brought to contact us now course that everybody shared positive views in relation to the future of catalonia and indeed scotland in the european union pollie says catalonia is testament to the vicious thuggery of the e.u. at absolute truth scotland will never be given membership spain is an easy member if it had broken the fundamental principles of the e.u. presumably that he would have said so and finally joel says enjoy your guests in catalonia be interesting to hear their opinions my feelings are running high in the ongoing vo to beat his a selection of reaction outside euston station but a representative sample of course but is still much suppose i mean certainly if one has a child support here. you can get very good value but it doesn't really seem like he would choose to run a patrol. leader it's infrastructure i know it really should be can it be to collectively should you have to release the prices if you know the.

chairperson who gave that quicksilver to their party to face but really travelling europe and see this way for a longer distance the cherry tree the trees are quite quite bad with the good the economy the country that's what we need to do and not the north of course you haven't got that many critical for them at the moment but for you especially reject killers that expensive people travel around the country. almost on the last play in a lot of places it's two trains a lot more you know. yes we don't have to have to run money just to try to get these trains in books should. only choose the price she's going with all the time i think it needs to go to generate more the other thing probably has a crucial ways it's probably seen by some people as being the main way to go and knows a lot of talk from the labor party about trying to get back to. home by the country show at the moment i think the. the reliable virgin trains accident because

everybody tend to be pretty consistently good coffee taste but it has not anymore. pricey reasonable it's not the cheapest service but only takes two hours and fifty minutes to get from you since piccadilly but i'm no delighted to be joined by steve hadley the assistant general say the largest real union that mt welcome to the excitement sure steve thank you for inviting me. and comment it should be said before other really unions have been campaigning hard for retirement public ownership but many people or some people who say little privatization resulted in lots more people using the real is not a contradiction well not really i think that the group from population has acquainted largely for the people using the railways and just the price of petrol and our forms of transport has made railways really quite economical to use up and told lately but i think that the main reason behind the our quest the renationalise

the railway is the government's own figures show that a privatized system is over three times more expensive they run than a national a system because some of these really companies are actually public we wouldn't companies in the countries are more like a bill you was probably on the balance of the any better these privatizing polluters as you call it well at the end of the day we have got we have got national israel ways in britain this just not british national israel ways and that's one of their great sort of contradictions if you're right that every country in europe can seem to make a profit out of british railways but the british government says that i can't. be looking at the information of the real we deliver the group which is that it can sort or to it which promotes the interests of the the various companies who are in the real ways and they argue if you compare the lake and look across europe then as they put it the model shift towards the u.k. is greater than any other country in the whole. continent of europe towards the

view is well i mean that's probably correct because there's a thing coming in next year called the fourth railway pope and basically what that tremendous piece of legislation that's taken the worst system in the entire europe the most customer dissatisfaction the most expensive system. on average five times higher prices and more paid people pay in a continent and that's open that open right across europe there's going to be a compulsory competitive tendering for every franchise in europe and what that support does what it was a point in britain it's markets that were previously closed off the private capital because they were nationalized been opened up they privateers that want to make a profit out of the steve had ticket can you looted their empty loot across europe and say there's a country which knows how to run it really is a jam we do a great job as france to create jobs is the example of the sort a real way you'd like to see run in the modern age well to be honest i think that any national railway and europe is doing better than britain i mean that's the

starting point i mean we don't want a return to the old valleys of british rail where we had a top dollar in management structure i can a feudal system if you like what we want there's a an industry that takes shareholders and stakeholders in the industry like the trade unions like a passenger groups like democratically elected local authorities and we want a plan and infrastructure and plan investment along those lines but if we but to the days of british rail you described as a feudal stops of no. astonishingly people still remember of the beaching cuts in quite a bit i don't think was another example of. a government initiative to chop a benefit of the real way which is still remembered to this day but still it's still in people's lips the beaching cuts of that happened under the publicly owned system how could you go until the same sort of chopping wouldn't have. that again

will lay the guarantee for that is that we have strong trade union and unions and a decent labor party i mean i think beijing was an apt absolutely massive phone call in the long term a lot of rains are been be opened i think the environmental damage that the pitching coach have done probably at the be assessed so i think that we're looking forwards with think we need a democratically controlled railway system is properly invested and that's cheap i mean when people are paying five times less on a continent people in this country are getting really ripped off for a terrible service and of course some of the biggest places other than the london commuting ones i mean did you think when you came in to trade union politics you'd be standing shoulder to shoulder with some of these bull hearted commuters coming into the city of london lived in london for thirty years. and the seven says have never been fantastic but the level of overcrowding now is something else and that again that boils down to lack of investment because they technology is

