Why am I writing this blog? revisited, or 10 Things That Have Really Pissed Me Off This Week and What Should Be Done About Them

Trying to be a bit more imaginative with the blog entry titles: "10 Things..." above is an attempt at a takeoff of the Harvard Business School (HBS) style books. Hope you appreciate it! I also just changed the title of the previous entry to a direct quote from Iain M Banks' classic space opera "Consider Phlebas". It's spoken when the young, vibrant Culture civilization encounters the old, god-like, disembodied Dra'Azon. I call this a "space opera", and it is - and very entertaining too - but Banks is also concerned to present a utopian society, the Culture. Exploring such ideas is an important role for fiction, and I detect an upsurge in interest in science fiction. The last "Golden Age" is considered to have been from 1939 through the 1950s, so perhaps a revival is due. This could be a generational thing (or part of a Kondratieff wave). Alternatively, though, it could be because we are on the threshold of social changes as significant as those which swept the world after WWII.

Back to the point: why am I writing this blog? Well, it has a bit to do with my opening remarks. We are at a turning point. But not only that, the economic system which now dominates the world is starting to show its weaknesses. This system has brought tremendous affluence, first to the West (and Japan and later the "tiger economies" of the Far East) in the 20th century and now to more and more of the world - China, India and soon South America and maybe even Africa. As environmental and other problems mount, there is, in my view, a deficit of analysis, no new philosophy to take us forward. Francis Fukuyama struck a chord when he claimed that we had reached the "end of history".

So what are the problems, and how might they be addressed? Well, I'll come to the fact that we're destroying the planet later and consider some more mundane examples. So: 1o Things That Have Really Pissed Me Off This Week:

1. Wagn, a rail company owned by National Express. I'm in Cambridge, UK, which is about 50 miles north of London, so there is a relatively short rail journey between these two key areas of the new UK economy. This Wednesday I went to London for the afternoon & evening, cost £13.85 with a railcard (£25, but I'm a frequent traveller), that's about US$20, if you are outside the UK (can you believe that?). The train on the way to London was delayed by over 1/2 hr - - signal problems etc. etc. - which meant I had to drop part of the point of the trip. And on the way back, there's no train for part of the way. Now this was scheduled train working, which I should have known about before reaching London (or even leaving home) - it wasn't just me, though, no-one else knew. Wagn put up pitifully inadequate notices at King's Cross and Cambridge and made no other attempt to let customers know about the delay. No message on the ticket-machine in the afternoon, no announcement on the platform or the train, no word from the guard on the train, no leaflets on arrival at King's Cross, etc. etc. Suffice to say I arrived back at 00:15 on Thursday instead of 23:11 on Wednesday evening.

Do I get any compensation for what really was a major event in my week? No. Wagn have no incentive either to avoid disrupting journeys or to communicate properly to their customers. Their overriding objective is to maximise their revenues. OK, everyone knows the privatisation of the UK railways was a screw-up, but 10 years later we seem no closer to a workable model. I happen to think there are major advantages in private operation of services such as the railways, but only if an overriding authority ensures that such operation is in the interest of the consumer. This can only be done by:
(a) Ensuring there is effective competition and (or at the very least) or,
(b) Ensuring that operators do not transfer costs to the customers (or other party). Wagn does this in many ways, not just in charging let's just say a full rate, for tickets, whether or not it provides the promised service, and I'll note a few others another time.

2. The RMT union: flashback to Wednesday again, and I'm trying to get to King's Cross after watching England vs Poland in the pub. But the underground system in London is run more in the interests of the staff, who use THEIR monopoly power on many occasions. The passenger, for whose needs the underground system supposedly exists comes behind their interests and of course those of the companies running the network. Anyway, on Wednesday the RMT decided to use their power to stop the Northern Line - without any sort of warning. They claimed this was necessary because of a problem with a safety system on the trains. There was, and most people blame the Underground management for the problem, (hmm, actually it's more complicated - see this Times article, but this blog and the Evening Standard - print edition - blame management) but the problem had been known about for some time and was not severe. Well, I don't know the full ins and outs of this, but what I do know is that there are people whose job it is to rule as to whether it is safe to run the system. It is up to these people to decide whether or not it is worth inconveniencing tens of thousands of passengers, not a handful of drivers.

OK, let's pause here. I happen to think that the future prosperity of the south-east of England and many other areas depends on having an effective public transport system. It's very simple: mass-transit systems are energy-efficient and the cost of energy is just going to carry on going up. It's simple supply and demand economics: the supply of our current fuels is peaking and alternatives are not going to come on stream fast enough. China and India are increasing demand and are very big. Businesses in the future are going to preferentially locate themselves where transport costs are lowest - for themselves and for their employees, whose salaries they have to pay.

On top of that, this area, like other parts of the world, is becoming ever more densely populated, because this is economically efficient (maybe I'll develop this point another time). And road transport just doesn't scale very well. It's fine for certain parts of the journey, but bringing cars the last mile or so from the main road to the front door of your house, your office, or a busy shopping area is just not efficient when thousands of other people are trying to do the same thing.

And, if we're going to have an efficient transport system, it has to be run in the interests of the passengers, not companies providing the service or employees who, when unionised - in what is effectively a monopoly - have great power.

So a large part of my reason for writing this blog is to explore how we can deal with problems such as these. And remember we're only on 2 out of 10. I'll discuss a few more problems with living at the "end of history" later and we'll see what patterns emerge...