On Aug 17, 7:01*pm, 1506 wrote:
On Aug 17, 2:51*am, Charlie Hulme
wrote:

On 17/08/2011 10:32, 1506 wrote:

Having been away for many years, one is pleasantly surprised by the
improvements the badly designed privatization has brought about.
South West Trains is on a whole new level of comfort compared to BR.

They came along just at the time when new rolling stock needed to
be ordered. I think we can safely assume that slam-door stock
would not be running today if BR had survived at it was ... or
been allowed to bid for franchises as has happened elsewhere with
the state railway organisations. BR could have been running some
Bavarian branch lines by now!

Charlie

That does not explain the other improvements. *SWT stations are in
much better shape. *Their staff shows an appropriate level of respect
for the customers. *The trains are reasonably timely.

Considering that you live in the United States (do correct me if I'm
wrong), I hardly think you're in a position to lecture us on how
wonderful the privatised railway is in Britain. It's very easy to
spout on about recent improvements (real or imaginary) while
pretending that if BR had never been broken up and privatised, the
railway today would be exactly the same as it was in the mid 1990s,
except that the trains and infrastructure would all have aged by
another fifteen years or so. British taxpayers like me are giving five
times as much money to the privatised rail industry as we did to BR.
Are today's passengers experiencing corresponding benefits to justify
this? I don't think so. Rail privatisation was a victory for
capitalist ideology; in all other respects it has been a spectacular
failure of scandalous proportions. The Tories won't admit it has
failed; certainly not as long as there are other public assets left
that they want to see flogged off for short-term gain.


The worst is TfL; the London Subway is dirty, hot, unreliable, and
staffed, in my experience, by jobsworths.

Predictably, the worst of your double-barrelled venom is reserved for
TfL, as a government body. If privatisation of the main GB railways
has been so successful in your view, why are we not hearing constant
calls - from passengers, staff or even backbench Tory MPs - for the
complete privatisation of the London Underground (or, for that matter,
Translink), so that more of us can benefit from the same ever-so-
efficient privately run transport Utopia?

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/630