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Yeah? Well be snooty if you must. But one of these days you may have a problem and no one else can help...

Well evidently you've never seen one of these.

Evidently I am misunderstanding you but I assure you it's not deliberate.

There will be some savings from nationalisation by reducing duplication, system friction and profiteering, but I don't think it will reduce subsidies by more than 20%. If you compare the UK to countries with comparable rail networks, subsidies feature heavily.

It was a different story for other railway staff. The reason there were no driver strikes was the dozens of train companies competing for drivers, so there was never a need. A potential return to a single national railway employer will inevitably have an effect on industrial relations.

Of course there are freight trains, but they are a fraction of total journeys. We do not have the size of country which can run a major, profitable, freight network which could be used to cross-subsidise the passenger network. Hence significant government subsidy is needed.

Twas ever thus. They definitely were involved in management/staff relations. The government were pushing for driver only operation which was one of the key causes of strikes during the latter years of franchising.

Why do you think railway subsidies are ludicrous? The UK is a predominantly passenger railway (the country's too small for major rail freight operations) and passenger railways are invariably loss making.

Arguably the DfT bureaucracy had more control over the privatised industry than it had in BR's time. With the government providing half the railway's income there's no prospect of it not controlling the industry one way of another. The trick is to get the right structure in place.

I've been to church services where the organ intro to the first hymn goes on that long as well.

Discus or javelin?

That is a not unsensible suggestion.

Oh, is that message still pinned? Thanks for the heads up.

We already have 'nice factories making biscuits and cloth caps' not far from Leeds, and no one is stopping them expanding or moving to a larger site if they thought there was more money to be made.

I mean, no one's stopping anyone building more biscuit and cloth cap factories. If there are no plans to do so, that tells you something about demand for those products.

We already have those in Batley and Guiseley.

Exploring Mars.

Meh. He's a patron, which is basically meaningless. Nobody cares.

Thousands of litres is... not much.

Nice that the Alien monolith from 2001 showed up. Now we know how they learned their extraordinary ball possession skills...