I was always concerned the Government were using the work to rule on GTR as a test for this. Anecdotally, off-peak on Southern, it did look like 2 trains worth of people on each train and people were managing fine with the frequency reduction - unfortunately.
Whichever way it is done, removing inefficiency essentially comes down to cutting staff, whether back office, professional or front line, and the loss of a livelihood.
There is, but I assume that even there some staff rely on the income that rest-day working gives them.
my greatest fear.
Yes, and that puts construction workers and engineers out of work.
Going a bit far I would imagine. Are you suggesting that it will ultimately shut down?
Not all of it, some suburban operations are sure to survive, along with some intercity operations that might be able prop themselves up.
Indeed, it almost feels deja vu of that era, with intransigent staff thinking their increasingly costly industry is going to be bankrolled forever. Every economy that is proposed being fought tooth and nail until management stop proposing them and just go for the armageddon reduction options. The 'basic railway' only came about when both staff and management became punch drunk with the scale of the cutbacks already introduced and realised their place was really threatened and not as essential as they thought. Rather too little and too late.
I have never understood how anyone could even think that changing drivers so often would make a saving. It stands to reason that the longer the driver is in the seat on the same train the better. Once you start swapping drivers over each driver loses at least 15 mins of productivity as they move between trains. It's clearly delusional that this would be better in any way (service resilience, cost etc etc).
We cannot have Scandinavian levels of public service if we want to pay US levels of tax. Politicians try to promise both but we have to make a choice at election time (assuming any of the parties are offering that choice).With the 2024 budget set to be announced 6th March (source), to me this sounds like the government may be gearing up to try and make a cut to taxes again by again cutting more money to public services. Perhaps this would then be followed by a Spring 2024 general election where the tories believe that a tax cut just before the next election will give them ammunition to say "we're helping people through the cost of living crisis by cutting taxes, as well as encouraging investment" and thus affecting their polls whilst quietly putting the railways under yet more stress.
Of course, what I would think of such a move, if my theory were to be correct, is far from positive
That depends on when the contracts end.
I think the DfT has burnt their bridges there.
In the year 2022-2023 rolling stock costs were 10% lower in real terms than 2020-2021. Some of this is reduction in cash terms and others from fixed leases where inflation pushes down the real term cost as the stock gets older. It's a little under a quarter of franchised operator expenditure.
