Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
Other countries manage to have decent nationalised rail, some of them even own some of our franchises as well, and we also had to nationalise the track part after Railtrack after it collapsed and after there was a series of safety disasters. Even America has a nationalised rail network.
I don't think we should nationalise most things but rail is a natural monopoly. There any only be one provider for a given route so the intended benefits of privatisation, i.e competition, doesn't really work. The companies given franchises and there is little incentive for long term investment and they rarely get badly punished for poor performance.
To me it seems almost a religious obsession with either nationalisation or privatisation. People pick a side and then think everything should be one or the other. Privatisation his good because is good and more efficient no matter what it's applied too.
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Yes they do, but in my experience they were rubbish and there's nothing in Labour's history to suggest they'd do it any differently this time around hence my opinion.
---------- Post added at 09:27 ---------- Previous post was at 09:10 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by passingbat
I'm talking about essential national services only. We live in uncertain times. Our essential infrastructure should not dependant on the ownership by foreign countries.
This is nothing to do with any form of political philosophy,
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No, I didn't think you'd suddenly gone insane.
Aside from Nuclear Power stations, which we apparently no longer have the expertise to build it seems, I don't see how the ultimate ownership of the railways or postal service, say, is a particular threat. It's not like the foreign owners can suddenly decide to shut them down and prevent them working so what's the big threat to the UK?