The Guardian newspaper in an article entitled "Nationalised rail is shunted into sidings as coalition tries to make sums add up on east coast line" raises some very relevant points far beyond just the east coast main line.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/31/nationalised-rail-shunted-to-sidings-east-coastHere are quotes from said article as follows.
"Without the burden of an onerous payment schedule, East Coast has been able to concentrate on service while paying back to the taxpayer ^600m in profits and premiums."
Regarding the recent West Coast main line franchise bidding fiasco it says "
GNER▸ and National Express left a combined hole of ^2.7bn in government spending plans, but the amount offered by First Group would have done even greater damage."
"McLoughlin is set on re-tendering a prestigious and potentially lucrative line that encourages operators to abuse the greatest failing of the franchise system: private companies take the upside when their predictions come good, while the taxpayer is saddled with the cost when they go bad."
"passengers and taxpayers have to hope that the next incumbent gets its sums right. A successful experiment in nationalisation is being sacrificed to make good a failure of privatisation.".
I would like to add that I am in no way anti privatisation as such having works all my life in the private sector and it does work generally but the private sector has its limitations too,ok for nuts ,bolts,tin of beans etc etc and a thousand other consumer items easily supplied by a competitive private market place,but railways! given they are now essentially a public service being kept afloat by huge taxpayer subsidies they can hardly be described as private rather they are still a basically nationalised industry in all but name overlaid by a very thin top heavy veneer of privatisation,when rather embarrassingly for the government they could be run as the current East Coast public model has shown much more efficiently under Directly Operated Railways. I have therefore logically come to the conclusion that the only train privatisation seems good at running from the taxpayers point of view is the "gravy train" purely for the benefit of the big transport companies boardrooms and shareholders bottom. Interestingly "Private Eye" magazine recently described First Group as and I quote a "rag bag of international transport companies and a whopping debt".Say no more.
