London Banter - View Single Post - Go-Ahead profits hit by Southern strife

Recliner[_3_] · September 10th 17, 03:11 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:
In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message

-septembe
r.org, at 13:54:56 on Sat, 9 Sep 2017, Recliner
remarked:
"It forecast that margins would reach up to 1.5 per cent."

From an orderly queue to take on this vastly lucrative business!

The DfT might struggle to find any bidders for SN when the
franchise is next tendered. It's become a real poisoned chalice.

Isn't that the unions' objective, to get the franchise handed to DOR,
nationalisation by the back door?

It's already nationalised by the back door - DfT is in charge and Govia
just run the trains for a fixed fee.

Very little would change if the Govia senior managers were replaced by
DOR senior managers (where would the latter come from, anyway)?

Govia, presumably, apart from one or two figureheads?

Do they swap around like that? Have Stagecoach made some of their top
people redundant and sent them off to get jobs with SWR.

I'm thinking here about the people in the parent company, not drones
being TUPEd over from the local franchise.

If everyone to do with running a franchise is TUPEd over, then almost
nothing will ever change. The whole point of swapping parent
companies on renewal is to bring in some new blood.

You have it right, though there have been exceptions. The Northern MD, Alex
Hynes, did transfer to the new franchise holder there at first though he's
now gone to Scotrail.

And DOR started with Elaine Holt transferring from our very own FCC. She
then brought in her former FCC colleague Karen Boswell to run East Coast.

Karen Boswell, of course, is now MD of Hitachi Europe, which is supplying
her former employers (GWR and what's now VTEC) with their new intercity
fleets.