<Wojtek Sokolowski>-----
> http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010607/80/bu8tv.html
>
> In comparision with the dismal performance of privatised British rail and
> hoplessly congested US "free"ways- it is an excellent illustration of what
> public ownership and public transit can accomplish.
>
> wojtek
-----</Wojtek Sokolowski>
but there is no guarantee that it won't be privatized one day. in fact SNCF (societe nationale des chemins de fer) was split in two a few years ago. one part owns the railroads and the others owns the trains, the split is similar to what happened with france telecom: ft owns the structure but the numbers have been open to private concurence.
i supposed the first step is opening the railways to private companies owning trains, the second is claims froms those companies that public ownership of sncf is unfair business practices etc... it is happening already in the distance education business where CNED (centre national d'education a distance) is criticized for getting gvt subsidies (well, of course it does, it's a gvt agency) which is unfair blablabla...
by the way, there has been a lot of papers on Jospin's trotskyst past (from the 60 to maybe 87). le monde has searched info and published quite a lot of stuff, a little apologetic but interesting. all this looks like maneuvers for the next to come presidential elections. chirac's office was looking for info to embarass jospin about his past and le monde seemed to have come to jospin's rescue publishing info first. whatever, i think it'd be cool to have an ex-trotskyst as president :-)
jc helary