From the FT:
The UK government is to take over the East Coast rail route between London and Edinburgh from National Express, the struggling bus and rail operator, which on Wednesday said it expected to walk away from the loss-making franchise later this year.
In a toughly-worded statement, Lord Adonis, transport secretary, said: “It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging.”
I really think Andrew Adonis needs to smell the coffee: that’s what private sector companies do. Didn’t he realise? And it’s also why they’re quite unsuited to supply public services.
When will the penny drop?
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Erm, so let’s get this right…
The railways are privatised, and end up swallowing as much in subsidies as it cost to maintain them in the first place, except profits go to corporoations, which don’t invest back into the network at a state-equivalent rate, and – as Private Eye has repeatedly documented – results in worse performance (in terms of being on time etc) than when the system was nationalised.
Privatisation is in part justified on the grounds that private companies are efficient, because the threat of making a loss and failing forces them to be.
Except when privatised railways fail, they are bailed out by the taxpayer.
Shome mishtake, shurely?
Exactly. If state-ownership is too much for some, why not have cooperative ownership?
If anything Paul, you understate the case; from what I’ve read down the years, the privatised railways received taxpayer subsidies that were around 5(!!) times the level BR ever got. Fifteen years later, what have we got to show for it? A reasonably priced, reliable, high speed (in the way most countries in mailand Europe seem to manage)rail network?
Hardly.
If the money spent on the privatised railways had been spent on BR, we would have got a decent system. Like the banks, another example of the intellectual bankruptcy of the right.