>> "I know that none of you are any good, because if you were, you
>> wouldn't be here"
Margaret Thatcher probably got that from the vile,
disgusting, demented and now wholly discredited
Alfred Sherman, one of several mad people whose
opinion the equally crazed Thatcher, inventor of
the catchphrase 'the great car society' chose to
take.
it is, however, probably true that her general hostility
to the railways was in part caused by her view
of the repeated use of strikes by rail employees
to pursue obscure and arcane differential and
comparative arguments at the expense of the
customers, particulalry in and around London.
In a traditionally rail-oriented society, (UK) it is I
believe true that the rail unions wilfully chased
away around twenty percent of their passengers
with the strikes of the 70s and 80s..
>I cannot comment on British Rail,
>but this is certainly not the case with
>many hard-working employees of State Rail.
It's always important to distinguish between 'working hard'
and working to the eventual good of the enterprise.
Where I live in Germany, we have far too many
corporations (the phone company, post office,
federal railways, public broadcasting) whose
primary purpose is seen as being to employ
people rather than deliver a service.
If the intention of State Rail is to maintain
a payroll and incidentally run some trains,
this should be stated and agreed among those
that pay for it.
If, as I suspect, the intention is rather to
engage professional transport staff and offer a
quality transport service to the public, that too
need to be set out and agreed.
At which time it may be reasonable to
say to the public that this level of service cannot
be funded by farebox (ticket sales) recovery
alone, and demands a funded contribution
of, let's say, twenty percent of the highways budget.
Then we will all know where we stand, and can
choose what we as a society are willing to pay for.
*Philip*
(wholly spoiled by German, and Berlin,
public transport, to the extent that
I haven't owned a car for a year and haven't
felt the least bit disadvantaged)