Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Neil Clark: Pull up on the hard shoulder, David Cameron, and think again

This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears in The Week.

THEY'VE flogged off the Tote, the state-owned bookmaker set up by Winston Churchill in 1928. They've sold the Channel Tunnel rail link to two Canadian pension funds. The NHS faces privatisation in all but name, some police services are to be carried out by private companies, and the Royal Mail, in state hands since its inception in 1516, is to be sold, with the taxpayer left paying for the company's pension fund liabilities.

And still the serial privatisers in the ConDem coalition aren't satisfied.

The most manically pro-privatisation government in British history - one which makes even the Thatcher governments from 1979-90 look positively social democratic - now wants to hand our motorways and 'A' roads over to private companies and foreign-owned investment funds.


The whole article can be read here.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Britain's railway madness: ConDem Government wants even higher train fares at peak times

The Daily Mail reports:

Commuters travelling at the busiest times face paying super-peak fares in the biggest rail shake-up for a decade.

Train companies are also expected to be allowed to charge more for journeys immediately after the busy periods in the morning and evening.

And Network Rail will be broken up into a series of regional centres which will give privately-run train companies more control of the tracks on which their services run.


The Campaign for Public Ownership believes that the government is on completely the wrong track with its railways policy. Instead of encouraging an even more complicated pricing policy, and continuing to support the disastrous privatisation model, which has led to Britain having the highest rail fares in Europe, the government ought to be listening to the vast majority of Britons and bring the railways back into public ownership. When that is done, a simple, easy-to-understand distance-based pricing system can be introduced.