Not before time. Railways were designed for the British countryside and are a traditional feature of it, so the nay-sayers can forget that one.
We need a national network of public transport free at the point of use, centred on publicly owned railways. The railways were only ever privatised on the monstrous understanding that the profitability of the private rail companies would be guaranteed for ever by means of public subsidies. So the shareholders have already been more than compensated enough: in this unique circumstance, renationalisation should be without (further) compensation.
Some undergraduate somewhere apparently wrote a couple of years ago that "railways were invented to ease the congestion on motorways". Well, ha ha, and all that. But not as good as the one once told to me: "Lady Macbeth is the sort of wife that Othello or Leontes can only dream of."
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I agree about the countryside and all that but, according to a chap on the news last night from the Chilterns, this new line from Euston to Birmingham will only shave twenty minutes off the current time!
ReplyDeleteIn that case, it might as well stop at lots of re-opened stations in country towns...
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