Broken Rails

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Interesting piece in the FT Weekend by Christian Wolmar about UK railways, and the ills it suffers as a result of its botched privatization and the current "Not my problem..." stance by our current Transport Minister, Grant-Cannon-Fodder-Shapps. As with all national networks, the railway system has never lent itself readily to the concept of fragmentary, devolved ownership. The main reason it was nationalized in the first place was to remedy the disaster that was its private-era, a time characterized in its earliest days by different rail gauges and even different local time.

Chuck in the cherry-picking of prime trade and its converse, ditching the unprofitable routes and times; inherent in an unregulated free market: and the resultant stew of inefficiency and poor service was ripe for rational-and-national-isation. Wolmar rightly points out that the newly-state-owned system failed to quite live up to promise and remit, due to a hangover of ingrained feudalism between the regions, that was eventually dealt with by - guess what? - state intervention, post which, our national railway system functioned well and largely profitably in the service of its customers.

We've seen similar disastrous reversals of good, functioning examples of state-owned national network businesses in the power and telecommunications fields as well. We might as well go back to private road network ownership and tolls every few miles: an idea so alien and stupid to us all now, that I fail to understand the reluctance of so many to accept that some things are just simply better left to public ownership: hey, maybe socialism ain't all that weird?

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