EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Similar.

My thinking is the following:

1. any Labour majority would be small - so you're talking about an SNP/Lib coalition - which will moderate Labour. Our economy is vastly different and you no longer have a powerful politicized trade union movement.
   
2. We know for a fact that the Tories will implement Brexit and this is a decision that will outlive any of the parties as they exist now. This is the only issue (assuming that is what will sway them).
   
3. The Tories have no credibility on the economy - we can debate Labour's performance all day long, but hammer home and obtain agreement that the Tories have no credibility. Who devalued the pound? Who caused Black Monday? Who caused IndyRef and the EU Referendum? So what if other parties backed it, the point is the economy - the Tory's have no credibility. It's fine for no one to have any economic credibility, but the Tory's have none.
   
   

True.

The good old Brexit School of creating solid national infrastructure systems.

@h2o - curious to hear your thoughts on the proposals.

https://www.labour.org.uk/wp-content/upl­oads/2019/03/Bringing-Energy-Home-2019.p­df

I'm struggling to find stuff not to like, to be honest - at least on paper.

I think the implementation of the LEC structures could be quite challenging - there's a lot of specialist expertise required for that to work. Presumably the specialists would be seconded from the REAs/NEA, but if there is strong demand to set these up then I imagine they'd end up needing quite a few of them.

Edit to add - I just had a look back through the comment chain, so adding some observations.

I don't think that renationalising the power grid is going to be particularly revolutionary. Public ownership of the grid is normal across much of Europe. The proposed structure borrows some bits from the Nordic model, and some bits from the German model (where a lot of utilities are provided by municipal stadtwerke) - they're models that generally work reasonably well. I think that the focus on enabling greater renewables integration through lower costs, cheaper borrowing and greater coordination is overall pretty sensible. And it still leaves the task of developing competitive energy sources to the private sector, which IMHO is better at solving that particular problem.

I think where there may be tensions is when sections of the industry try to lobby for preferential treatment - what happens if a large local employer lobbies the local community to vote on REA budget proposals that favour the employer, but not the decarbonisation strategy?

But, I'm looking for potential flaws. Overall I think this will be perceived by the UK electorate as radical, but in a European context it's not, really.

LEC

I'm not clear on the benefit of bringing it down to such a localised level. It starts to feel a bit Nicola Murray and the 4th Sector.

There's also the NIMBY factor. AD biogas plants for e.g. are likely to get local pushback, despite being a solid solution for waste disposal.

You don't transform a country without a vision, and you don't have a vision without some degree of fanaticism.

Idealism and fanaticism are not synonyms. Some people combine them, but they're not the same thing and they don't inevitably go together.

I dunno.
Have you met Pep Guardiola?

Well, I think the model might work quite well for large tower blocks and newly-constructed housing estates, to be honest. Less well in a residential street of 19thC red brick houses.

Agreed re NIMBY factor - I was thinking about a different angle of the same thing (YIMBY, but because of a large local employer)

I don't think that renationalising the power grid is going to be particularly revolutionary.

I think the point is to restore sense rather than be revolutionary.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-50289303

"On the potential dangers of Brexit, the report says: "We have seen the commentary by many about the potential of Brexit to be the cause of a return of violence - including through an increase in paramilitary activity.

"We understand why people make that claim, but the issues surrounding paramilitarism, and why it continues to exist, long pre-date Brexit."

It adds: "The real issue about the dangers for peace in Northern Ireland, therefore, is not that Brexit itself could be the direct cause of a renewal of violence, but rather that it has the potential to add fuel to the fire of continued paramilitarism."

Note that in low income areas/near the border you have to deal with paramilitaries, people that have the cash to move out to non controlled areas frequently do. They also sell drugs, are involved in protection rackets and the lot.

Then why are they calling it #GreenIndustrialRevolution all over social media?

As I understand it, rail can just be allowed to lapse as each franchise comes up for renewal. A sensible policy would to start by only doing this with the shit ones. But you would still need a State run company to operate it.

The company is called DfT OLR Holdings Limited

Branding, the industrial revolution is a British (Manc) thing that is almost universally thought of as wonderful and the best of British ingenuity (dispite all the actual problems of pollution, slavery etc they went along with it) so saying it's like that but with all green stuff sounds a lot different than revolution sans industrial.

What if I told you...

...the NI railway/bus system is ran by a government owned company, so this system still exists in the UK and works reasonably well? (one for the people that say it can -never- work. Of course rolling back a change is different than never have made one in the first place)

one for the people that say it can -never- work

For those people - the Swiss railway is a government owned company as well...

Does the Swiss railway system also have Cantonal government ownership?

Yes. CFF/SBB/FFS is owned by the federal government and the cantons.

Edit - no it's not. @SwissChap is right - it's wholly owned by the confederation.

According to their data, no - the company is fully held by the 'Bund' or the 'Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft' (Swiss Confederacy), which is the government at federal level. By the way, there are other companies also providing rail services such as the BLS, owned over half by the Kanton Bern and over 20% by the confederacy.

(Oh, also, the SBB itself in turn owns a whole host of other companies either fully or partially, such as SBB Cargo, a catering company, and some regional railways.)

I think MGB might be fully privately owned but I'm not sure.

I was wrong.

The MGB is composed of three companies: the Matterhorn Gotthard AG (MGB) emerged from a rebranding of BVZ, the Matterhorn Gotthard infrastructure AG (MGI) is the former FO, and a new stock company Matterhorn Gotthard railway (MGM) has been established as a management umbrella. The MGB has taken over FO's operations and has turned over BVZ's infrastructure to MGI in exchange. The MGB is majority owned by the BVZ Holding AG (which also owns the Gornergratbahn AG (GGB)), whereas the MGI shares are held by the Swiss federal government and the cantons, MGM is owned by BVZ Holding and the public sector in equal shares.

I was curious and looked it up, and well, seems like you are correct, but also it's all a bit of a mess and the MGB is part of a trio of companies of which one is the infrastructure (owned entirely by government), one is the management (owned half by the government, half by BVZ Holding), and one is MGB itself (presumably the actual trains etc.? Not sure) which is mostly owned by BVZ Holding.

So... yeah, we got some complicated company structures there too.

So Gornegratbahn is the only 100% private bit of what I know as MGB.

Anyway, that's my railway nerd itch scratched for a while. As you were! :D

First round of Speaker voting underway...

In real terms, yeah, considering a normal, non-business-management human being will see management and infrastructure as part of the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn and those aren't 100% private.

The UK is the only country in the world that it’s both privatised and nationalised (we’re talking Network Rail).