Labour have FINALLY announced something they will do when they they win the next UK General Election... Renationalise the Rail Network.
They've pledged to renationalised the entire network, bringing back ownership of the railway lines, bridges, and stations under one new public body 'Great British Railways'.
The rail hardware will be renationalised as current private contracts expire, so there shouldn't be any bail out costs, as contracts just won't be renewed!
The rolling stock will remain under private ownership.
Labour claims this will save around $2 billion a year being paid out in Dividends to shareholders, so presumably $2 billion a year more to invest back into said rail network!
This plan has the backing of the rail unions, although they want Labour to go further and nationalise the rolling stock too. However Labour says this is too pricey.
It also sounds like a good way to save money as there should be less duplication across different UK regions if just one nationalised body is doing all the managing.
That is, of course, assuming we have the technology in place.
I've never really understood the concept of having private companies running different bits of the network, it never made sense to have this privatised.
I mean rail is the ONLY viable means of transport for many people taking many journeys, so we have to just pay whatever is charged, and put up with whatever level of service is offered, so this incentivises privately run networks to get away with as lower quality of service as they can.
And the state of the rails today suggests this is what has happened after 30 years of privatisation.
And there was nothing wrong with the nationalised rail service back in the day either, it was cheap and efficient.
Hopefully we'll get back to this with Great British Railways, and if we don't it should at least stop things getting worse, and we've got a company with a cool nostalgic name at least!
