An upfront tax on breeding. No one is allowed to have a child without say sticking £1/2 million down. Possibly with some banking industry similar to mortgage providers to allow those prospective parents who have secure employment to borrow enough in advance

in which case, who pays for all of the housing to be built for the UK's current homeless population too?

Yes that would be a good way to control the population too.

People should pay a tax to have children rather than being paid to have children.

Say 10% a week extra if they have children.

I use Southern daily I have 2 different lines within a short drive, one branch line that has DOO and one a little further that had guards. I elect to travel on the non DOO line as often as I can because the trains are faster, experience less delays at stations and are taken out of service less frequently because of camera issues.
The vast majority of station stops are unmanned and my preference would certainly be a person indicating it was safe to leave.
There is a lot of nonsense talked about the OBS role, most times the trains are heaving so they won t be wandering through spreading fairy dust but will be standing wedged next to other passengers as we all are. I suspect that where they are used they will have a revenue protection role and eventually the role will be phase out. One of the key differences is that new joined a will not be safety trained and will have no responsibility for passengers should a derailment occur.
The report just released states that DOO can be safe if certain conditions are fulfilled not that it is actually safe now

Why does the number of people on a train make it more dangerous?

http://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai...Lpk4nr1FL.html


http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...worker-8167516

And here is the Rail Regulators view on crowding. I trust them chinny chin chin.

http://orr.gov.uk/what-and-how-we-re...ding-on-trains

Sorry I thought we were talking about this country. Not a relevant example.

You ask why numbers matter. That is why. Dismiss it all you want but it is relavant

It's irrelevant as the safety aspects are very different in the UK. If that's all you have you have failed.

You need to see how the Japanese shove passengers on trains. The guards pack them in like sardines.

Safety regs that are already being eroded. Using other countries as an example is a valid concept in debates.

When the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus is on the British Network please let me know. You're losing this one...

The Metro doesn't have guards on it but somehow we manage to survive. It should be common sense to stop and wait if the doors are closing.

I'd prefer to fight for what we have now or better rather than wait for things to get worse.

Thankfully over 50% care about having Guards on trains.

Indeed, tube trains don't have guards with far more stops, and more people on platforms.

Unless there's been a change though the OP has this wrong . The southern proposal was to have the guard collecting fares and checking tickets and helping passengers. That seems far more productive than moving to a door with a cctv screen every few minutes , while the driver does nothing , or for the guard to just find an emprty carriage and hybernate there.

Its the children who will end up doing all the work and paying for the increasing numbers of elderly retired. we need more not fewer.

Southern keep saying this change is about improving the service.

How does it improve it other than making more money for the company? Ticket prices don't come down. Trains don't run any faster or safer.

All that happens is a job is downgraded or lost.

No we don't. This generation will have to pay the price for over population by having less security in old age, but the next generation will have a better quality of life.

koantemplation is not a fan of working...

London underground
2015 Number of statutory reportable injuries to TfL underground and rail customers 104, number of fatalities 3. Most injuries were on stairs and escalators.
Of platform injuries 60% train doors, 30% people falling between platform and train.
One fatally of someone falling between the platform and train.

Nah, we'll have robots for most of the work by then, and can import migrants to do the rest. The planet is not short of people. Recduce the global population by a few billion and we'll have a lot less problems

Kids are an expensive luxury so the should be treated as such and start paying tax from conception if not before. We don't need more children to pay tax - we need more net contributors and less beneficiaries

Ultimately we just need a few to give the robots something to do. Retain a wealthy elite just phase out the (now redundant) working class

It improves the service as it allows a train to operate if the second member of staff fails to turn up for work.


That should make you happy as it's another person free from the tyranny of having to work for a living.

Southern is owned by Govia. Govia is part-owned by Keolis.

The main shareholder in Keolis is SNCF, the French national rail company.

Is SNCF allowed to run driver-only trains?

Do you care if there is a guard on the trains?

Yes, on safety ground. There are circumstances where a train driver might be injured or worse in an incident and there ought to be some railway official present who can take charge and lead the passengers off the train.

When profit is put before safety, it ultimately and inevitably leads to unnecessary deaths and bereavements.