Getting nationalised by the French government.
Hartlepool power station is owned and operated by EDF Energy.
Interesting.

We’ll obviously have an ‘entente cordiale’’ revival where we make all the electricity and they use all our electricity.
What Rent a Brain ever came up with the idea of flogging off our energy providers is a C&£T.

EDF have a 66.5% stake in Hinkley Point, the Chinese have the other 33.5%,
Let’s not go down the road of who sold the ‘family silver’, she wanted us all to have a share in the Utility Companies well possibly ‘not’ realising as soon there was a profit the general public sold them. They were then “mopped up’ by the big institutions all foreign who are now screwing us.

all of our share indeed. just a certain few to all have their share to make a profit down the line which we are all paying for now.

Come on mate, there’s no bigger Tory than the working man when it comes to a chance to make a few bob, they couldn’t give a monkeys about holding a share in a utility,
They should never have been sold, that’s my opinion, like the railways.

There are certain industries who are strategically important to a country and should be in public hands.
How long your list is depends on you politics but energy,public transport and communications are on my list.

I can’t disagree but apart from some rail networks are all foreigned owned making massive profits, I doubt there would be enough money in the pot to renationalise them.

I often read Rail Magazine and try to keep myself up to date on whats going on.
Network rail is in public owned and the TOCs (train operating companies) are now effectively government owned/controlled with the TOCs simply receiving a management fee for operating them. Covid finally saw goodbye to the idea that the private sector can handle the finance to effectively run trains. Its all a bit complicated but here is an article from a respected rail expert.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ationalise
The public perception of our railways is often different to the facts just like the NHS.

They should be renationalised and bus services re-regulated. All private companies do is splash a bit of paint on, bang up the prices reduce then run the services for their benefit and take us to the ridiculous scenario where it’s cheaper to get a taxi if you have a family, unheard of at one time.

Stagecoach cleaned up when they took over the buses, the Scoutars, brother and sister got most of the old bus stations which were on prime development land. He is a sir and she is a dame, both buckled.

Remember when the shiny new bus depot was built in the mid 80’s and within 10 years the buses were kept in the open air in an ex builders yard by Stagecoach and due to my frequent visits to the council depot had the dubious pleasure of seeing the bin wagons tucked up and pampered inside where the buses used to be. Oh the irony.

Stagecoach cleaned up when they took over the buses, the Scoutars, brother and sister got most of the old bus stations which were on prime development land. He is a sir and she is a dame, both buckled.[/quote]

Sir Buckled of Scotland and
Dame Bus Depot.

The London (TfL) and Manchester systems of integrated travel could easily be replicated in the Tees Valley.
How about a bit of levelling up in the true north

The line from Saltburn could run to Hartlepool and give someone access to south of the river and the jobs going there. Wouldn’t cost a packet but you need the will, same as a crossing of the Tees near Cargo fleet and stop this lunacy of widening the A19 yet again.

public transport in this country, except in london, has always been regarded by all party,s as a poor relation and of little possible vote winning either. it needs to be a public concern with a small clause that it should run closer to a private one. what i do mean by that is that the council owned bus services were better but many were so top heavy with non revenue bringers in it became rediculous. only one company i worked at became private when i worked there. the only positive was from the companies point of view was ridding itself of a complete top floor of office staff and loads of inspectors. the mid 70,s PTE,s were a failure as different departments in each area were set up with a head office in wakefield, known as wastefield at the time, where the company did not run buses. they did not shut other offices down either or rid any staff. no wonder maggie brought in de regulisation of the buses as that shit show could not have lasted forever. thought actually being in the eu might have helped with their transport systems being run quite opposite to ours.

Bus companies always seemed to be looking for ways to save money, but the elephant in the room ( the non operational staff) were invisible, but to be fair most companies are like this, the head office relates to the office staff as their people and therefore untouchable, whereas the raggy lads who made the money could bugger off.

it was always a case of sod the drivers and the mechanics as long as the vehicle was cheaper and did a mile to the gallon better on fuel consumption. shut down the canteens, give em all the minimum required by law and then wonder why there is so much overtime being worked after people left at the first available chance they got.

