Breaking the fifty-first promise!

Swindon’s current Council likes to pride itself on delivering its promises. Hence it put forward its famous menu of 50 promises against which it reckoned it should be judged. Their self-image is one of an efficient and well-managed Council.

Although it wasn’t in the big 50, another promise was made by Council Leader Rod Bluh. When Bath University’s proposal to build a University campus close to the Great Western Hospital at Commonhead, was abandoned, Rod publicly committed the Council to a policy of ‘No University, No housing’ (in the area surrounding Coate Water). Let’s call this the 51st promise.

Meeting: Rebuilding union workplace organisation

Rebuilding workplace union organisation – the National Shop Stewards Network

Wednesday April 2nd 2008, 7.30 p.m.
Venue: The Broadgreen Centre, Salisbury St

The guest speaker at Swindon TUC’s April 2008 meeting is Dave Chapple Secretary of Bridgwater TUC, and President of the CWU’s big Bristol Amalgamated branch covering Royal Mail. Dave is also Chair of the National Shop Stewards Network, in which capacity he is speaking.

Buses: a public service, not a ‘business’

This is a letter in response to a debate in the Swindon Advertiser letters page. 

I don’t know whether John Forster-Heatlie has heard of climate change, but his view that bus companies which do not make a profit should be allowed to go “out of business”, would have the result of pushing more people into cars. Perhaps he doesn’t think there is a threat to the environment and society. Yet he must know that the state of Swindon’s roads is worsening, and is threatened by government imposed housing targets. He bemoans the very idea of “subsidies” but doesn’t appear to mind us all choking to death as a result of pollution, whilst the roads become ever more congested.

Historically, government’s of whatever political stripe, have always tended to differentiate between subsidy and investment; the first being viewed as bad, the second being seen as virtuous. In reality, road transport has been given massive state subsidies which the tax payer has had to pay. The railways, for instance, have to pay the full cost of their infrastructure, whereas the private motorist and transport companies have never had to pay the real cost of the infrastructure they use. That, in part, is why the railways have been unable to ‘compete’ with the car. Yet the big increase in rail passenger numbers has resulted from the terrible congestion created by increasing road transport, despite the chaos caused by privatisation of the railways.

In the case of the buses, privatisation was a disaster, precisely because the industry was transformed from a public service into a profit-oriented one. This led to a decline in services and, with the exception of London, a decline in the number of passengers. Since 1995-6 local bus journeys outside London have fallen from 2,660 million to 2,315 million. In London they have increased from 1,193 million to 1,810 million.

The increase in passenger numbers in London, taking people out of their cars, has resulted from the dreaded subsidies (£550 million out of contracts worth £1.4 billion), and of course, because driving there is a nightmare. The average road speed in London is 11 mph.

So called free-market competition has been revered like a God, at least since the days of Thatcher. ‘New Labour’ adopted this ideology, endeavouring to turn everything (even health provision) into a commodity. In real life, however, contrary to the theory competition does not lead to increased ‘efficiency’. The free-marketeers only measure efficiency by profit levels. But every economic activity, or the absence of it, has social and environmental consequences, and costs. Subsidising roads rather than buses and trains has had disastrous environmental and social consequences, and we pay the costs.

What we need is not for Thamesdown Transport to go ‘out of business’ but an improved public service; more frequent, more reliable, and cheaper buses. In order to achieve that we need an end to the de-regulation of buses. What’s the problem with subsidy for a socially useful and beneficial purpose? In order to tackle the environmental crisis we need to make a big shift from road to rail and buses.

Martin Wicks
Secretary, Swindon TUC