@catmcgee And this is a bad thing? It’s a compliance necessity. Doesn’t mean they actually read it but they have to retain the option, same as they would do with email, Slack, Teams etc.
@Detroit67Book@ProudScotCelt Not disagreeing with any of that and some of us at STV back in the day, argued that the news brought most of the retained audience, so had upstream value for everything else… and digital news carried ads which the on-air didn’t!
@ProudScotCelt@Detroit67Book It's not commercially viable according to STV. They've been trying to get out of news commitments for the thick end of 20 years; growth in digital revenue masked the problem for a while, but it was never far from the surface.
"Back then, Football had soul. Beckham bending it from 40 yards, Pirlo slowing time, Scholes seeing passes before they existed. Now it's press, run, recycle. Athletes everywhere, artists rare. We've upgraded engines & downgraded imagination."
— MICHAEL OWEN
@Maureen6Johnson Maybe I'm confused. Are you saying the money was spent on the wrong / unintended things, or subject to fraud? They're not the same thing.
@TstreeT_Contro Nonsense. In the end boxers will decide if they want to fight the best or win a piece of metal. The two aren’t necessarily related whether it’s Zuffa, Ring or any other organiser. It’s not been beyond promoters to capture a sanctioning body either, they’re not paragons of virtue.
@JMC_1973@DCBMEP Around 10 TOCs had to chuck their franchises they were so unprofitable, so far from "no-lose" they were often loaded with debt. That's just as big an argument against privatisation though.
@KarlTurnerMP In this case it's probably more about alignment - one organisation planning both services and infrastructure. Having the railways working well is worth the punt but I suspect the 2% profit (and often not as high as that) will soon disappear.
@Tech_girlll This could go on for a while, you’d need to define “AI” too. Being the leading provider of AI infra and services is well within their reach; the frontier model vendors make peanuts compared to Google if that’s the definition today.
@drue2514@akaChivato@AlistairCarns And the rolling stock contracts generally include manufacturer servicing for many years, another guarantee nobody wants on the debt pile. The question is borrowing for these things at 5-6% and never ever paying it back, or pay the leaseco 8%?
@blisswords@AlistairCarns@LindaPears87262 Privatisation encouraged people back to trains in a massive way. But this is all window dressing because track and signalling have been public for years and rolling stock will remain private. Operators have long been going bust so it’s hardly been a commercial goldmine.