The council spend £10k installing raised ramps and bus stop signs on Merlin Way a week or so before the NO 3 Bus stopped running all the way to Clavering. It was a trial period to see if there was any demand. I used the service during the ongoing trial, after the roundabout on Merlin Way I was the only person on the bus.Surely the council should have done a survey to determine wether it was worthwhile before lashing out £10k of our money ?

The council spend £10k installing raised ramps and bus stop signs on Merlin Way a week or so before the NO 3 Bus stopped running all the way to Clavering. It was a trial period to see if there was any demand. I used the service during the ongoing trial, after the roundabout on Merlin Way I was the only person on the bus.Surely the council should have done a survey to determine wether it was worthwhile before lashing out £10k of our money ?

Trouble is it’s just not joined up. Council gets requests for these things and Stagecoach pulls the rug on the service.
Prior to this as buses were run by the Council, there’d have been a ‘ what do you reckon’ conversation and sorted out the easy way.

these things are regular events where there are actually petitions from residents from an area requesting a bus route or extention. very rarely these services have more than the odd person if any on them, and they are usually on because their car is in the garage and they are wanting the bus to save on a taxi fare. possibly its the reason for signing the petition anyway with a rider that no stops should be placed outside their house.

I remember when they introduced the Hoppa Buses in the town, like mini buses no specific stops, you either waved them down or requested the driver when to stop. They didn’t last very long,
Buses in the town are only busy at school times etc, most run empty during the day, with the fare now £1.90 if there are a couple of you a taxi is more convenient and a bit more expensive but it’s a door to door service.

take out the kids and the OAP and a 7 seater taxi would suffice. You can understand the lack of buses at night when many have the attitude of my step daughter when she was in her teens. We had buses passing our door but she would get a taxi on her own to go up town as she didn,t want her mates to see her getting off the bus.

The problem is there is no plan for public transport apart from place like London.
It more or less left to the market (bus companies) to decide with some services subsidised by local/govt funds.
The councils/TVCA should commission services across bus and rail specifying defined routes/timetable which is integrated and including across Tess Valley ticketing. Its this kind of thing the TVCA should be doing but it appears to be up to its knees in silt.
Stagecoach and Aviva etc wont be happy.

The Allied air force did a great job in europe in WW2 meaning the rail system had to be rebuilt in a modern way. The Luftwaffe failed and we are stuck with a Victorian (&pre) system of windy track. Yes its all the Germans fault.

We need to take it all in our stride and rock down to...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azuSxl9 ... elessMusic

The thing with the mega bus companies is they’re fly buggers. Anywhere an authority talks of regulating services, the big boys with national coverage like to threaten to quit running services in that area and with their buses and generally minimum back up in their ex builders yard type locations can disappear overnight. Get the message.

The thing with the mega bus companies is they’re fly buggers. Anywhere an authority talks of regulating services, the big boys with national coverage like to threaten to quit running services in that area and with their buses and generally minimum back up in their ex builders yard type locations can disappear overnight. Get the message.[/quote]
always wonder if those who planned the de regulisation and privatisation of the buses expected it to end the way it has. disbanding the national bus company only to end up with a few smaller less caring companies across the country.

Interesting point that. Nicholas Ridley who brought in de-regulation did so on the understanding it was to increase competition, by having smaller companies and more of them.
Sadly the sharks moved in and hoovered up everywhere…look at Darlington, the newcomer Stagecoach moved into town overnight started duplicating Darlington’s bus routes and offering free travel, result Darlington Transport were out of business in a few weeks.
The traffic commissioners should have said Ok Stagecoach, now carry on providing the same service for the next two years for free. No chance, but they now control most of the urban areas in the North East and Darlington must have put out a warning to other companies?
As for choice, what choice? There’s less choice now than there ever was before, a monopoly.

I believe the council give a lump sum to Stagecoach and it’s up to them how they operate the system. I think they will cherry pick the routes where the most revenue is.

at one time bus companies used to run on the idea of cross subsidisation. routes 1,2 and 3 made the profits to continue running 3,4 and 5 that were loss makers. that worked well for years before de reg and now the big boys want the profits of the profitable but go cap in hand to councils to cover the loss of the others. another case of having the best of every worlds. about time we get back to the dirty word of buses being a public service in the same way as they regard rubbish collections.

