Railway Blues and Reds

A railway franchise gets its timetable in a tangle and the gov says it is drinking in the last chance saloon. A health service murders tens of thousands of people over the decades and it rewards it with yet more taxpayer's money and lauds its 70 year killing spree with anniversary salutations. When did it ever call last orders on the NHS killing machine?

Of course the franchise system for the railways brought in by the Blair government was a dog's breakfast as governments do not know how to structure business -it's not their job and have no business poncing about as franchisees.They don't even know how to run the State let alone something as sophisticated and organic as business.

So it all went pear-shaped as perforce it must and now there are calls for renationlisation but was it ever denationalized with all the regulation,taxes and the absurd franchise system - an arbitrary construct wrenched from the unity of the original railway system. It was tantamount to dismantling a Rolls Royce and  selling off different parts of the car to different companies and then wondering why only dysfunction results.

The absurd chuntering Chris Grayling does not help things but then he is in an impossible position because his job is absurd -Transport Minister -the railways were supposed to be privatized so why is he meddling in its affairs? Because it never was privatized -it is a semi nationalized hybridized mongrelised Down Syndrome of a railway system part funded by the taxpayer -a regular pushmi-pullyu me circus freak show of a railway system.

If we want to see a proper railway system sell the thing off and close down the Ministry of Transport. No? Then this railway soap opera will outlive Cornonation St.