The treacherous hypocrisy of the anti-renationalisation crowd

When people tell you that the UK should not run its own rail network and that the system is fine as it is now, you should realise that you're conversing with a traitor who hates Britain.

It seems harsh, but that's really the only way of seeing it.

If they argue against rail renationalisation and in favour of the way the system is set up now, you're clearly dealing with someone who thinks it's fine for foreign governments to operate chunks of our rail network and extract the taxpayer subsidised profits overseas to fund rail infrastructure in their own countries, as is the case now ... but who hates the idea of the UK running it's own railways and reinvesting any profits back into our own rail system.

You're dealing with someone who loves foreign governments running our railways and shipping their taxpayer subsidiesed profitis overseas to invest in their own rail networks, but who thinks that it's some kind of unaffordable communist madness for the UK to run its own rail network and reinvest the profits in actually improving our own services and infrastructure.

Here are a few facts

• Since the Tories privatised the rail network in 1994 fares have increased by an average of 114% and the amount the taxpayer hands out in subsidies is double what it cost to run the entire system before privatisation.

• Three quarters of the rail franchises in the UK are now fully or partly owned by foreign governments through their state-owned rail companies!

• The Netherlands State Railway (Abellio) operates a network of rail franchises in the UK that is two and a half times the size of the entire Dutch rail system!

• Between 2012 and 2014 foreign state owned rail companies sucked over £1 billion out of the UK rail network, none of which would have existed without the vast taxpayer subsidies that get pumped into the UK rail network.

• When the private operators of the East Coast Mainline bailed out of their contract early because the line was supposedly so unprofitable, a state owned operating company was set up to take over. This soon became the most popular and most profitable franchise on the whole network until the Tories hastily re-privatised it.

• The Tory policy on state ownership of our rail network is that the only country that should be banned from bidding to run UK rail franchises is ... the UK!

• Since privatisation in 1994 the UK rail network has become the most expensive in Europe, and it's also one of the least reliable and most overcrowded systems too.

• In March the Tory transport Chris Grayling just handed another vast chunk of the UK rail network to a foreign government, when he handed the South Western franchise to the Hong Kong state railway.

Treachery

So next time you hear someone banging on about how nationalising the railways is such a bonkers idea, ask them why they approve of foreign states running our railways and extracting the profits overseas, but think it's such an awful idea for us to run out own railways and keep the profits here.

Ask them why they think it's acceptable that the system costs twice as much in subsidies now than it cost to run the entire system back in the 1980s

Ask them why they think UK passengers should pay the highest ticket prices in Europe for some of the most overcrowded and unreliable services of all.

Ask them why they think the UK should be the only country that is barred from submitting bids to run chunks of the UK rail network.

You'll soon see them trying to perform absurd mental gymnastics to defend the involvement of foreign states like Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy, Singapore, China and Hong Kong in running 74% of our rail network, whilst simultaneously trying to make out that the UK should continue to be barred from running our own railways because the state sector is supposedly so "inefficient".

If the state sector is so inefficient, then why on earth do they insist on arguing in favour of a system that is 74% operated by the state sectors of other nations?

Of course they won't like being challenged on their treasonous hard-right economic views and pushed into putting on ridiculous displays of mental contortionism to defend their "keep things as they are now" mentality, but someone needs to stand up to these anti-British bullies who insist on shouting down the idea of rail nationalisation because they want, for whatever crackpot reason, foreign states to continue running it and extracting the profits overseas instead.

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OR