The Netherlands rail incumbent, NS, has been fined Euro 40m by the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) for abuse of dominant position in the regional tendering process. ACM found that NS has submitted a lossmaking bid in order to shut out competition on the regional tendering process. The other bidders were not able to compete on the same basis as Abellio, who won contracts. NS is also accused to have obstructed the access to service facilities at train stations for its competitors (slow answers, incomplete information provided). That is why we particularly support the European Commission’s implementing act on service facilities: it will provide more transparency in the rail facility market and oblige service facilities owned by the incumbent to be more open. Link to the decision is here: https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/publication/17397/Dutch-Railways-NS-abused-its-dominant-position-in-regional-tender-process/
Germany has been condemned by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for failing to separate financial accounts within DB AG, between infrastructure activities and trains operations. The lack of separation in the financial accounts creates a significant risk that money for infrastructures, including track access charges and public funds, can be used to cross-subsidise the holding’s passenger and freight operations. This results in significant competitive distortions for other rail companies. The ECJ sent a strong signal in favour of separation of holding structures.
You say “Poor old taxpayers”
Does that mean our British taxes
(which we are automaticly paying e.g. through VATs on almost every-thing -)
are being “donated” by Britain, or “raided” by Europeans,
to fund Netherlands, Germany and other European
“rail-problems and other shortcomings” ?
———-
What will be the financial “balance” and “cost-to-Britain”
of such individually-capitalistic monopolistic over-consumptions and wastages” – when nationally and internationally trying to agree and implement a Longest-Term Survival Strategy ??
100 bn bill from the EU for leaving to pay its debts. No need to pay that when we leave.
If we remained, we’re on the hook. 1000 bn total as the EU debt mountain.
How many nurses would have to be sacked to pay for that if we had remained.
@ Blagger
Your comment sounds correct to me. And to back it up, it appears the Lords agree with this belief. Here is a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTPbxyDCL0A
If we have to continue this Brexit negotiation with our government acting like simpletons who you can see coming a mile away, then the tax payer is going to be fleeced for a lifetime by the little Hun piglets. The vastly overweight shadow front bench are mindless yes men, who sound, when speaking, as if they have eaten too much infected beef. So no hope there. Somehow, our men appear unable to land on planet earth when it comes to telling the EU to go and dance to Jack’s pipes. No business would be able to function or flourish with this lot taking a leading role.
No wonder they could only get jobs in Parliament. They couldn’t make it as players in the real world.
“Maybe” this rapidly worsening British Commonwealth-of-Nations
versus
“The Rest-of-Europe”
governancial-financial-and-lifesupports “carbuncle”
is but a but a further symptom of the much huger “evil-network” of the
World Carbuncle-Conflict
which is swallowing Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea
(and it looks threateningly as if soon not only the USA and China but Russia, India and all nations-of-people down to London, England, Scotland, Northern-Ireland – and cirrhosis-like-randomly “individual”- cities and smaller neighbourhoods will become engulfed too)
conflicts without a hope of “No-Lose Cooperative Resolution” –
proliferating into both open surface blood-spillings
and insidiously-parasitic undercurrents, terrorisims, mafias, other criminal-gangs,
and literally ‘endless’ conflicting-‘true’-religions,
all now literally “suppurating” into bloody international and civil wars,
and onto the “leading-democracies’ developed-world protest-marching-streets
over water-to-drink, food-to-eat, clothes-to-wear,
shelters-to-hide-from-the-weather-and-predators-in,
safe-workplaces,
and right-knowledge, know-how educational, and social-intersupport-services,
and –
(the ‘nub’ Blagger points to as well as does Lord Berkeley)-
financial-(in)accuracies
and-therein-lifesupports-distribution
managements, judiciaries, governances, and “private”-ownerships
are beyond our control.
—————–
Facts:
Fact 1. One-human-being needs just one-human-living
(maybe that is ~£300 per week in Britain ?)
so the “better” you are on the rat-race dog-eats-dog “social-mobility-ladder” the more money (“pay”) you are both given and can “acquire” –
which “reciprocally” in turn makes you both more and more deluded
(that you are more than one-human-being:
[e.g. the psychiatrist believes s/he is ten-human-beings “needing” c£3000 per week ‘take-home-pay’] – multi-deluded.
Fact 2. All of the “developed” nations are consuming and also blatantly-wasting many more times their fair-shares of the Earth’s resources than the Human-Being both Naturally and Civilisationally “needs”:
in our British case we each are doing-away with 5 (five) times more than we need;
and our “big-brother ally” USA is “wasting” more than 9-times their fair-share.
[see the David Attenborough hosted science report “How Many People Can Live On Planet Earth” (possibly only via Eden TV ?)].
Fact 3. Spain actually has established a “Holistic Health Building Service”! as well as an Illnesses & Hospitals Medical sector –
Britain has no such successfully-separate Holistic Health-building service,
only the huge
originally wrongly-worded but greatly-successful “National Health Service”
a de-facto medical-sector, not “normal-health-building” –
but now rapidly failing –
failing in both its own Workplaces
and in and towards our surrounding greater Lifeplaces.
—————–
Fact 4: And now this “rail-travel” joins the endless traffic-jams of “private-and-professional” cars
on the whole World’s roads – not just on our increasing potholes here in Britain –
all trying either to get to and from “work” on time 24/7/52 –
or go shopping, ‘taking-the-kids-to-school’,
and go on a “well-earned” holiday and on day-trippings.
————
Fact 5: And we are still having to vote for governments
and thereby for bloated civil-services “experts”
Fact 6: all grossly-overpaid and under-performing –
Fact 7: because we –
(too)
“need more” ?
=== it is 2am in the middle of the night twixt Tuesday and Wednesday === === and ‘You-All’ are snugly democraticly sleeping in bed ===
=== whilst the ‘likes’ of permanently-disabled and low-incomed “me” ===
=== are having to sit up and search ===
=== for some way to find and dialogue with just a few honest-people ===
– and a ramification might be the UK short-term-strategic £100 billion
new railroad project of HS2
now going beyond Birmingham as far as Glasgow,
which could be a disastrous ecolonomic and human-developmental mistake, even short-term of up to 100 years –
(see my critically strategic-sketch in not-for-profit, power nor prestige http://lifefresh.net )
Nonetheless, welcome to the 12th Baron Vaux of Harrowden (you can read all about the title here). He won a landslide with 16 out of the 27 votes.
==============
More dictatorship at the heart of the UK.
Ignored of course by the Lords.
Just tell the plebs what to do whilst they cream the cash.
Same as HS2. Get back to the country seat 5 mins early, and the plebs have to pay
I “see” the underlying and overarching human-civilisational Challenge to be
prioritising every-one; every-thing; every-infrastructure and logistic; every-constitution, law and practice;
and the Earth’s Lifesupports themselves –
according to their longest-term Necessity, Sufficiency, and Affordability;
in terms of their
1. “Sustain-worthy-ness”.
2. “Sustainability”.
———————–
All civilisation infrastructure, currently especially the HS2 railway and train(s),
needs to be re-evaluated in such longest-term priorities: each needs to be “worthy-of-sustainment” and “materially-sustainable”.
That I “see” to be
“The New Longest-Term Strategic & Immediate Emergency Bottom-Line”.