Re: As inevitable as it was predictable. Archived Message
Posted by Ken Waldron on September 18, 2023, 3:32 pm, in reply to "Re: As inevitable as it was predictable."
These German/French state enterprises are basically buying in into our privatised sector. "nationalising our railway network by the UK government was not allowed under EU laws. " The drive to privatisation in the railways was a UK project. The Brits privatised wholesale the UK rail system thirty years ago...and then lobbied for the privatisation of all EU networks: the outcome of the UK obsession with privatisation were the EU guidelines you refer to, so you are really talking about British driven legislation. As I said it wasn't "a bad foreigner did it and ran away..." Yet the fact remains that even today thirty years later EU rules doesn't dictate that a state can't own & run its own railways: that's amply proven by the existence of State ownership still controlling most of the European Railways...apart from the British railways, which as you note, is a free-for-all for all those state owned railways of Europe who use the foolish British love of rentier capitalism to subsidise their own National systems. Of course there's still a large Brit-inspired privatisation lobby desperate to loot the European system: just as it did that of the UK, but the German Federal Government is the sole owner of DBAG: the German railways and the French government the sole owner of SNCF: The French railways. Their status as independent enterprise is nominal and allow them to take advantage of the British system but both are owned absolutely by the nation-states in question: there's no two ways about that. So when you say that its "not allowed" well, its actually the reality and the facts are against you. Aside from a shocking loss of self-confidence, the real reason the Brits won't do the sensible thing and take state control of the Railways is not only that they sold off (for peanuts) all the hard assets and rolling stock which would be would have to be replaced at vast expense, but they then would then have to buy out or compensate for all those extremely lucrative contracts they signed. Yet the main truth is that the British never wanted to do it because the ruling elite despise their own population and don't see why they should provide services for them unless there is an opportunity for graft or rentierism in order to enrich themselves. Unfortunately the filter which you really need to change is still at the "A bad European man did it and ran away..." stage. The truth is that that the whole disastrous Railways saga was both self-inflicted and self-perpetuated. -It was Britain that did it to itself.
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