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  • This may be a bit staged (though not calculated except to release it to coincide with his publicity drive on public ownership of the railways), but one thing Corbyn does very well is stick to his guns when it comes to not appearing privileged:

    http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/16/jeremy-corbyn-floor-three-hour-train-journey-london-newcastle

    I say staged and not calculated because while I believe it was undoubtedly a genuine choice on his part to sit on the floor, together with the filmmaker present he would then have realised that it would be a good illustration of a point about public ownership (notwithstanding the fact that just because the railways are currently in a dire state, it doesn't automatically follow that public ownership would improve them, although I believe they would, too).

  • Much respect for his principled stance but the last time the railways were nationalised it was disastrous. This graph says it all:

    Don't forget that Beeching - i.e. decimation of the network - happened under nationalisation.

    Since the railways were re-privatised in 1995 passenger numbers have soared and service quality has improved dramatically. There is no evidence that nationalisation would improve them and they are not in a dire state - the National Passenger Survey shows that most passengers are happy overall, but unhappy about value for money. They are too expensive and there aren't enough seats on a lot of services because the trains aren't long enough, but as the passenger numbers show that's largely because they've become a victim of their own success.

    The too expensive part is because successive governments have chosen to shift the burden of funding the network from the tax payer to passengers. I don't agree with that and I'd like to see it shifted the other way, especially as the real world cost of motoring has fallen. In the UK each passenger journey is subsidised by just under 3 euros, when it's 8 in Germany, 10.5 in Italy and 12 in France.

    The point is you don't need to re-nationalise the railways and risk a massive dip in service quality through a re-organisation when you could just shift more of the cost of the network onto tax payers, sort out the rolling stock operating companies (who as an effective oligopoly don't help with the rolling stock situation) and invest in longer platforms and more carriages.

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