What a joy it is to travel on trains in Germany, where services are fast, efficient and always seem to arrive on time. Why can’t we have Deutsche Bahn running our own trains, rather than those imbeciles at Northern Rail, whose slovenly late-running services using rattling old rolling stock from the 1980s were so bad that its services are to be nationalised from 1 March?
Oh, but hang a minute. Deutsche Bahn already is running those trains. Northern Rail’s parent company, Arriva, is a subsidiary of the German state railway company. In which case the question becomes: why can a company that seems to manage to run rail services in Germany make such a hash of running rail services in and around Leeds and Manchester? That is a question, perhaps, that could occupy an entire conference, but I’ll make just a few pointers here.
Firstly, Deutsche Bahn, when operating trains in its homeland, doesn’t have to contend with Mick Cash and his RMT union.
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