British Expats - Thatcher dies

Quote:

Originally Posted by danfolkestone (Post 10657725)

This is an excellent example of those on the left wrongly blaming Maggie for all the world's ills. British Rail was privatised in 1993, three years after she left office. She had personally intervened to prevent privatisation during her term in office, describing it as "a privatisation too far."

Most privatised industries have switched from taking taxpayer subsidies to paying considerable taxes to the treasury since privatisation. That actually understates the benefits of privatisation though. My recollection of using the telephone in the 1980s was regular crossed lines and getting cut off. Power cuts were ridiculously frequent. The trains were over 50 years old, slow and unreliable. Privatisation enabled these industries and others to obtain funds for investment that transformed them in a way that publicly owned businesses could never have achieved.

On the railways Mrs T. commissioned a report the conclusion of which more or less said shut down everything except services between the major cities. This wasn't acted on.

I think the present situation is summarized quite well by the last paragraph of the article on pages 14 and 15:

http://www.railpro.co.uk/magazine/ar...ct05master.pdf

At least such confusion shows that neither the â€˜invisible handâ€™ nor the â€˜public ownershipâ€™ brigades will advance their respective causes much by trying to prove where the rail industryâ€™s money has vanished over the last 10 years. Meanwhile, Britainâ€™s current, curiously-hybrid, private-public rail network will continue to muddle through, leaving us wondering whether weâ€™re experiencing the worst of bothworlds and the best of none.

I watched a programme on the Beeching report presented by Ian Hislop the other day. Apparently the Transport Minister at the time had road building connections...... Nevertheless, the report was published in 1963 and the labour manifesto in 1964 stated they would stop/reverse the cuts. There was a labour government from 64-70, they did a u turn and most of the cuts were implemented during this period. Since 1972 the network has been pretty much unchanged.