t land.
Forts and very big cannon, the ‘nuclear deterrent’ of 19th century times. And earlier, of course, the Welsh had Jemima ‘Fawr’ Nicholas to keep the French in their place!
No the privatisation of the railways was basic Capitalism, John Major was running out of ideas, so he thought he’d do that to help his friends in the City, but it was badly done, cost a fortune, and by the law of unintended consequences, after this mates made a fortune, the Franchises were sold to European Nationalised Railway Companies, you couldn’t make it up.
Actually, I quite like the French, but I may be biased, but I may be biased. Some of my family come from Penally, near Tenby, and in the church are some 13th century tombs,where the script is in French.
There are good points and bad points of both nationalisation and privatisation, in Britain we only get the bad points of both. Probably something todo with our psyche.