r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	dddiamonddd
Comment	I started to type out a reply to this, but I don't think you realise how much of my time you are asking for here. As I started to answer yor questions, I realised that everything I said required explanations of even more concepts, of background knowledge I couldn't reasonably assume that an average person would have, and I would absolutely have hit the character limit before I'd meaningfully answer those questions. The tl;dr is that these sorts of organisations are generally run, as much as possible, to be self-sustaining. Government funding is common, because these entities are considered necessary for a functioning society. That funding often has conditions attached, eg. it must be used for a specific purpose and returned if it's not used for that. My job involves checking those conditions were adhered to. I'd bet that the Scottish Government is going to be more inclined to provide funding for ScotRail, given that it's very important for the economy and it'll form a major part of their push to met environmental targets. How much that funding will be, how necessary it'll be in the first place (since that likely depends on what sort of surplus/deficit arises from normal operation), who knows. Running a company that operates a service with the intention of making a profit (a la Abellio) is a different beast from running a public sector entity that exists to provide a necessary serivce. If it can be operated in such a way that it doesn't require government funding to meet its objectives, then there wouldn't be a need to fund it. That's probably not likely, but the entirety of its funding won't be coming from the government either unless they decide trains are free to use. To explain how public sector entities operate in more detail is to basically explain everything I've learned over the course of years of auditing their financial statements in detail, with increasing levels of responsibility for those audits, and a CA qualification. With a shitload of nuance. And I can't put this on my timesheet. If it took me a few years to fully understand their operation, the associated legislation and regulations, etc. I am not going to be able to properly explain this to you in a reddit comment. I can only suggest you look up some public sector entites and read their financial statements, and then read the legislation that'll be referenced in them. There's a lot of publicly available information on the Scottish Government website about the funding they provide to public sector entities too, both the specific funding and their approach with allocating funding. I think the most recent Parliament budget would have had information about ScotRail (I didn't look too much into it because I only looked for what might impact my specific clients).
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/uxb8fa/does_anyone_actually_support_the_scotrail_drivers/ia72ss2/
Created	Fri 27th May 2022 3:22pm
Status	normal ()

I started to type out a reply to this, but I don't think you realise how much of my time you are asking for here. As I started to answer yor questions, I realised that everything I said required explanations of even more concepts, of background knowledge I couldn't reasonably assume that an average person would have, and I would absolutely have hit the character limit before I'd meaningfully answer those questions.

The tl;dr is that these sorts of organisations are generally run, as much as possible, to be self-sustaining. Government funding is common, because these entities are considered necessary for a functioning society. That funding often has conditions attached, eg. it must be used for a specific purpose and returned if it's not used for that. My job involves checking those conditions were adhered to. I'd bet that the Scottish Government is going to be more inclined to provide funding for ScotRail, given that it's very important for the economy and it'll form a major part of their push to met environmental targets. How much that funding will be, how necessary it'll be in the first place (since that likely depends on what sort of surplus/deficit arises from normal operation), who knows. Running a company that operates a service with the intention of making a profit (a la Abellio) is a different beast from running a public sector entity that exists to provide a necessary serivce. If it can be operated in such a way that it doesn't require government funding to meet its objectives, then there wouldn't be a need to fund it. That's probably not likely, but the entirety of its funding won't be coming from the government either unless they decide trains are free to use.

To explain how public sector entities operate in more detail is to basically explain everything I've learned over the course of years of auditing their financial statements in detail, with increasing levels of responsibility for those audits, and a CA qualification. With a shitload of nuance. And I can't put this on my timesheet. If it took me a few years to fully understand their operation, the associated legislation and regulations, etc. I am not going to be able to properly explain this to you in a reddit comment. I can only suggest you look up some public sector entites and read their financial statements, and then read the legislation that'll be referenced in them. There's a lot of publicly available information on the Scottish Government website about the funding they provide to public sector entities too, both the specific funding and their approach with allocating funding. I think the most recent Parliament budget would have had information about ScotRail (I didn't look too much into it because I only looked for what might impact my specific clients).