From his recent posting, it is clear that Robert Goff's views on Britain's railways are informed more by Ken Loach's filmmaking than by any substantial experience of actually having to use them or pay for them. Not surprising, I suppose, given that, from his e-mail address, he appears to be based in Rhode Island, USA. 'Loach's major criticism of privatisation is that it endangered the staff and the public.' According to this years Whitaker's Almanac, railway workers don't even feature in the top twenty most hazardous occupations. According to accident statistics in this years Whitaker's Almanac, rail is the third safest form of long-distance travel, after sea and air. Deaths per 10,000 passenger journeys are quoted as follows: sea = 0.0002, air=0.0004, rail = 0.12, road = 0.77, pedestrians & cyclists = 1.1. Rail is also the most spectacularly expensive, and by a huge margin, of which more later. And as for those Staffordshire accident victims, they were found to have failed to observe three crucial health and safety precautions. However, I did recently read that a typical track engineer foreman, who typically has 5-7 years' professional experience after leaving school, earns £31k. I have professional qualifications in three separate areas, including two postgraduate degrees gained through seven years of full-time higher education. I earn 13% less than that. Unlike the railway workers, however, I'm not complaining about it (as with Loach foregoing Hollywood riches in order to have the freedom to make left-wing propaganda, I too am willing to sacrifice the chance of a big salary in exchange for job satisfaction) and do not feel it's acceptable to victimise my students and archive clients by walking out on strike whenever I have a grievance. Meanwhile, rail travel is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, to the tune of some £11 billion per annum. The two main alternatives, air and road, are heavily taxed. Yet rail is STILL substantially more expensive when you turn up at the ticket desk. A standard return from Newcastle to London costs £156. If the taxpayers' subsidies didn't exist, the true cost would be £512. The last air ticket I bought for the equivalent journey was £84, of which £32 was tax. After you factor in the cost of getting to and from airports, let's call that £100. Taking into account vehicle maintenance, depreciation, insurance and so on, I would put the cost of going by road at around £100, too. Take away the fuel taxes alone and that would come down to £40. Ergo, common sense says that like horse-drawn carriages, railways are an obsolete technology. Rail is a lot more expensive than air, but is slower and not significantly safer. So, the myth Robert Gott paints of 'expensive car owners and those who can afford to travel by air' is a Ken Loach, loony leftie, stuck in the '70s myth which has nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of transport in Britain today. Those on an average or slightly below income (I earn what is almost exactly the quoted national average, by the way) is far more likely to travel from southern England to the the north or Scotland by air than by train. That is because market forces have made air transport more efficient, safer, able to carry more passengers at a lower cost and less polluting (hydrocarbon emissions per passenger mile are now less than 5% of the 1980 figure). Oh, and incidentally, those who bang on about environmental issues should (i) consider recent research which reveals that trains are less fuel efficient than the average family car per passenger mile, and (ii) acknowledge that a five year-old child exhales more Co2 in one week than my (very inexpensive) car does in 10,000 miles. The UK currently has a population of 64 million; academic research in the areas suggests that 20 million is the long-term, ecologically sustainable figure. Suggested reading: Jack Parsons, 'Human Population Competition - A Study of the Pursuit of Power through Numbers' (Lewiston, NY, 1998). If these people (most of whom have several kids) are serious about protecting the environment, they shouldn't be taxing to death people who work hard, contribute to the economy and need efficient long-distance passenger transport in order to do so. They should be doing what China has done, i.e. introducing population control. I'm sorry if this has gone off-topic, but I think that there is a relevant point here, namely the tendency - even by academics - to accept what they see on the screen as gospel, especially if it tends to mesh with their own political and ideological sensibilities. Should I ever visit Los Angeles, I would not anticipate being blasted to smithereens by Arnold Schwarzenegger; because I recognise those images for what they are - fiction, pure and simple. Likewise, if Professor Gott were to turn up on Newcastle station tomorrow, then once he'd got over the shock of how much his ticket costs, endured lengthy delays, had to stand throughout the journey, had obscenities hurled at him after asking someone politely to switch their mobile 'phone off in the quiet carriage and suffered a wide range of other indignities, I suspect that he might question Loach's eulogising about a golden age of rail travel. Loach, I suspect, would have us travelling around in a horse and cart if it fitted his vision of a Pol Pot-style socialist utopia. Leo ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html