[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Damien

I would say there is which is why a lot of countries don't privatise the railways. The main one being there is no real mechinism for competition. You as a consumer can rarely choose which provider to take because you need to get somewhere and there are rarely multiple lines for that.

But I’m afraid that is not understanding the model. The ”competition” is in bidding for the franchise and being allowed to run it for the term of the agreement. The successful bidder has the ability to run the franchise and make money but to win it must submit a tender that commits to them also investing in it.

The “competition” is not in the choice of the passenger, although there may be an element of that on some services.

The tender process is a flawed attempt to bring competition into it because to make any investment worthwhile companies need to be given long contracts which, once given, are hard to take away for poor service. Seen how bad Southern Rail have been.

I don’t think the model is flawed but the process of assessing and awarding the contracts may be and also open to levels of incompetence and corruption.

Even longer term investment such as HS2 needs to be driven by the government anyway because of the length of time involved to build and then to turn a profit.

I, personally, don’t believe the government ( unless you have ultimate executive power wi h no regulation - such as China for example) are best placed to manage or deliver any major infrastructure projects.

Then there is the fact they're a key part of our infrastructure whose success shouldn't only be measured by profit but the economic benefits of the areas which they serve.

There are sectors that work and those that don’t, i’ll Agree with that. No one could argue that the privatisation and deregulation of the telecoms sector was a bad idea.

Privatisation of certain public services within local authorities- surely a good thing.

Privatisation of power generation, do you think the government could have financed Offshore Wind??? Especially in the developmental stages.

This is largely useless for private companies that need to make a profit, if the government want them to serve some minor station for a handful of people in a rural area then they need to provide incentives for that. So we have to underwrite it anyway.

It depends on the contract. They will be told there are lucrative routes and routes they will have to take a loss on.

I would argue there are few candidates better for nationalisation than the rail network.

I disagree.

We invented the pendalino ( spelt wrong I think); it was called the APT we thought it up in the 70’s, the tilting train, so you could have high speed trains on U.K. twisty lines.

British Rail failed to deliver it, but now we buy it from a private company.

Governments are not the birth place of innovation and delivery.

I think you can only describe it as a Marxist policy if it's part of a broader attempt to bring about Marxism in practise, i.e prepping the country to become communist. Even a socialist government couldn't be described as Marxist without that intent. Just as some policies such as increasing police/security apparatus or putting more power in the executive cannot be described as facist without a border context suggesting it to be so.

The formation of the NHS for example was not a Marxist policy because Attlee was not a Marxist.

The NHS is a good example as much of it is not controlled by the government, it is however funded totally by the government ( well us actually, the government doesn’t have any money)

So no the NHS is not Marxist, but it still needs to be run better