Out-of-hours, BT, and trains

So the deal was give up £6k a year and you can stop having to deal with out-of-hours patients, gee let me think.Hey what a surprise a lot of GPs took the option and a report out today states that the only people to benefit were the GPs. What a surprise. Was this yet another move to push people towards private health care? You can't get hold of a NHS GP, why not go private and get a 24hr number to our staff instead. We'll send someone round and just add it to your monthly bill.

I've always delighted in the assumptions with a GPs surgery, I'm ill; nauseous, diarrheatic, and dizzy. Please make your way to the surgery. How?


BT want to start charging extra for people who pay with cash or cheque and not by Direct Debit; admin charges they say, people who pay this way are more likely not to pay or are late payers. No, bad doggie! Your pricing structure should have taken all that into account and thus you should be rewarding customers who pay by DD due to the lower costs. Why should we be paying because you didn't get it right in the first place?


On a final note the government is paying for an extra 1,000 train carriages to be phased in by 2014. They'll be leased to the train companies for an estimated £130m a year. I couldn't see anything about how much they'll cost to be built though.

So let's take a look at that. 1,000 carriages over 7 years at £130m a year; well no it won't be £130m a year they're not going to instantly get 1,000 new carriages by the end of the year. So we could be talking £130k per carriage per year, assume a steady creation of them and that's 142 a year for seven years

142 - £18.46m
284 - £36.92m
426 - £55.38m
568 - £73.84m
710 - £92.30m
852 - £110.76m
994 - £129.22m

So what at first appears as £910m for seven years could be only £516.88m.

That's not my true concern though. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of privatising the rail system to stop government (i.e. us the taxpayer) having to pay for it? Ah you might say they're getting money back by leasing the carriages. True if we knew how much they cost to build, but yet again it has to be asked - who's taking the risk here? Who's investing the money? It's not the companies (who are supposed to) once again it's the government.

In a true privatised system one of the franchises will start to make 1,000 carriages, use those that come out and lease the excess to other franchises. The risk is all theirs, if they produce to many and can't lease them out, they'll either be sitting in sidings de-valuing, or costing money being pulled about the area.

But it's the government making them, which just goes to prove yet again that we simply don't have a true privatised system. The government invests the cash, takes the risk, and the company (shareholders and directors) profit. Stop fannying around, either let the companies take the risk or re-nationalise the system.

Of course if we'd wanted to privatise things properly, we'd have scrapped all the franchises and awarded the national contract to one company (as per the National Lottery) and made them re-bid every few years. With failure meaning a transfer of stock to the new managing company, a company will either do everything to make it work; or bleed it dry and run away. Appoint a decent watchdog with sharp teeth and I hope we'll get the former outcome.

Oh no can't do that we wouldn't get competition <spits> If I wanted to get to Birmingham on Saturday there are apparently two different companies I could travel with; Central Trains and Chiltern Railways, First Great Western apparently doesn't. Yet if I pick any of the the three sites they all return exactly the same data, that's because they're all powered by "The Train Line" site.

Now this is fine if you need to leave at a specific time, but what if time's not to much of an issue and you just want the cheapest company? So how much would it cost? I've no idea it won't give you any prices unless you register. Fortunately BugMeNot had a login to hand.

08:06 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return
08:13 Chiltern Railways £4.90 Cheap Day return
08:36 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return
09:03 Chiltern Railways £4.90 Cheap Day return
09:16 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return
09:26 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return
09:36 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return
09:56 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return
10:06 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return
10:26 Central Trains £4.90 Cheap Day return

Wow that makes so much difference. Price has no meaning it's just a question of time. But that's the weekend, rush-hour Monday must be different surely. So to get in by 9am

07:18 Central Trains £6.50 Standard Day return
07:30 Chiltern Railways £6.50 Standard Day return
07:37 Central Trains £6.50 Standard Day return
07:53 Central Trains £6.50 Standard Day return
08:10 Chiltern Railways £6.50 Standard Day return

Remind me what the point of competition was again? Silly me the price has been reduced to its lowest point by the two companies competing against each other, that must be it...