there not that you could grow more trains but they decision has been taken because these franchises are awarded every five or six years maybe get it years or from there's no really in the real incentive for private companies they invest long term and isn't that congestion on the trains and making commuters lives easier what they want to do is get on make a quick buck and get back out again have you got a structure in mind for a public we would really hope we avoid the the british rail futile structure as you called how could you see that a new structure for a new publicly owned really well thank george mcdonnell and the labor party is as actually forwarded a blueprint for that and what he's talking appoint is a democratically controlled railway you would have consumer groups you would have for example in transport or tear fell as another called you would have trade unions and that put it up already there but jointly control and the democratic way the railway system operated and. investment took place and can you point to

a like to like comparison from the last few years which indicates that perhaps a publicly owned real b. runs better than a privately operated one well absolutely if you look at these coast main line which is now in that l n e r the only time that that actually delivered a profit was when it was in the public sector for nearly two years and put millions back and there was treasury and then likely it was privately run then publicly run no privately run again and no publicly run again yes and they'd and the private firms actually had to back at least three times in total because they bought into the contract as loaded at the start of the contract they make greater profits and as a contract was on the subsidies decrease that they get from the government so what they do they they want for the first few years they cream off all the profit and then they hand back the case so if you look at the structure of a new public system which would have the benefit of of having an integrated

structure one would be an argument for having an integrated trade union representation of in your the largest of the real workers' union by some distance but it will be an argument for having a single union operating for real we workers so's we didn't have disputes among unions as well as disputes between units of management and the absolute they were an industrial union were not for about a privilege for the higher pay grades or about a privilege for people who were awake already work we organize right across the railway industry and would encourage everybody to join ianthe. but with a vote for your union can i thank you for the good now it's time to show and i don't know if there's going to be a single really workers' union steve but i know we're going to present you with the exam and quickly you know the drill a little of the way to your next visit to the school real. quick and then toast to your fellow workers ok thank you very much it's lovely. great pleasure steve thank

you for coming up after the break i speak the story of michael fry a man who has made a particular study of the east coast lying to scotland which is fear but i can forward between the private and the public sector. what politicians do something. they put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or somehow want to. have to go right to be close this is like the before tree in the morning can't be

good. i'm interested always in the waters of. the city may. seem wrong or well just don't call. me. just to say proud just to get educated and gain from it because the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. that i would add that on other hand i doubt that though that. a lot of the money out of the money there was that actually. this was

a good time to. try to move the right. was that if not why not jam there again why it generated the ball people we believe will be here. but what i can say about the bible so jolly well they are of the moment of mother having a little accuser is a little out of the way could not be old enough to want to the people i don't want to put out they are the most hardy without all the mother brother. welcome back now not everybody is in favor of renationalisation transport sixty crisscrossing things that's a very bad idea this is what he has to see in the house of commons. mr speaker i

know i'm going to hear a lot today about nationalizing everything it is of course remember worth remembering we've heard today that the cost of a national as noble as companies would cost ninety billion pounds we've heard nothing about the cost of the nationalizing the railways not just losing the private investment for you always new trains but actually the billions of pounds on bringing those trains back on to the public books so we remain committed to success of a private railway and i to get some further perspective alex is joined by historian and political commentator michael fry michael welcome to the alex salmond show good to be here alex. let's start on the score slight because that is a real way which was a private hands then public hands then private hands public hands private hands and no back in public hands the sat give us an insight into how best to run a railway i have to say that whoever hands it's been in that particular line has

never made much of a profit and it's in fact it's often made the last simply because there's not that much commercial and industrial traffic up the east coast of great britain the only real a really profitable long distance line in britain is there is a line between london and glasgow simply because glasgow and clyde side in general was a producer of heavy goods of steel and ship and so on and they these are these kinds of activities attracted a lot of railway traffic and must have been true of these coastline but in recent years the east coast line seems to have been a success when it was in public hands then they went back into the pilots had the most been handed back to the public sector is that an insight there they even are a difficult line to run maybe better than the public said. well of course since privatisation in the in one nine hundred ninety there has been a tremendous increase in traffic on that line the only trouble is it hasn't produced profits for the railway companies involved. this is because i mean the

