Margaret Thatcher famously said that "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." Saying that is all fine and proper if you are at a Tory Party conference but the problem with Tories is that they eventually run out of other people's stuff to sell. By my count, the Thatcher Government successfully sold at least 103 publicly owned companies and assets which the Great British public will never ever get back. She not only ran out of other people's money but also ran out of other people's stuff. In general, I can not think of a single instance in the modern era of politics where a tory party has made the world better.
Likewise in Australia, the party (the increasingly incorrectly named 'Liberal Party') founded by Keith Murdoch and Bob Menzies, is tory to its core. Remember, the word 'tory' is in the pejorative and comes from the Gaelic 'toraigh' which means 'thief' or 'robber'. Every single day, on my way to work, I am reminded of yet another thing that tories have stolen and which we will very likely not get back.
I work in Mosman. Mosman is a suburb of Sydney which is so devoid of atmosphere that NASA should use it to test lunar landing equipment in. Mosman is a suburb of Sydney which is so devoid of culture that a pot of yoghurt takes pity on it. It is also so nominally a tory held seat that since responsible government came to NSW in 1855, I do not think that it has ever sent a Labor member to either the State or Federal Parliament, or had a Labor majority council ever. Mosman is very happy accept the outcomes of any and all tory policies.
I think that it was for this reason, and perhaps demonstrated by the cousins across the harbour in Woolahra, that Bradfield's plan to build a heavy rail line never happened. When the then Liberal Government ripped out all of the trams in an effort to smash the RTBU in the 1950s, the replacements across the North Shore were the various bus routes. Forest Buses defended its patch and so the State Buses more or less didn't really venture that far east of the Pacific Highway and kept to themselves up the sliver of land from Manly to Palm Beach. The latest edition of the Liberal State Government, saw Mike Baird parachute his way to the NAB, Gladys Berejiklian parachute her way to Optus as well as being entangled in a corruption scandal, and Mr Perrotet complete the grand plan of flogging off the buses to the lowest bidders.
The long plan of how we got here was firstly by painting a series of buses red. They became the Metrobus services and then those services were decoupled from a fixed timetable. Before the sale of Sydney Buses, those routes were then carved up according to the regions but they still remained decoupled from a fixed timetable. This has meant that after the buses were privatised, we the general public can not complain about the buses being late, if they were never running to a timetable in the first place. The routes which I usually use from the City, being the B1 and the 100 are both progressively being degraded and now I have the data to prove it.
The 100 bus was heralded as a ten minute service. This is 6 buses an hour. On average since privatisation, I calculate that the average time between 100 buses is 21 minutes. I have had to wait for a 100 bus for more than half an hour on numerous occasions. If the 100 bus is running to a serving suggestion of a twenty minute service, then this means that there are only 3 buses an hour and the variable running costs have been halved.
Likewise, the B1 bus was orginally slated as a 7 minute service. This works out to be 8 buses per hour. I have calculate that the average time between B1 buses is 19 minutes. Let's be generous and understate this as only 15 minutes between buses. This means that there are only 4 buses an hour and the variable running costs have also been halved.
I am sure that running half the number of buses or less is great for efficiency and is excellent at maximising profits but as a citizen of the State of NSW who have my public service stolen and then degraded, I have nothing but contempt for the process. Sure, running fewer buses might be inconvenient but when you're standing in the rain and it is six degrees outside, it is unpleasant.
What's even worse is that because I work in the the Insanic Kingdom Of Mosman, which is a kingdom all to itself, what happens is that we are the last stop of all of the eXpress services to the City. 173X, 194X, 230X... there are more eXes than a jilted spouses club. Being the last stop before the City, this means that the chances of a bus being full and carrying the dreaded "Sorry Bus Full" sign, now means that if you wait for a bus and it arrives and is full, you can wait another 15-20 minutes for the next one. Because I live in the bogan west, I already know what a once hourly bus service looks like and that's fine but when other connections rely on you arriving somewhat in time, this really makes a mockery of the whole thing. Waiting half an hour for a bus at one end has knock-one effects which means that if I miss the 18:50 Busways 752 bus, there isn't another one until 19:50.
This is another case where although it might be possible for a private organisation to spin a profit, the actual delivery of services by that private enterprise is very very obviously worse. Private companies have no moral responsibility to care about the general public and as I have stood in the rain freezing, I take that as a personal slight; which proves that both a private company and the political party which sold the buses off in the first place, neither display any moral responsibility to care about the general public nor the ability to do so.
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