Nationalisation of the railways is already heading off track

Gareth1990 said:

Japan has managed to operate a privatised rail network successfully for decades, why exactly couldn’t we?

Click to expand...

Tetchytyke said:

/snip

Click to expand...

Tetchytyke said:

Network Rail owned some of the most valuable real estate in the country. If they'd kept it it would have continued to give them a constant and consistent revenue stream from which they could fund other projects. Instead, Network Rail were forced by the previous government to sell off their assets and the prices they were achieving was little more than fire sale revenue. The people who bought those assets for a song will do very well out of it. The taxpayer will foot the bill.

/snip

Click to expand...

Tetchytyke said:

Electricity, gas, and telephone networks were privatised in the same way as the railway. You had one infrastructure company responsible for the hardware and you had a competitive market for suppliers into that hardware.

You can't choose who gets your electricity or gas to your house. But you can choose who supplies that electricity or gas into the system and therefore, in a roundabout way, who supplies you with the gas or electricity. The market-based supplier model does work to an extent, but only to an extent.

But yes, the same model has failed in all the other privatised utilities and largely for the same reason. Any superficial competition at supplier level is completely undermined by the monopoly held by the infrastructure owner. The telecoms industry, specifically Openreach, demonstrates that perfectly.

The national gas grid is owned by Macquarie, formerly of Thames Water and currently of Southern Water. They also own the largest local gas distributor. Two of the other local gas distributors are owned by the Chinese. Ever wonder why your gas standing charges are so high? There's your answer. Turns out that it isn't Net Zero after all, it is Macquarie price-gouging like only they can.

Interestingly, the system operation and planning part of the electricity network was nationalised again in 2023. There have been rather a lot of articles in the Daily Telegraph recently about how NESO are apparently "engulfed in scandal" and is "covering up blackout threats." I wonder why the Daily Telegraph would be going after a recently nationalised utility company. Answers on a postcard to Matthias Dopfner c/o Tufton Street, London.




There is a reason why season tickets are still regulated fares.

For long-distance or leisure journeys there usually is some sort of competition from other modes. It's commuting, particularly commuting into London but also increasingly into places like Birmingham and Manchester, where other modes can't offer any genuine competition.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 30 Jul 2026 ==


Sadly we have had successive governments, of both sides, who have seemed determined to sell off anything that isn't nailed down.

Network Rail owned some of the most valuable real estate in the country. If they'd kept it it would have continued to give them a constant and consistent revenue stream from which they could fund other projects. Instead, Network Rail were forced by the previous government to sell off their assets and the prices they were achieving was little more than fire sale revenue. The people who bought those assets for a song will do very well out of it. The taxpayer will foot the bill.

It's always the way in the UK and then we wonder why everything has gone to poo. Look at HS1, it cost seven billion quid to build and the brains trust in the Conservative Party sold it to a foreign pension fund for two billion in 2010. That pension fund then sold it on for three billion quid in 2017 having racked up huge profits from access charges in the meantime.

Instead of having an asset they can generate regular revenue from, the taxpayer has spent a net five billion on building the asset and for that money they get to pay someone else £80 a minute to use that asset. It's absolute madness. I fully expect that the HS2 White Elephant will go the same way.

Imagine where we'd be if we'd set up a national investment fund such as the Norwegian sovereign fund or even the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund. Instead we've flogged everything off like a spivvy market trader and we're still up to our eyeballs in debt. No wonder nothing works anymore.

Click to expand...

Tetchytyke said:

It's always the way in the UK and then we wonder why everything has gone to poo. Look at HS1, it cost seven billion quid to build and the brains trust in the Conservative Party sold it to a foreign pension fund for two billion in 2010. That pension fund then sold it on for three billion quid in 2017 having racked up huge profits from access charges in the meantime.

Instead of having an asset they can generate regular revenue from, the taxpayer has spent a net five billion on building the asset and for that money they get to pay someone else £80 a minute to use that asset. It's absolute madness. I fully expect that the HS2 White Elephant will go the same way.

Click to expand...

Watershed said:

Japan has a higher proportion of its population living in cities (70% vs 54% in the UK) so there is inherently more demand for train travel. You also can't buy a car unless you can prove you have a dedicated parking space for it, which means that many people are forced to use public transport regardless.

Click to expand...

Tetchytyke said:

Any superficial competition at supplier level is completely undermined by the monopoly held by the infrastructure owner. The telecoms industry, specifically Openreach, demonstrates that perfectly.

Click to expand...