Welcome Mark Hopwood, SWR Interim Managing Director

[whole diary]

[IndustryInsider]

Share price doing ok though...

Probably do even better if First were to lose or walk away from one or both franchises.

Rail is still a small part of the FirstGroup portfolio, which includes FirstStudent and its fleet of 44000 buses for example, yes 44 thousand, or First Transit with 19000 employees.  The ups and downs of those businesses have far more effect than blips with its rail franchises AIUI^▸ (as I understand it).

[TonyK]

Mark Hopwood's own LinkedIn page says he's Interim MD.

I guess a permanent MD is an interim MD who has been there for quite a long time, whereas an interim MD can be a permanent one who doesn't stay long. Words mean what we want them to mean, sometimes for the most subtle of reasons.

On the subject of plainer speaking, I rather like this snippet:

I know you don’t want to hear parts of the industry blaming each other for issues you just want to see fixed. So my approach is that it might not be our fault, but it is still our problem.

I think that is a welcome step back in the direction of an earlier ethos, before we had separate companies all trying to blame each other whenever something went belly-up. I shall be watching that in operation with considerable interest, in the hope that it works well and encourages other TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) (and NR^» (Network Rail - home page)) to think along similar lines.

Good luck, Mark Hopwood, and I look forward to great improvement on the SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)!

[Timmer]

Phone in on BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Radio Surrey with Mark Hopwood.

You can watch this on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/272043345411/videos/live-with-the-new-md-of-south-western-railway-what-are-your-questions-for-mark-h/442021566679272/

You don’t need to be a member of Facebook to view this video.

[Timmer]

Update video from Mark Hopwood:
https://vimeo.com/385998462

[GBM]

Working more closely with notwork fail?
The signalling problems at Fratton still continue after 24 hours I see from journeycheck (or were they only short term, but jc not been updated)

[JayMac]

The mood music from the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) would indicate that Mr Hopwood's tenure at SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) will indeed be interim. Very interim.

Rail franchising is a complete basket case. It's only ideology propping it up now.

I think there needs to be a period of nationalisation while a suitable new model for running the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)'s railways is drawn up. As franchises fail they should return to state ownership. Then, once all have failed or ended naturally, there should be concessions, with a return to sectorisation and far fewer operators.

Room should be left for open access private operators if they want to offer something different.

[grahame]

Share price doing ok though...

Probably do even better if First were to lose or walk away from one or both franchises.

Fallen through the floor today ... compressed scale on this graphic, but still lost two thirds of its value since late lat month.  Down from a high for the last 12 months of 138.8p to 31.14p this morning ... bounced back a little to 40.78p a few minutes ago.

[TonyK]

I am tempted. The big players will make billions from snapping up fire sale stocks, so why not? I shall wait a bit longer before deciding, which could possibly be too late.