jnc's Recent Activity
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jnc liked Jamessquared's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
You don't have to understand the logic, you just have to understand the rules ;)...
Oct 14, 2026 at 9:10 PM -
jnc liked 35B's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
That doesn't alter the truth (itself potentially problematic) of what @Snifter writes about how the price could potentially be set. As ever with pricing, understanding the trade off between price and volume as a way of maximising income is an...
Oct 14, 2026 at 8:14 PM -
jnc liked Steve's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
I'm sorry but I think that you have not grasped the Gift Aid situation and requirements. At Bovington, you purchase a ticket that gives you a 12 month pass. That is not a problem and the whole lot is eligible for Gift Aid and is what the NYMR...
Oct 14, 2026 at 8:14 PM -
jnc liked 35B's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
Two separate issues. One is the personal tax position, where I see what you're saying. The other is that this is £1.88bn that government passes on in a range of ways without ever having to manage the complexities of grant applications,...
Oct 14, 2026 at 6:59 PM -
jnc liked cksteam's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
I'm not saying I think it will be changed, I'm just suggesting it is a Government scheme/policy. As we've learned over time no matter what the politicians might say, what they do can be completely different. I just wouldn't want to be reliant on...
Oct 14, 2026 at 12:27 PM -
jnc liked cksteam's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
Whilst the NYMR example is probably the most documented on this forum I'm not sure how good an example it is, except for how not to do it. If for example they had not tried the 12 month free pass I suspect they would have had more success than...
Oct 14, 2026 at 11:25 AM -
jnc liked Steve's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
It isn’t as simple as that, as the NYMR has found. With Gift Aid you have two choices; give a 12 month ‘ticket’ or charge 10% more than the standard fare in order to Gift Aid the fare. The first couple of years the NYMR opted for the former and...
Oct 13, 2026 at 10:51 PM -
jnc liked Jamessquared's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
That's where we might diverge in view. I'm not so sure it is as clear-cut as that, as a reading of the NYMR thread (especially a couple of years back) may show. The headline looks good, but model 1 (free return within a year) appears to have had...
Oct 13, 2026 at 8:56 PM -
jnc replied to the thread North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion.
The £300K loan I noticed was to the Trust; that presumably provided a large part of the £500K grant from the Trust to the PLC. (Your post can be read to indicate that the £300K loan was to the PLC; it wasn't.) In other words, the loan and grant...
Oct 13, 2026 at 6:59 PM -
jnc liked 35B's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
Just as this thread used to be recommended reading for discussions of principle, I suggest the NYMR thread occupies that (sad) place now. The message that comes out from that is that that success is borne of lots of little things, not a few big...
Oct 13, 2026 at 6:52 PM -
jnc liked Jamessquared's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
Oh, I don't disagree, I think some kind of wholesale structural reform on the WSR would bring many benefits - I just caution against throwing all eggs into the Gift Aid basket! The other benefits may in the long term prove rather more beneficial....
Oct 13, 2026 at 6:51 PM -
jnc liked Fish Plate's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
I quite agree Tom, gift-aid on fares is not necessarily a silver bullet on its own, but there is also the issue of probably the biggest source of friction on the railway of the past few years, and that is that the supporting charities are...
Oct 13, 2026 at 5:47 PM -
jnc liked Jamessquared's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
True, though it’s worth noting that Gift Aid in effect leverages four times the value in altruistic donation from the public which might otherwise not be made, and if it didn’t exist the Government may come under pressure to fill the gap. So it...
Oct 13, 2026 at 5:46 PM -
jnc liked Gladiator 5076's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
And presumably gift aid, which the Governments website says they pay out £1.88 billon per year, is subject to the whims of the guy or gal inhabiting No 11 Downing Street. Perhaps around the cost of a medium sized hospital so the politics could be...
Oct 13, 2026 at 4:59 PM -
jnc liked Jamessquared's post in the thread West Somerset Railway General Discussion.
Although I support the principle of moving to some kind of charitable model, I think there are some somewhat heroic assumptions in that £400k figure. The biggest one is to reckon on 75% of the income being inherently charitable. That takes some...
Oct 13, 2026 at 4:58 PM
