This piece of mine on the shocking rise in Britain’s rail fares, appears on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website.
Neil Clark: The latest price increases show Tory serial privatisers got it very wrong in the 90s. Join the protests to put things right
“Whichever way one looks at it, privatisation is a giant asset-stripping process. It is a very efficient way of taking money out of taxpayers' pockets". Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour MP who uttered those words during a debate in parliament on rail privatisation in February 1995, deserves some sort of posthumous New Year honour for calling it exactly right.
While Tory ministers claimed that selling-off the railways would bring "benefits to passengers and taxpayers", and scoffed at opposition concerns, the latest above-inflation price increases in Britain's rail fares – already by far and away the highest in Europe – shows once more that the serial privatisers of John Major's Conservative government got it very, very wrong.
You can read the whole of the article here.