Probably realistic unfortunately ☹️

That’s a fair point.

If you were single and earning an MPs salary it could be a bit of a no brainer - could you get a other equally or better paying job within a few months? Considering you have been a politician for the last 5 years not an SME in whatever field?

If you had a family on that salary, unsure. If you agreed it with your other half as a planned move, maybe?

Think of it as a safety net, if you lose the election you lose your job… But the winnings of that bet would then help you out.

If you win, you keep your reasonable lucrative job, no problem.

It’s probably a single dev that made the decision, then moves onto something else. They (probably?) don’t have the ability to just raise a recurring PO etc to easily pay you and don’t care enough to worth through the paperwork.

If you had a paid licencing model they may have done it, or just found another lib/ wrote their own.

ty!

Don’t the MRLP have quite a good track record of their policies actually being implemented 30 years or so after they first joked about them?

I will look some up later…

Probably too long for the online forms everything use nowadays. Before you just had to write ~real small~ on the paper form.

I agree that the coalition was probably better than a full conservative government, they both had to get rid of their stupid/extreme policies.

Still stuck me with 10s of thousands more student loan though… I’m over that now… Mostly.

Students in particular got fucked due to the tuition fee pledge roll back. I can see the conservatives using that as a wedge against the lib dem student vote in those seats.

I’m somewhat cynical about their actual commitment to this issue after they scrapped the investment fund… It’s an investment can we not spend money on some more risky schemes and give them legislative/planning assistance to help them succeed and generate the government money back?

Or was it all meant to be subsidies for things that wouldn’t give money back to the govt?

It would be good to know the actual questions asked, it’s suspicious how low green/libdems/reform are in almost everything.

Shouldn’t a question like this have a neutral midpoint with trust/distrust on either side? This looks like it’s penalising parties people are less aware of the policies of.

Edit: oh, it’s the bit at the top “which party would you trust most to:”

Naff question really what was the point of including the smaller parties there? Should have just been the main parties for that question or a graded version with all parties.

This posts entire comment chain is an interesting example of people that have extensive knowledge in completely different areas of programming to me. And have some concepts I had never heard/thought of.

How it generally works now is that the operators win a contract from the government to run a line for X years. They pay the government for that contract, then have (as a for profit company) to make enough money to make a profit on top of that. There are various rules though on the fare increases allowed (hah!) and the contracts generally include minimum service levels etc.

The actual tracks and signals are run by network rail who are a state owned company that own most of the infrastructure (replaced Railtrack who were an actual public company that went bust!)

The stations are managed as part of the operator contracts I believe? Unsure on their ownership.

Because the operator’s contracts are time limited the operators can change over time, when that happens though the rolling stock (trains) are generally transferred with that, either through being sold to the new operator or leased. (It’s not like you can order a new fleet of trains and get them delivered on short notice!)

My understanding is that labour is mostly going to take over the running of each contract as it runs out instead of buying them out. I assume they are then leasing the trains to avoid the up front expense of buying them all. As they won’t be trying to make a profit it (should) be possible to run a cheaper service and could/should allow the lines to be run for the public good instead. (That’s where people opinion of public ownership comes in)

There are already some lines run like this as the operator went bust and it defaulted back to government control.

A policy! And I thought they were just campaigning on “we’re not the Tories”!?

This is more just confirming a rough policy they have had for ages right? Just let the contracts age out and take them over when they do?

I do wonder if just allowing the operators to actually compete on the same lines might help though (within reason)

The train guards are the ones who check the tickets, do the announcements etc. the drivers went on strike a few years ago (and maybe partially now too?) to stop them being fired. They can’t run trains without them.

What did you expect then? They would never have got a majority, a coalition or vote trading is the best they could have hoped for.

They didn’t do as much as they had hoped, but probably still better than a Tory majority (for the apparent userbase here). The alternative would have been either a minority government or another election?

There was compromise though, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I seem to remember them taking the crazy off the top of the conservative agenda and bringing them closer to centre?

That was before I could vote though, so wasn’t entirely paying enough attention.

Instead of spoiling it, vote for your local Monster Raving Luny party candidate and help get their deposit back. (Or any other niche party you like)

Otherwise - unless you were a student at the time (me 😭) wasn’t the coalition a much better result than a full conservative government?

Labour isn’t actually popular though, it’s just the conservatives that are unpopular.

So due to FPTP voting, many will vote for the party most likely to beat CON there. So you will probably see a lot of Lib Dems (conservatives lite edition) and some regional/single issue/independents win seats too.