But that in itself is another misconception, the taking back of East Coast into government control essentially tupe'ed all the commercial staff back into central control but allowed them to continue working as they had on a commercial footing, albeit under the umbrella of DOR. Remember the franchise only failed as National Express paid too much for it up front making it non-viable in the first place, there was no inherent fault with the franchise itself.
If anything it supports the point I was making that if a rail company under government control operates to commercial principles the model can work - although I remain unconvinced that it would work long term unless strict financial control is exercised to maintain efficiencies and not be used by government to create unnecessary jobs on silly terms just to create jobs to keep the unemployment rate down.
Finally East Coast was/is a lucrative trunk line with large business use, what works there isn't going to work on say Northern Rail which like many bus services needs government subsidy to even work, there is no size fits all whatever Jeremy may tell us all.
Equally I have no idea what to do about the steel industry, however I just don't see what Nationalisation will achieve apart from you and I as taxpayers covering the c.£1m loss a week that Port Talbot is making to keep people in jobs with no long term prospect of improvement, its not as if the Chinese are going to co-operate on global prices just to save our industry?
My opinions on the problems of nationalisation have been polarised by two conversations I have had this week; first was with a director of a former nationalised utility company who are having all manner of trouble as the majority of staff just do not seem to understand that in the private sector one doesn't have a blank cheque from government underwriting everything. They are trying to modernise working practices and no one will accept anything and he is tearing his hair out as the staff by their actions are basically hamstringing the whole company moving forward and actually risking their own jobs as they just don't get it - and to clarify the guy is not some capitalist beast, he is a long standing staff member with socialist sympathies who understands that they need to modernise to protect all their futures.
The second conversation was with a former colleague from British Waterways which went from government corporation to charity c.3 years ago. He was saying that from day one they have had it explained to them that without the supply of government money they need to be more sensible and commercially minded, however they have also embraced that outside government control they can borrow against assets to fund works and thus maintain and build their commercial business. Its a very different beast from when I was there when an engineering project that cost c.£280k was approved and undertaken on the business basis that it 'might' solve a problem - it didn't but with government funding it was no ones money so who cared!
