It’s so simple to me, to improve public services you either borrow billions (and get future generations to pay the debt) or you increase taxes for those alive today. I know what I would do.
Me too - just send every household a bill for 800€ to wipe out the SNCF debt and start again with a real world business model. Then we’ll see how popular socialist principles really are…
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Or you improve efficiency.
The problem is that the two things you suggest are easy and the one that I suggest hard(er) - you can tell which ones the politicians go for until the whole thing becomes a bigger liability than can be ignored.
That said, after decades of public ownership, with no incentive to cut back dead wood, I would be surprised if there aren’t relatively easy efficiency savings to be made, but it will affect jobs.
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Let me challenge you about yours, Simon. Why under the capitalist dream do hundreds of thousands of young people have no prospects of a home of their own, and no capability of saving for a liveable future? Why are foreign billionaires in London allowed and even encouraged to buy up properties at grossly inflated prices in order to launder criminal funds?
Why are plans being drawn up with the USA to allow private investment funds to take stakes in our public services, strip their assets, and turn the NHS into a cash cow, as it plundered the services for elderly people, the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped for quick profit: all the latter are now collapsed and in a disgraceful state of neglect.
I have seen this from the inside, Simon, over the last 30 years.
Properly and ethically run governments do exist, and plan for their citizen’s future through adequate and forward looking education and training programmes leading to worthwhile work Germany, France and the Scandinavian nations are exemplars. So is China.
The UK government is sclerotic, class-ridden and imperialistic in its outlook, its economy based largely on exploitative overseas adventures and generating wars abroad.
Without malign outside interference, a planned economy based on socialist principles does not promise utopia, and is achievable, I believe. It will and should perhaps should be different from the current unsustainable consumerist one, but there is growing evidence that young people both want and see the need for radical change. If you can’t entertain that possibility, I think you may be out of touch yourself.
Socialism only works when other people are paying for it, they do not like to pay for it themselfs.
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No way Peter - I asked first but frankly I’m bored of repeating myself. You patently don’t have any answers. Maybe we’ll just stick with - Abracadabra 
However, as this discussion is about France - I will indulge you (a bit). To hold France up as an ‘exemplar’ (your word) is frankly barking. Not matter what the positive spin may be on the state of the nation - it’s national debt is currently running at about 97% of GDP and it has more millionaires than any other country in Europe - so obviously Robin, the socialist model doesn’t work here! France currently has one of the highest national debt levels of any of the world’s nations.
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France is in a hole, it’s president was elected on a platform of change so he has to deliver, reducing the power of the unions, privatisation, cutting social security costs are all part of his plans, they will be unpopular to some but seen as overdue by the silent majority.
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Good point Tim and I often wonder why that is. Intimidation, bullying maybe - or just not keen on bucking an extremely long trend?
cool that you own your own company. What sort of loco’s do you hire out? got any pics of some of the older ones.
Harry look at the Somerset and Dorset Locomotive Company Ltd on Facebook, it is a closed site but you will get a pic of my English Electric class 20 locomotives, one of the locos D8188 was used in the Bond film GoldenEye when they dressed it up as a Russian engine and blew it up well a model of it was.
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I’ve spent a lifetime helping to build and improve the welfare state and paid into it too, although I have fortunately never had to use its services myself. Nothing I’ve paid into it do I begrudge to those who needed it, many of them would never have been able to pay for it if it were a marketable product available only to the well off.
Well done Peter but I think that you are in the minority.
I think that’s fantastic too, Michael. Like many of my generation I was an avid trainspotter (only LMS locomotives you may be disappointed to learn - and don’t anybody else groan and say “Now we’ve heard it all about Peter Goble…”)
Hats off to you and your enterprise!
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Born and bred near the best trainspotting place for ex LMS engines, Tamworth and I spent many years of my childhood in the fields by the Station, oh happy days.
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Oh joy, double level station, me too.
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that is so cool.
only found this group?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/somersetanddorsetrailway/about/
Harry, Yes that is the S & D railway co ltd, mine is the S & D Locomotive co ltd. sold them a steam locomotive many years ago.
How do I pass a link to you?
just write web address on here
my son is loco mad.