Biscuitman

They literally couldn't. Used to be that all the pubs in Carlsisle sold beer produced in a Nationalised Brewery.... it was ****. Only went there the once, worst beer in the country and it was the only beer in the town.

the girls were pretty and friendly though, made up for it.

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IF THE EU WAS THE ANSWER, IT MUST HAVE BEEN A STUPID QUESTION!

Julian Morrison

Fairly similar to what I'd recommend, but I see a simpler and less drastic means to the same end.
1) Convert all train operating leases INTO phpbb_ownership of that route.
2) Using the already nationalized corpse of railtrack, give away ownership of the infrastructure to the route owners who use it.
3) Stop blocking any mergers that might happen. Tell the monopolies and mergers commission to take a hike.
4) Shut down all regulators, tagets, blah-di-blah. Cut off all subsidies, cold turkey.
5) Hands off, and let the market sort itself out.

I think the result would be that they'd quickly enough merge, probably it would end up being Virgin British Rail or some such.
As I put it, they've been outsourced.

Paul Birch

No, I'm advocating letting a reformed BR turn itself round without public money (but without contributing to the public purse either), then selling it back to the private sector. Everyone benefits by disentangling the current mess, and the industry ends up back on a free market where the discipline of the bottom line will keep it efficient thereafter.

Paul Birch

Yes. There are a few difficulties with that approach, though, which actually make it more complex than mine. One is that another body - the MMC - also needs to be reformed or abolished (it ought to be anyhow, but that's another political fight). The second problem is the Railtrack equity; that properly still belongs to the public and should not simply be given away to private franchise holders; they ought to pay for it, but in the absence of a market and under the current complex regulatory arrangements it would be very difficult to price. A third problem is that more than one franchise holder uses the same track. Untangling and partitioning the contractual obligations would be a nightmare.

The advantage of my approach is that the current value of the franchises is generally well-defined (since shares trade on the stock exchange). In a few cases it might be necessary first to de-merge the rail franchises from their parent companies. If we know how much they're worth now, we know how much to pay to renationalise them. Though perhaps it might be simpler and better to borrow the capital to pay them off straight away, rather than promising them shares in the reprivatised BR later.

Bellatrix

No! businesses need incentives to be efficient! We need to privatise more - the NHS for example!

B.A.Ware

So your saying people should be allowed to make money out of the dying and sick. Why can’t the NHS be run like a private concern for no profit? Richard Branson said he would run the Lottery for no profit

B.A.Ware

Paul Birch
How are you going to turn around the railways with no public money? No private business would touch them without subsidies, at the moment we spend millions subsidising the likes of Virgin rail.

C_steam

When it comes down to it, 'Profit' is just a means of keeping score. It enables business decisions to be quantified and forms a method to evaluate all aspects of the business tree.

What you do with this profit is the crux of the issue, and I am sure that any 'private' NHS would recirculate any profit back internally.

B.A.Ware

[quote="C_steam"]What after the directors have taken their huge payouts and bonus’s. There’s a hospital by me where the chief executive has just been awarded £122,500 compensation for loss of office after he was sacked for gross misconduct for fiddling the star rating of the hospital.

C_steam

You can always find exceptions!