Today I .............

Worrying about an elderly friend in hospital very poorly

Clearing a house and estate agent came round and had a booking within a very shirt time .it is a tremendous bargain though and in the most fab position near the sea , schools ,churches , pubs etc etc

I can lend you some rather nice headphones if that would help. Posted today, with you tomorrow.

Thank you Jerry, that's a very kind offer... you've looked after me more than once over the years... but I do have some hardly-used headphones which I can plug into an Amazon Echo Dot. Not the last word in hifi, but better than a poke in the eye.

The real fun will start after the new carpets go down next Monday, and I have to re-install all the hifi, TV, Sky, broadband gubbins and 5.1 surround stuff. It'll all be worth it in the end, I keep telling myself.

With all this stuff out of the room, first thing Mrs. P noticed was how 'live' the room sounds. And that is with the carpet and sofas still in. All the ornaments, plants, and equipment must have being having a significant effect on the sound, diffusing rather than absorbing , I expect. When things go back we are ditching the vertical blinds in favour of curtains, which should be a good thing hopefully.

Met with house clearnce guy today to get a quote and showed a lovely couple round the house who wanted to buy it .ideal as he is a builder and knows about the idiosyncrasies of the house like solar panels etc .got a pretty good deal really
Considering the market

Today it looks as though the Government have delivered a pay offer to the rail industry that successfully splits the loyalty of membership by at least third.

The "Driver Only" stipulation that had Train Guards across the country standing firm with station staff, catering staff and anyone not "on-train", has been removed from the table.

They will now be the most eager to accept a total of 9% (4% 2022 and 5% from 1/1/23 onward) pay increase, now that their jobs are secure.

However, ALL ticket offices will close and be repurposed under the new offer, with staff having no home location and being made to work at any station within a specific radius.

The rest of the deal includes a 7 day railway, and Christmas Day and Boxing day now being taken out of employees AL entitlement for the year, instead of being bank holidays as they are now.

Asked by the powers that be on how I would vote on this matter, my response was brief:

F#ck the Tories.

Today I am sorting out the garage. I've become encumbered by the vast amounts of tat my mom had in the loft.

She moved to a smaller gaff a couple of years ago, and asked to store some stuff here until she'd settled in.

Being the "good lad" that I am, I agreed.

Now, I need the space, so stuff has to be sorted out.

Back in the day, my old man told me about a suitcase in the loft that had "as many different newspapers as I could get" that were printed on the day of John Lennon's death.

Needless to say, I found it and went nosing around. It's a veritable treasure trove. Beatles books, biographies, the original Get Back album companion book....there's a fair bit to get through.

I have now got distracted and the garage hasn't really had the overhaul it needed. Better discipline required.

I'm in favour of re-nationalising the railway and running it as non-profit (likewise for water and power) but the bloke commentating on that video is an idiot.

wow ... the thing about the ticket offices is bad . i used 2 of them yesterday to advise and rebook a train i missed

we need them

Network rail has been under government control since 1/9/2014. Network rail are responsible for maintaining track, signals and all infrastructure for the railway apart from some stations, that are maintained by the franchise holders.

Their current reasoning for renationalisation is that they will provide a more economical cost to the UK, rather than using public money to supplement Private Commpany profits. They will improve customer service, more trains will be on time, less cost to the tax payer....etc, etc.

Since the GOV took over Network rail, this is how their version of "improvement" looks: Train cancellations due to infrastructure issues have increased year on year since the GOV took over, because they haven't invested in maintanance and have CUT maintanance schedules almost in half. This is a fact and is checkable. The numbers wrongly report an upturn in performance since 2020, due to the massivley reduced timetable they operated for covid.

They havent reinvested in the infrastructure, even though for the last 6-ish years they have had almost all train operating companies in a management style contract where the companies get a set percentage of the revenue, and the GOV keep the majority. My train operating company was running on a 1% share of the management contract the government put in place for covid. They are only just off that and into a similarly crap contract.

So, you have the government strangling the profits for the train operating companies, you then have to pay them with public money to continue running trains because without it, the companies can't affort to operate, and the government saying that they dont want to prop up these companies with public money....but they are taking it all out!

