Live data from Hacker News

UK Rail services to come under unified state control

bbc.com

21–30 of 383 posts

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#21
post #7

And so the privatization experiment come to an end. Bye bye Thatcherism. I hope this silly belief in the cure-all of "small govt" will die with it. Sure govt's should not supply all food, or luxury good, or ... But public transport, schools, hospitals, ... I think we should make a good set of rules by which we can decide which typed of biz should be in private hands, and what we prefer public. The Fed, Blackwater, pr…

This type of "privatization" doesn't make the government any smaller. There is still exactly the same amount of coercion and government control.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#22
post #7

And so the privatization experiment come to an end. Bye bye Thatcherism. I hope this silly belief in the cure-all of "small govt" will die with it. Sure govt's should not supply all food, or luxury good, or ... But public transport, schools, hospitals, ... I think we should make a good set of rules by which we can decide which typed of biz should be in private hands, and what we prefer public. The Fed, Blackwater, pr…

> The Fed, Blackwater, prisons, rail, hospitals, banks... What could possibly go wrong? This is not a universal truth. Come enjoy an African government hospital, then sample one of the listed private hospitals.

"There exists a private hospital in a country of superior quality to a public hospital in the same country" is a weak claim. Even weaker is "there exists a private hospital in the world of superior quality to a public hospital also in the world".

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#23

Norway's railroad also went "private" a few years ago, and have butchered it up into (not all): - we have a directorate of railway deciding where to build tracks, what providers must adhere to, their timetables etc - one government owned company building - one government owned company building and maintaining the tracks - one government owned company owning the trains - another one maintaining the trains - one govern…

The best description of this I've seen is "playing at shops": there's no real market, it's just set up to look like one.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#24
post #15
post #7

And so the privatization experiment come to an end. Bye bye Thatcherism. I hope this silly belief in the cure-all of "small govt" will die with it. Sure govt's should not supply all food, or luxury good, or ... But public transport, schools, hospitals, ... I think we should make a good set of rules by which we can decide which typed of biz should be in private hands, and what we prefer public. The Fed, Blackwater, pr…

No it doesn't, this is absolutely not the end of privatization. Private companies will still be running all the trains, the only difference will be they'll be run under the branding of GBR so that people can't complain about the private companies. All this does is move the accountability away from the private companies.

Sadly.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#25
post #5

Good. This is wildly overdue. The privatization of public infrastructure (ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail ) was a crime of the highest corruption. Edit: Link broke? Edit 2: Thank you @bogdan https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858

Unfortunately this isn't actual nationalisation. The railway will still be operated by private firms, this is only a transfer of franchising from the department of transport to this new "Great British Railways" department; which is a new franchising model. It's supposed to allow them to set unified fees, and have greater control over branding and speak with a unified voice, but apart from that I don't see any of the…

"Great British Railways" -eyeroll-

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#26
post #10
post #7

And so the privatization experiment come to an end. Bye bye Thatcherism. I hope this silly belief in the cure-all of "small govt" will die with it. Sure govt's should not supply all food, or luxury good, or ... But public transport, schools, hospitals, ... I think we should make a good set of rules by which we can decide which typed of biz should be in private hands, and what we prefer public. The Fed, Blackwater, pr…

For what it's worth, even Thatcher thought rail privatisation was "a privatisation too far" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#...

Thatcherism went beyond the namesake :)

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#27
post #5

Good. This is wildly overdue. The privatization of public infrastructure (ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail ) was a crime of the highest corruption. Edit: Link broke? Edit 2: Thank you @bogdan https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858

Unfortunately this isn't actual nationalisation. The railway will still be operated by private firms, this is only a transfer of franchising from the department of transport to this new "Great British Railways" department; which is a new franchising model. It's supposed to allow them to set unified fees, and have greater control over branding and speak with a unified voice, but apart from that I don't see any of the…

Also this is less nationalised than ScotRail, which will actually be state run: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-564...

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#28
post #7

And so the privatization experiment come to an end. Bye bye Thatcherism. I hope this silly belief in the cure-all of "small govt" will die with it. Sure govt's should not supply all food, or luxury good, or ... But public transport, schools, hospitals, ... I think we should make a good set of rules by which we can decide which typed of biz should be in private hands, and what we prefer public. The Fed, Blackwater, pr…

This type of "privatization" doesn't make the government any smaller. There is still exactly the same amount of coercion and government control.

Building railways roads and essential national infrastructure... Coersion?

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Fed, Blackwater, prisons, rail, hospitals, banks... What could possibly go wrong? This is not a universal truth. Come enjoy an African government hospital, then sample one of the listed private hospitals.

"There exists a private hospital in a country of superior quality to a public hospital in the same country" is a weak claim. Even weaker is "there exists a private hospital in the world of superior quality to a public hospital also in the world".

I'm fairly certain that the claim you're replying to is that private hospitals in the countries in question are consistently better than public ones.
Post reply on HN