1. Sell off all assets. Ballast, scrap metal, wood, equipment. etc.

2. Sell all land.

3. Plunder all profitable routes. Millionaires at the front in private carriages. Peasants at the back in stainless steel carriages with a trough in the middle. The carriages in the middle will pay the going rate which is whatever the market will bear.
These companies have a railway to run and do not need any interference from the government in any way. Safety can be compromised as most people will stick their neck out to save a few bob.

Any objection to this plan is just intellectual clap-trap or no market actually exists. Which is closer to the truth. Dogma.

The problem with your suggestion is that its too simple, and the Government would not get the money to spend on its chosen subject.

Your proposal would mean more money for maintanace, so tracks would be better, so trains could ruin on time, and the train companies could charge lower fares as their overheads (lower rent/franchise fee) would be less.

Its a no brainer really, Gordo wants his cash, and thats an end to it.

Bit like Green Taxes, what is it spent on !!!!!!

Agree the way privaisation was completed was far too complicated to work effectively.

~Very bad.

Private capital built the network. What’s so impossible about returning the erstwhile private infrastructure to private capital?

Do we really want Lord Adonis in a Cameron government when he has served up the kind of left-wing nonsense that appeals to the Prescotts of this world while affronting the intelligence of anyone who understands transport economics ?

If this is a brilliant Cabinet Minister then how do you define a dud one ?

You raise an excellent point.

What happens to all of the workers, do they transfer to the Public payroll, only then to be transfered again at a later date to another franchise.

If so who pays their wages.

Seems to me that National Express paid too much for the franchise in the first place, have just found this out and having lost 20 millionrather rapid are looking for out.

Assume not any significant penalty clauses, otherwise they may think twice.

Sadly from passengers comments (radio and TV) the service had improved out of all proportion since national Expess took over the Service.

Never was a great fan of privatising the railways with so many different train operators, and track management sytem operators.

If National Express was loosing 20 million in a few months running a good service, how can nationalisation for a few months (with all of the set up costs) produce a profit ?

==================

If they signed a crap contract, they are going to have their arses sued for breaking it by nationalisation

Nick

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/07/i_could_operate_trains.html

It seems that National Express never had much skin in the game and are quite at liberty to walk away from the contract now things aren’t going to plan. The last bit about Lord Adonis rejecting a £100m offer from NE to exit the contract on a consensual basis shows just how financially- and commercially illiterate the custodians of the public purse are.

The service is, in my view, well run and the trains always seem to be full.

As it is, we have an effectively nationalised company running the track, other private companies running trains on that track (with contracts with the track company and temporary licences from the government), and yet other companies leasing out the trains themselves. And now we find out that the operating companies don’t really exist and were set up with severely limited liability specifically to bid for these licences.

It was a botched privatisation from the start, and the botching is still going on, including the government’s handling of this crisis. National Express should be told to get on with the job of running the contract they bid for, and if their “special purpose vehicle” goes bust, the government can nationalise THEN. And NE can have egg all over their faces and explain to the City why the fact that one of their subsidiaries is bankrupt doesn’t reflect on their own management. Right now they look clever and the government look like (and are) mugs.

In my view we should wait until the train company licences expire, and then privatise the lot as one company, as should have been done in the first place.

Does anybody want to accept a small bet that they won’t?

Likewise it is hyprocritical to ’slap down’ Greg Hands for naming a civil servant in the House – Ms Izzett – when both Kelly and Lyon have been ‘named’, and who are Kelly and Lyon if not civil servants?

Is the last paragraph not worth a question in the House?

Criminal law exists to regulate against crime – such as fraud, or negligence. Do we think these laws inadequate such that we require further law, specifically for railways? if not, why is the Government regulating railways at all, over and above other industries?

Rail companies – like all companies – should be untouched by the State beyond the standard provisions which apply to all companies. It is the State which creates problems in the first place; and then which creates even worse problems with its “solutions”.

Government is but one method of Governance; and it is a method which specifically and exactly imposes its rulings by force. You will be harmed by law if you do not comply. Government is purely and wholly about non-voluntary contracts, purportedly for our individual or common good, but in practise the Government generally acts in its own favour or in the favour of those who have by one means or another paid for the Government to act as they wish. After all, by what means or mechanism does the common mass of people have to direct Government to impose non-voluntary contracts which are in their favour, other than being granted by the Government a single vote each, every four years, to select from a set of those who implicitly and inherently are in favour of, since they benefit from, the current arrangement.

It’s a stich-up. You’re permitted by Government to vote for those who support having a Government.

What happens if you think Government is a bad idea? are you supposed to form a political Party, get voted into power and then disband Government? why should such a Herculean task be required of those who wish not to have the Government impose by law requirements upon them? is not itself imposing such a Herculean task upon someone to be free of Government the use of force to impose Government? all contracts should be voluntary and well-informed; making it so impossibly hard for someone to be free of a contract they have no wish to be part of is *not* voluntary.

The options made available to us by Government *are not the only options*. We do not have to organise our State in this way. We do not have to have a Government; it is only one means of Governance – and it is a particularly bad means. We do not even need to have a *State*.