Quote:
Originally Posted by Railsigns.co.uk
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.
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Does anyone have any real idea of what the railway system would be like today if it had not been privatised?
You are quite right to point out that we taxpayers are paying far more in subsidies than ever we did when the railways were nationalised but you are slightly off target about the privatisation. First, it was not a victory only for capitalist ideology (or Tory dogma). It was also a victory for spivery on a huge scale.
John Major's government knowingly undervalued the railway assets massively and stipulated that a large percentage of the shares were to be reserved for big financial institutions. In other words the Tory's friends in the City were given a vast profit for doing nothing and the British people were defauded of part of the value of their assets. I'm quite sure those institutions were very grateful to John Major and his government and I take it for granted that they expressed their gratitude in a way that John Major and his colleagues found most satisfying. I'm also sure that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown took note of what was going on and decided that they too would help the big financial institutions when it was their turn to ruin the country. That, beyond rational dispute, was why they persisted with PPP even when it had been proved comprehensively to be against the public interest; and that, beyond rational dispute, is why Tony Blair puts it about that he has earned millions since leaving office.
Second, privatisation has not been a total failure. The railways are now doing more business than previously including freight. I doubt if that increase would have occured under public ownership.