railways are a means of long distance mass travel and so the prices really have to be kept low. otherwise people won't travel on them on the other hand prices really have to be high in order to finance the investment for new technologies and various other improvements on the railways to keep those those rail railways running you know according to the latest the best standards available so we've had the paradox of an increase in traffic amid deteriorate or you're quite poor. service and not earning enough for reinvestment are you saying that when it comes to real ways it's much easier to make money in short hole that is a long haul one i think that's absolutely true of the you know the long haul. railways which seem to work on the high speed rail ways as we see them in europe

you know from going from germany through the channel ports or eastwood's to to warsaw in prague is an absolute pleasure. you have the high speeds high level of service and these railways are doing well but you're british quite a small country so it's in in terms of area so it's quite hard to find effective long term or long distance railway stretches which will make profit i mean i think probably london's a glasgow would be a good one to try but unfortunately you know the british government's in their wisdom i'm not trying to read so they're trying only from london suburban which is bound to be a disaster but they're going to get to glasgow sometime in the next century of a month or so they tell us but that's here i am and i'm not sure railways are going to going to last that long because you just interest in one thing before we go into the future of the way it's. been you know a well known privateer you know. by by the inclination to go on the right of center

you believe in privatizing folks never think so and you're in favor of privatizing always well you know i'm also being a right wing i'm also a pragmatist i'm not a dogmatists like many of the left so indeed i was in favor of all the privatizations of the thatcher era and of course some of them you know telecoms ability huge success but railways have been a failure you know absolute privatisation really has been a complete disaster from beginning to end so what is about the railways that make it so difficult to run in the private sector well but as i say because you. not general generate the revenue in order to keep up with technological improvements as you obviously can in telecoms i mean that's what you know in the old days use used to have to apply to the government for a telephone now you can just walk into a shop and buy the latest and you could get any color as long i was glad. but really i don't like that i'm railways are essentially victorian technology i mean

they're on a par with the hot air balloon or the penny farthing bicycle that sort of the government's investing in perhaps fifty billion perhaps a lot more in this high speed rail that's a good take some table use saying that investing all of the capital in the technology which is essentially did well while yes there's there the technology is outdated i think in the twenty first century railways will die and be replaced by new forms of transport so how can you possibly say that when there's been a whole almost a doubling of passenger numbers in the in the last there and the service is woeful i mean there you know if you if you go even on some long distance services you have to stand away this is not so i think in the long run a standalone service which people are going to accept but we can't say when to wait for the newest star trek transporter to take us to me to be in the meantime surely well fast real comfortable real is the best option but who's going to pay for it i

mean there's no money to you can invest you know several several billions of pounds in a high speed service as the government would like to do from london's burning them there's no guarantee this is going to produce ninety percent of this so in the relatively short term before other means of your smart cars or whatever smart electric cars it up to be for the environment come into being how would you think the best thing could be done to run the real we right now there is no solution to this problem as i say it's a legacy of the nineteenth century i do not believe there is. anny way of running british rail is at least in and efficient and profitable way with a guarantee of comfort for all passengers i don't believe this this concept is capable of realisation therefore we just have to drag along until the whole

environment is changed by new means of transport with good of a speed to develop the fifty billion pound plus going into this fast real from london to bubble and perhaps elsewhere to making the couple services more efficient we're comfortable spacious with modern communications like wife lie and chill for a child's life would be a fine thing chance of our in that scenario or what we're told that the railway at its best will provide us but it's still a very patchy performance and on the whole i would say the rail services in this country are still poor as anyone who's to travel only form it was we will be able to tell you what michael fry you give us some trenchant views going back through history looking and some somewhat alarming future predictions we regret the demise of the of the real it was a big mistake the other night male crossing the border that sort of stuff one of the yes i used to love riding on the railways before they were ever privatized at

least in first class they they provided an absolutely excellent service with smooth clean linen and there are a silver cutlery and you could sit and have your or have your morning bacon and eggs while the sun rose over the north sea and it was an absolutely delightful experience one of my was decisions of fuss mr scott was to order of the new sleeper kalitan which had just being about to be introduced at the present moment though could that recapture one aspect because the sleeper service from london to scotland the skull to london used to be illinois. promise they you went up to play golf or in northern days for the shooting will be less in the old days i usually. a nice thing that would make that aspect of travel with a proper cabin from sweet facilities the less could that mean a revival in the sleeper service yes i think so because that was a huge convenience also for people who are from scotland who had to do business in

