The British government has announced that it is nationalising the East Coast railway franchise after National Express made a half year loss of £20m.
Lord Adonis, the unelected Transport Minister for England, said that they wouldn’t renegotiate the London to Edinburgh franchise contract as National Express had asked because “I’m simply not prepared to bail out companies that are unable to meet their commitments”. Unless they’re banks, of course. Or car manufacturers. Sorry, that wasn’t the unelected Transport Minister for England, that was the unelected Business and Enterprise Minister for England, Peter Mandelson.
Lord Adonis added:
It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging
Quite. Much better for a company struggling to cope with £1.2bn of debt to carry on losing £40m a year on a contract and pay the British government £1.4bn for the privelege. That way National Express could be nationalised as well and we’d be another step closer to the socialist republic that’s being built.
Technorati Tags: Transport, Railways, National Express, Lord Adonis
no, i sense some westminster blackmail\ bribery ahead, if the east coast line is nationalised\run down, it wont really have that much effect on anywhere except scotland
also
closing 2 of 3 naval shipyards, 1 of them is scottish
so, i think the deal being cooked up is, keeping the shipyard open and keep the railway open and funded, something along the lines of, if you go independent, why should we buy our ships from you or subsidise the railway north of newcastle
discuss
I see where you’re going with it but I think it’s a marxist thing than a Scottish thing. Socialism is slowly taking over the world and of course nationalisation is all part of the marxist conspiracy. You should do some research into the backgrounds of our beloved leaders – you’ll find that a worrying proportion of the cabinet have been involved in marxist and communist groups in the past. The main banks have been effectively nationalised, parts of the railway have been nationalised (Liebour said they would re-nationalise the railways back in the 90’s), the car industry is partially nationalised. The objective is for all industry to be nationalised.
ooops, 2 of the 3 are up here
They’re probably only the jobs that were moved from England to Scotland before the election anyway.
I do, I remember Al Darlo, when he was a fire brand communist in the 80s running around the town
I thought Barrow still had a big shipyard or is it only good for submarines now?
‘Vote for the Union’ or lose the shipyards and railway
Its a plan to de-rail the nationalists up here, we wont vote Tory ever, so they need some way to screw over the SNP and this seems like an ideal tool to do it with
Good to see the Wonko the wild-eyed conspiracy-theorist is back…
Privatisation has been a scam helping to make tons of cash for a few at the taxpayer expense. Far from bringing private investment, rail privatisation has meant huge taxpayer investment – and now means inflation-busting increases in ticket prices.
If New Labour were Marxists they would have shut down this rip-off scheme years ago, surely? As it happens Tories went ahead with the sell-off because Blair and co were so weak in their opposition.
As for the banks, word is they’re planning to sell Northern Rock to Tesco. Remember, it took them 18 months of crisis and 11 years of government before they took one bank over – if they were in any way socialists, they’d’ve done this ages ago, right?
I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist Charlie. The reason Liebour haven’t been nationalising before now is because the European Empire wouldn’t allow it. Saving Northern Rock from bankruptcy might yet get us fined for illegal state aid under imperial rules.
I couldn’t resist – but why I bother I don’t know.
There’s been no intention to nationalise anything – not even the railways, which virtually everyone wants to see brought under some kind of not-for-profit ownership.
Bliar scapped Clause 4 remember? Part of the offensive to win big business backing. That the EU prevents public ownership is incidental – Blair and Brown are signed up to the EU agenda, as you well know.
Glad to see you realise the “EUSSR” is nothing of the sort…