Then you have them trying to "back door" privatise the railway by controlling the parameters that the RDG and NR can negotiate pay deals.

Their plan to improve the railway is to remove all ticket offices and start new joiners to the railway on contracts that include forced overtime, staggered progressive pay structure, so you start on less money than the guy who's been here for two years doing the same job, and you will not catch him up for 5 years in the new plan. They have cut the length of sick pay for anyone with less than 5 years service, so today some had 26 weeks at full pay, but if this agreed, they will get 6 weeks instead. I could go on....but it's grim reading.

They are not interested in improving the railway. They want the profits and they are cutting any possible cost they can to rake in as much as they can.

Anyone who thinks the government is going to improve a publically owned service need only look at the NHS for confimation of their inability to do so.

I would not have ANY issue with renationalisation if i thought they would use the profits to prop up the NHS. But they won't.

Privataisation resulted in a more efficient network, higher levels of investment, better rolling stock, shorter journey times, better terms and conditions for workers, higher levels of safety and the highest recorded levels of customer satisfaction in history.

Plucking up the courage to work in the garage on the motorbike....
Need to drop the front wheel to remove a broken bolt that holds the front mudguard on.

I agree with what you are saying and don't dispute the fact that privatisation improved the overall service, at least in most areas of the country, there have been a few disasters.

Network Rail have never been a 'proper' independent company. They were my biggest account when I was with Arriva, and quite lucrative since they, along with the police, didn't seem to care what they spent. There seemed to be next to no scrutiny of costs unlike what I encountered with the accounts that were companies with shareholders to answer to.

This is the same problem with the NHS. No control of costs - plus NHS is riddled with management incompetence.

A nationalised organisation does not have to be run badly, it just needs sufficient in-built controls when it is set up, and an effective system of scrutiny. Put the responsibility on senior management - if they fail to deliver then they're gone, no golden farewells or payoffs, your contracts terminated as of now, clear your desk.

I don't think privatisation is ideal for passenger rail travel since to my knowledge no-one has ever run a profitable passenger rail service since the locomotive was invented. The essential costs are too high. To make a genuine profit whilst maintaining safety and acceptable standards of service the  ticket prices would have to be astronomical.

Obviously the cost of the subsidy to the taxpayer has to be balanced against the revenue generated by the increase in economic activity resulting from having an effective passenger rail network. So it's not inherently a bad thing. But seems to make more sense to me to avoid subsidising the profits as well as costs. Hence nationalisation.

Nationalising the railway will not reduce the amount of public money the GOV has to put into it, it will still require the same amount of Diesel, Electricity etc to run trains. The cost of rental contracts will not go down, they will only go up etc.

The issue i have is the narrative and the result of the potential nationalisation.

It's a publicity stunt. The various groups that hold the GOV to account for their spending are outraged that the UK rail industry is receiving UK tax payer money to subsidise it, not because it's public money, but because these companies are using these public funds to REDUCE rail fares in their own countries. The UK commuter is subsidising the ticket prices of France, Holland and Germany, who are able to pay far less for their journys thanks to the profits these companies make in the UK...some of that profit is subsidaries from the UK GOV.

THAT is why the GOV want to renationalise. They want that money, and if they get it, it will not go into reducing rail fares in the UK, nor will it go on improving the service, journey times, rolling stock etc. It won't go on the NHS, road repairs etc Instead, the Tories will pump it all into the pockets of it's MPs and supporters.

All whilst claiming they can't give any public sector worker a decent payrise and claiming the rising ticket costs are due to rail wages!!!

No, you're correct in that the money would not be leaving the UK, but the issue is reinvestment.

At present, there is a certain level of investment from the private firms. A level the GOV will not agree to.

That's my issue with it all. The Bullshit.

Phil, regarding the solar panels:

Most people see them as a 'fit and forget' thing, but giving them a clean every twelve months or so may give some improvement in efficiency. They can get a bit manky if neglected. A friendly window cleaner with one of those long stick hoses might be able to do this. If I had solar I'd be cleaning the panels periodically.