I agree with Carl. The London Underground (which is in public ownership) is in a grotesque state of decay. At King's Cross scores of people wee killed in a fire about ten years ago.
One of the reasons that the traditional left is so weak in Britain is that it is much more difficult to make a case for the superiority of national ownership. The lessons of the Coal Board, Railways and British Steel is that public ownership can be just as brutalising as private.
The extension of public ownership - as one might glean from Carl's post - in Britain is itself a sign of economic decay, where the state took on responsibility for organising production, but on capitalist lines.
I don't suppose it will do the campaign to get people off the roads much good.
In message <19991008142558.42874.qmail at hotmail.com>, Carl Remick
<carlremick at hotmail.com> writes
>Carl Remick wrote:
>>Today's Guardian notes that one consequence of privatizing UK rail service
>>has been a falloff in reinvestment.
>>
>>The Guardian states: "A report for the office of the rail regulator by the
>>consultants Booz, Allen & Hamilton had harsh words to say about the lack of
>>investment. 'Track renewals have averaged around 1.3% per annum during the
>>control period (1995-2001). This is low by comparison with European
>>railways, which typically replace around 2-3% per annum, and with the
>>intended renewal rate of 2.2% per annum quoted in the 1995 business plan.
>
>Doug wrote:
>>Interesting contrast with the quote from Margaret Thatcher on the front
>>page of today's New York Times: "We are quite the best country in Europe.
>>In my lifetime all the problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the
>>solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world."
>
>I hate to say it, but in light of additional information, the problem would
>seem not to be private vs. public ownership but simply that the UK – with
>all due respect to Baroness T. – is unusually backward. This week’s
>Economist (another British beacon unto the world) notes that capital
>investment in the UK’s rail system has been anemic under both public and
>private ownership. It states:
>
>“
the safety technology to make crashes less likely and congestion less
>dangerous has been around for a long time. It is called an automatic train
>protection (ATP) system. If a careless driver jumps a red light, the brakes
>come on and the train halts. It is in use in many American trains; Sweden
>converted its network in the 1980s; the French and German high-speed
>networks are being converted to it. Britain has been toying with this for
>years, ever since the inquiry into the Clapham rail crash in 1988
>recommended it. British Rail wanted it in 1994, but the government said no.
>
>“Inevitably, many people will be tempted to blame the crash on the transfer
>of Britain’s railways into private hands, which began in 1995. Yet though
>there is much to criticise about the way in which that privatisation was
>carried out, and much now to be reformed in the way the railways are run and
>regulated, to draw a connection between privatisation and the crash would be
>wrong. In public ownership, under successive governments, investment in the
>railway infrastructure was meagre. There is no reason to think that had it
>remained in government hands, spending on safety measures would have been
>markedly higher.”
>
>Carl
>
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