341–350 of 383 posts
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I'm fairly certain that the claim you're replying to is that private hospitals in the countries in question are consistently better than public ones.
If that was the claim, then why consider African hospitals instead of any hospital?
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You can pay a £20 premium each way to up that to about 100mph average. Competition and choice is great.
Quality services and products are great, choice for the sake of choice has no value. Otherwise we would bring back bloodletting, leeches and snakeoil salesmen to get more choice in cancer treatment.
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https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html > the next time someone says (or you read) "Britain has the highest rail fares in Europe", you'll know this is only 15% of the story. The other 85% is that we have similar or even cheaper fares, too. The big picture is that Britain has the most commercially aggressive fares in Europe, with the highest fares designed to get maximum revenue from business trav…
I'm sorry but this article is bullshit. Go and actually check the train prices (because I did) now. Book Sheffield to London 1 month in advance, comes out to £70 odd return (nearly 4x more than article states) with a first class upgrade for an extra £70....Paris to Leon 1 month in advance? £20 odd return with another £20 first class. Idk if something has changed but you can't quote this article anymore. Train prices…
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They did privitise the risk too. After the failure of the east coast franchise recently, the government bailled out virgin, but that's not the fault of the system. If I want to travel from Birmingham to London I have a choice of 3 different train companies, as well as a coach company and driving (either hiring a car with or without driver, or using my own car). That's tons of competition, and it shows given the choic…
out of all those options, it may even be cheaper to fly
The flexible season tickets are welcome. However, missing from this news report is any mention of making the cost of rail travel more affordable for the public. The report quotes the former boss of British Airways about " greater flexibility in the way that fares are operated in the future " What does this mean? Can we expect less expensive tickets? The UK already has some of the most expensive rail tickets in Europe…
A possible flexible solution is to have the option of buying bulk tickets for a discount and using them whenever you want.
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As someone coming from a country (Italy) with nationalised railway I always found the trains in the UK to be pretty great. Sure, you have a few delays but it's eons better than what I had in my country. I never understood why people were complaining about trains in the UK. Italy added a private offering some time ago, which I personally never tried, but my friends back home always praise them for working - unlike Tre…
The trains in the UK seem ok in terms of the number of services and reliability, but they're so expensive. It's almost always cheaper to fly or rent a car than it is to use the train for anything approaching long distance.
EDIT: Also I wouldn't call UK trains reliable. I see a lot of stations having a fleet of coaches ready or sometimes in use because the trains are out of service. That's very poor.
There must be a better way to set up incentives. Eg. Company is chosen - they get a temporary monopoly on a route, for free instead of having to pitch a ridiculous low ball But... Every time a train is late, they pay £100,000 Every time a train is cancelled they pay £1,000,000 They pay £10 for every passenger complaint. Etc etc