Jago is left-leaning as a rule, so I was expecting this to be an anti Thatcher/Major tirade and yet the chronology seemed right, at least for the first minutes I checked out.
I’ve been uneasy for quite a few decades about privatisation in Britain, as it’s been far more about corporatism, managerialism, incompetence and greed … and yet the old BR was socialist by the end.
https://youtu.be/Z5sEp9Wo4vY?si=K_UHyYj1gnx2eR7u
It can be argued that the privatisations of telecoms, gas and electric improved competition by giving customers a choice of suppliers, that alone may have improved the value equation enough to justify the process.
ReplyDeleteAt the other end of the scale is the water privatisation, an outrageous creation of private monopolies, almost entirely unregulated, allowing financial shysters to screw every water user in the land, and that's all of us.
The railway privatisation sits somewhere on the scale between those, messy and fragmented, also with opportunities for fiscal shysters to game the system, screwing both customers and government.
But I never use trains, in fact most of the population don't use them frequently, what's more I object to my taxes subsidising the small minority who do, especially with illogical outrages like HS2 - if all those 19th century trains stopped running tomorrow, private or public sector, I wouldn't shed a tear.