Great Western Coffee Shop

Looking at the governments recent decision to abolish NHS England deemed a quango; is the new Briitish Railways just another quango overseen by the Department of Transport.

Oh - the same irony that rail franchising is declared dead and the TOCs will be nationalised, whereas flavour of the month in bus operation is a network designed by the public sector, with routes or areas operated by franchises?

Yes.

My reading of the debate is that Labour are re-nationalising the railways, and re-nationalising ... erm, the National Health Service.

 ::)

When was the NHS privatised?

Depends on your definition of NHS England body

I'd suggest it depends rather more on your understanding of what constitutes privatisation.

Maybe so, so tell me - what is the value of external contracts entered into by NHS England? And why they aren't seen as privatisation (even by 'the back door')?

No.

The first phase of GBR is to bring all the National Rail franchise under on body, GBR.   Phase 2 will be the reshaping of the operators, it could see all the London 'metro' services handed to TfL; consolidating Southern, SWT and SE outer services into one operator, the interesting one will be the proposals for a Hampshire IoW unitary authority which looks like transport is part of that proposal, there are likely to be others, Buckinghamshire??.   Cities like Manchester, Birmingham all local services handed to the metro mayors to run.

The Labour Government move with NHS England seems more about devolving power to Health Care Trusts than micro management by the men from the Ministry the same is for GBR ................ However the men from the Ministry tend to be  control freaks, hopefully the Government will be able to prise control out of the dyeing hands of the Civil Servants

I’m currently on a journey from Charlbury to Basingstoke. Lots of the stations appear no longer to have GWR green branding on the signs. Most have FGW purple and Cholsey appeared to have nothing at all.

I swear that at least some of these (eg Oxford platform 3) were fully GWR-ed up until recently. Is this a deliberate debranding in anticipation of Great British Railways? Or am I imagining things and these were never GWR green at all?

Cholsey certainly did have GWR branding on the Up Relief platform in May 2019.

(https://www.mbob.co.uk/rforum/cholsey2.jpg)

Mighty Cholsey station with its five platforms! As many as Didcot Parkway - and more than either Swindon or Oxford  ;D

And with six tracks, it pips Twyford, Maidenhead, West Drayton and West Ealing.  ;)