UK Rail Privitisation

Very interesting report on 'File on 4' on Radio 4.

Basically whent the Tories privatised the railways (Nonsense all round really), they created a new type of entity, called a 'Rosco' which takes care of owning the rolling stock and then leasing it back to the train operators. This was done because the length of the train operator franchises was kept short (To make them efficient and generate competition - Market solution and all that tosh) and, consequently, the rolling stock would not be attractive for the train operators to buy due to the long lifetime of those assets. The problem is that although the Tories created 3 of these Roscos - again, to generate competion and a 'market' - there isn't really any competition going on. Result? The costs of leasing are too high to make it attractive for the train operators to lease the amount of rolling stock they really need. Hence standing on the Glasgow to Edinburgh train every day rather than being provided with an extra carriage...

Moral? Regardless of your idealogical position on the concept, privitisation and introducing markets is not an approach does not lend itself to everything.
Sensible? No - some things just don't make sense being de-nationalised. If you think not, go travel around Europe and find a good public transport system that isn't municipal, or otherwise state-owned...

How do we get out of this mess? Feck knows ....

Link :
BBC Radio File on 4