These mega operators are always pleading poverty, yet still in the business, maybe they’re doing out of charity ….. and pigs might fly.

[quote="Bluestreak"]Getting nationalised by the French government.
Hartlepool power station is owned and operated by EDF Energy.
Interesting.[/quote

EDF now going to build Sizewell C in Suffolk, wtf can’t the U.K. government build it ?

The only emission is garlic.
Apparently the back up to the reactor is 25,000 Citroen 2CV6s.

that emission would have smelt worse than living in haverton hill years ago. they,d better have a re think about their back ups as those things will have a very limited life running on this shit E10 crap.

Think they ran on leaded plus

The French government are going to fully nationalise EDF meaning the French government will own the power station 100% along with a percentage of the new one at Hinckley Point.
The same government are freezing gas prices to the end of 2022 and possibly into mid 2023, electricity is to capped at 4% price rise.
Meanwhile our current PM is sunbathing in the garden at No,10, none of the potential PMs will comment on how or what they are going to do about rising energy costs.
Thursday whinge.

How do you know what our current MP is doing, does she share her diary with you? Do you want her to walk around the town with a ‘ sandwich board ‘sstrapped on ….?
We all know what our previous Labour MP was up to, no wonder he looked drained every time I saw him walking up Elwick Road. Wonder what he’s doing now?

I said PM not MP, Johnson is still the PM, he only resigned as leader of the Tory Party.

Whoever gets to be the next PM must fix the energy industry and its structure which means fixing the pricing paid for by consumers.If not confidence in the economy will collapse and who is going to invest when you have energy fuelled inflation flattening consumer spending and creating a long term recession.
This should not be an ideological debate, it's about protecting the bedrock and driver of an economy and the easiest way of doing this is to take it into government control.

You’re right, but my Freudian slip was triggered by the other constant references to our allegedly absent MP

When they misguidedly privatised it, they should have said to one body, not this loads of competing company’s bollocks, but that said, in the interests of National security I believe power, railways and telecoms should be nationalised.

Truss or Sunak will be living in number 10 or Chequers so whoever is PM they won't be paying any fuel bills, it will be us mugs paying it in taxes etc.

Yes your list of power, railways and telecoms is what most people i know (irrespective of voting history) would like to see in public hands/control but Starmer is going cold on it. But its a vote winner

The only person in this country who has got a grip on the national emergency and offered a comprehensive plan to tackle it is Gordon Brown: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... rdon-brown

When Brown was PM and Alistair Darling was his Chancellor they acted quickly to stop the rot when Northern Rock collapsed and stabilised the banking system - admittedly at huge cost, but God only knows what would have happened if the big banks had gone under too. What Brown is proposing now is being rubbished by the right-wing press but Macron's mob have done it with EDF and they are further to the right on a lot of issues than the Tories.

Truss and Sunak are too busy knocking bits off each other to come up with anything bigger than a sticking plaster solution. As for Labour - is Starmer on holiday like Boris? Anybody remember the name of the Shadow Chancellor?

I hear a rumour that she is going to be the next Minister for Leisure & Tourism

It's Rachel Reeves and who has heard about her. She should be out there banging a git big drum.
Brown was and is a class above the current labour and tory lot. His quote about being ahead of the curve is not something you think is happening now.

MPs disappear of the face of the earth for their summer break of course some will say they do constituency work. They have every W.E. off, they return to their constituency and might hold a session for couple of hours on a Saturday.
Now Hartlepool’s MP appears to be on a permanent holiday, when was she last in town albeit it will be harvest time on her farm so could be helping bring the harvest in ?

Starmer’s going cold on the Labour Party isn’t he….he’ll be renaming it the’ Smug, but Pleasant Party’ soon, because he’s as connected to the working class as I am to the Duke of Foggy Furze.

Last in the town, well the brother in law was at a do for the British Legion on Saturday night and she was there all night.

Yes your list of power, railways and telecoms is what most people i know (irrespective of voting history) would like to see in public hands/control but Starmer is going cold on it. But its a vote winner [/quote]
would not be so bad if these companies were all british owned and not 70 per cent in the hands of foreign investors. even railway running stock seems to be built abroad instead of places like doncaster, swindon and horwich in the past.