"The Bad Old Days"?

Neil Clark writes:

As public support for renationalising our rip-off railway companies and privatised utilities grows by the day, so too does the negative propaganda about public ownership.

One of the worst examples of this occured on ITV's News at Ten on Wednesday night. The government, we were told by the reporter in question, was not too keen on nationalising Northern Rock because it would be like returning to the 'bad old days'. (There was another anti-nationalisation jibe on the BBC News.)

Well, if the 'bad old days' refers to a time when you could just turn up at the railway station and travel anywhere you liked on a whim because the prices didn't cost and arm and a leg and when utility bills weren't a major factor in the household budget, then let's be having them.

Quite. I should only the words of David Steel on this week's Any Questions?, calling for the money to be spent on an extra runway at Heathrow to be invested instead in the rail network.