From e.g. ITV. To be fair, they blamed it on "risk takers", but I can see a golden opportunity for a Project Fear double whammy here...
Stands to reason, doesn't it?
1. As a result of Brexit, GBP fell in value, making foreign holidays too expensive, so there are more people holidaying in Britain.
2. As a result of global warming, people are more likely to be on the beach and more likely to go into/onto the water.
3. UPDATE: VFTS points out that with rising sea levels, the water is deeper, thus increasing the risk of drowning.
Sorted.
What have we wrought in the UK?
10 hours ago
3 comments:
Mark, you forgot "accelerated rise in sea level". So the water's deeper than last week.
Mark Nooo!! This is a terrible, awful tragedy - young people - imagine being their parents.
I want to hear your thoughts on the railways - I need a bit of MW common-sense/economics. What about selling slots like airports do?
VFTS, I have updated.
SV, as to railways, same rules apply as to any other monopoly, in other words some combination of...
- encouraging competition (could be from road or cycles paths or airlines but pretty impractical in most cases)
- reduce barriers to entry (also impractical, railways are a natural monopoly)
- nationalise them (solution of last resort for operators, probably a good idea with the actual railways and stations)
- price caps (but would make trains even more crowded and reduce inventive to improve services or make them run more often)
- super tax on profits (easy enough)
- quasi-land value tax (a bit tricky)
- put franchises out to competitive tender - this is similar to auctioning landing slots for aircraft i suppose - which probably works best under the circumstances. Only landing slots can be auctioned off one at a time to competing airlines, one railway has to control the whole line to avoid timetable clashes/crashes.
We can go through the same list for all other monopolies and decide what is the best combination if they can't be busted full stop. Or we could decide that one company dominates a market because they are simply better than everybody else (only applies to smallish niche markets)
Post a Comment