london and there's as you got as to send you off to sleep in edinburgh or glasgow you could order a dram or two from the carriage attendant. and then you would drop gently through the months and wait refresh to in london so it is that level of service that are freed privatization no paradox likely killed privatisation was supposed to produce improvements in service and they did precisely the opposite michael the e.u. say the railways are a thing of the past but look at the opening the borders lou railway and in the long stretch a lane which i think carries the over a million passengers sure that it's been an outstanding success yes i'm not sure how much money it makes or. a new news for the bottle as good news for the world as the brothers people are very happy although when they start getting new housing estates and lots of commuter traffic i'm not sure they're going to be remain so happy but and you know that line has particular drawbacks it doesn't go all the way through the strict cio of the it doesn't go from one side of the borders to the

other it's all your single track it could be make money as let's said scenic railway because it's an hour of doma from the law to station a scone waverley station in edinburgh many of the see that real with the world to shoot well aware you have to travel for long distances to get there and but yes surely that could be the making money if yesterday and it is a scenic route because the rail itself runs on a higher level and that kind of tree top level so if you've been used to driving down that road the trees obscure of thing but no the vistas open up so it's actually a very fine line of all in favor of it for them might be a future for the railways after all. if it is yes but you have to take each project seriously i mean there also been drug double tracked on that line and it also gone all the way from edwards a carlisle official hesitation you know the civil servant saying oh have you thought of this minister have you thought of that minister you know cautious pussyfooting investment is not the way to go and i have to ask you michael your

best an admirable conducting listen to your london how did you get down to london for the interviews were you in a plane are we on real i was on the railway yes but this is because i'm a bit of a railway buff and i will always travel by railway unless it's absolutely unavoidable well listen i surely got you here i can see that i'm sure they'll get you back and in the meantime so you can celebrate and comfort your journey collectors that you with them examine quick i don't have to tell you that little bit as you know only scotch absolutely and of course they do. own the rivers of the moment they do serve scotch though i must say of a rather inferior blend well i expect you to pass that on your fellow passenger hospital he won't go very far out. there what michael thank you alex. what a way to run a real with and next week we turn to another hot issue fast rail or chess two is that the future of rail is an old solution to twenty first century problems the

done that before it's even built we speak to the people and the community is at the sharp end of fast rail union or your lady wife running at how long i was in there are only what did it mean to you when we boarded it was called the valley gardens and my wife and i sadly lost one of our twins named bree louise back in two thousand and three so we asked camden licensing if we could change the name of it and for free they granted is that permission and it's been the bring louise ever since it was more than just a business there's a huge emotional attachment you had in these premises are and it was our house and i own for this thing is as well so the book can accumulate it was called the street are unbelievable honestly. so what are we living today about the real was first the proponents of the present twin track system and there's an ever diminishing band that is public ownership of infrastructure private operation of the trains they say with some merit rail traffic is increasing faster than any other country in the world safety has improved and under the old british railways board the specter of

dr beecham stop the land that was a long time ago another that is no problem getting people to use the trains the problem is squeezing them all into the trades the momentum for an integrated public ownership model is no very strong but whatever happens is it too much to expect in twenty first century britain we can work a system of how to make the trains run on time with seats for all the passengers. i know from time to me i know like simon chill it's goodbye for now.

became camera. roughly once they showed some new sleeve for the. future uncool videos and some with the broken eastern. down more on string i don't rightly don't t.v. it was you know provision on my back when i wanted to. ask but i. get. there so you know i lost his boss because. resources you know. any of those it doesn't but the better honest i don't meant that there's been a. so i says you know what i was you know. you know just i mean what

it i'm already but it was sped up out of me just a lot of the medium even. if it up as well i must admit that really feels i just don't get off on getting the rest but those were the all of. those people are going to respect i'm one of those but i was just this for this part of this. my family fussy about what you just but that already has a question he thought of getting up there calling your simplemente my thought aloud but let me just quote. a parting of ways european leaders talk of a future without the u.s. what is in store for the transatlantic alliance and much much more on this issue of trust. and leave. it with. evil as

a levels from somewhere you. came back to the community and people we are based on and on the road. me all you got is all bible. that's. right. she's going to. use your money doesn't that give us all that. we don't. know we're going to this. but also touching me in my life. i see him on have to.

be. capable of producing chemical weapons in syria as the u.n. envoy gives a warning about extremists in the country but russia's fear of a false flag attack is brushed aside in washington. another foldes flag attack is being prepared to try and hinder the anti terror operation innately i mean is this enough for when you try to put the blame they try to put the onus on other groups and we don't buy into that. france's president stirs outrage among the country's opposition figures after a manual wrong calls in his own citizens french goals for resisting economic reform . with ted.