http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,1938548,00.html
The link above will take you to an article which suggests GNER's current plight is down to the Government. Oh yes. THE GREAT BRITISH GOVERNMENT. the supplier of all evils and wrong doings.
If you read the article it sounds like the UK GOV alomst forced GNER to bid £1.3 Billion over 10 years. It also sounds like UK GOV must have done all GNER's sums and projections for them, otherwise, how else could they have got them so disasterously wrong? Apparently they were wrong to accept such a ludicrously high bid. And lets remember 'BID' is the opperable word here because we're talking about an auction where as is normal in such transactions, the highest bidder wins.
OK the article might have a point about what the current franchise and bidding system has created but I wholy disagree with the suggestion GNER's plight is all the governments fault. Lets not forget that their owners are up shit creek too because they overstretched themselves and got caught out when things didn't work out as they expected things too. It sounds to me like the people in the boardroom and accounts department at both SeaContainers and GNER have a problem with maths. It also seems to me that people are forgetting that GNER turned in a profit last year in addition to investing £x million pounds upgrading trains and station facilities.
In my view GNER only have themselves to blame. They got their projections wrong, they submitted a bid they subsequently claim they can't live up to and incidentally it was significantly larger than their rivals and they signed the contract. They really need to stop whinging and get on with the job they started and keep the ECML as the UK's premiere rail service (even though it doesn't yet feel like a premiere rail service).
The last bit of advice I'll give to GNER is this - Lower your profit margins ya greedy bastards. Perhaps then you might find the money you so conveniently claim isn't there.