The BBC have acquired a sudden enthusiasm for the pronouncements of Peter Hitchens. Not all of them, naturally. Just this one.
Hitchens fans at the Beeb
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Hitchens is right. Perhaps this will encourage Beeboids to explore some of the other views that Peter expresses, most of which are also right.
That includes his criticisms of the pseudo-Blair named David Cameron, who abandoned true conservatism a long time ago, a serious point missed by some of those commenting here.
As the BBC must know from British history, nationalisation has not been a complete party political divide:
"Gladstone nationalised telegraphs as early as 1869. Joseph Chamberlain promoted municipal enterprise in Birmingham, and Winston Churchill declared in 1918 the nationalisation of the railways as his Government's policy"*
(* 'The development and impact of nationalisation in Britain' by H. Waschke.)
Yes but Hitchens doesn't realise the Railways were better before the Nationalisation at the end of WWII by the then Labour government.
This was done partly to fulfil Clause Four and partly to avoid paying the bill for rail use during the war.
The privatisation of British Rail also had an EU dimension,the downside of which was the separation of ownership of rolling stock and track.
But ,you have to go pre- Beaching to see BR in its hay day.
Dr Beaching,under Harold Wilson's government was responsible for the closure of many of the feeder lines which joined onto the main lines. At a stroke,many towns and villages were left without a rail link.
Under Barbara Castle, IIRC, heavy goods were forced onto the roads.Gone were the ubiquitous goods trains that fed our industries.
Hitch the younger was in sparkling form last night. He also began his (justified)plea for railway renationalisation with a nifty jab at NuLab; if the Labour Party isn't pro state owned railways, what exactly is it for ?
Peter Hitch seems to be on QT 3/4 times a year now; a tiny step forward for the Beeb. The disappearance from QT of Roger Scruton, however, seems to be a compensatory 2 steps back.
Sometimes it is the simple and casual ways in which Beeboids distort the truth to serve their own political agenda that is the most breathtaking. The selective use of the Peter Hitchens comment on British Rail, but not his other comments that would not fit the Beeboids world view is one case.
Just now on You and Yours on R4 there was a story about buses driving around in the summer with the heat on. It seems that someone has to lift the bonnet and flick a switch to turn the heating off. A union mouthpiece said drivers could not do this because of elf’n’safety and that an engineer would be required to do the job.
Now a blind man on a galloping horse can see that the problem is back to the seventies bad old trade union restrictive practices, yet the consumer shafting union scum was not questioned on this and was instead allowed to shrill on about the evils of privatised bus companies.
Clearly the Beeboid scum are on the rampage to stop privatisation which would most likely lead to their troughs being empty.
The BBC – what is not to hate?
BBC selectivity:
BBC Sport: -overkill on its Wimbledon tennis franchise coverage;
-near zero coverage on its non-franchise 'Tour de France', which starts tomorrow. Need to check ITV instead:
'itv.com/sport/tourdefrance ,
AND:
'letour.fr'
Nationalisation in 1948 was for doctrinal reasons . Apart from the LNER (always the weakest financially) the other companies were recovering from the war reasonably well.
It has been a consistent liberal left lie that nationalisation was inevitable. Drivel. The GWR and the Southern were bitterly opposed to it.The LMS executives saw it as a way of gaining control of the lot and enhancing their careers.
For once Hitchens is wrong which is , as you point out, why the BBC flags this up.
Nationalisation= reunionisation= all the problems we had from the 50s to the 70s.
Welcome back Brown having beer and sandwiches with the union bosses
Again there's no prospect – from the BBC – of an adult discussion concerning rail nationalisation/privatisation. Certainly the privatisation in the dying days of the last Conservative administration was mishandled. The separation of those running the trains from those having responsibility for the tracks and all held together with a mind-boggling network of interrelated contracts was a recipe for the spectacular crap set-up we have today. But, returning to my first statement, don't expect to hear on BBC a discussion which would broach the BBC-approved mantra "nationalisation good – privatisation bad". After all, one of the costliest of our nationalised industries this century at £3billion+/year (apart from the state banks – but that's another story) is probably the BBC itself.
Perhaps Peter Hitchens would like to see Bob Crow appointed Head of London Transport?
The railways were never truly privatised, instead a bunch of private sector management teams took over the same stock and staff and unions, and have been incompetently "regulated" .
Late running stopping service trains coming into South London regularly dump all passengers on the platform at Croydon in order to be "run fast" empty and make up minutes to meet the regulators target. Passengers arrive home later, but the empty trains are "on time"
Not just the regulator should be strung up, the 'elf and Safety gang as well. Every time someone tops themselves jumping in front of a train, which since Labour took power is regularl event,the entire network is shut down for half a day.
British Rail was just as bad. Hitchens is just trying to be "controversial", but has wrong-footed himself on this one.
Nationalisation= reunionisation
Yes of course, this is a big problem.
Unions are corrupt as we all know. They work with the REAL bosses, whether they know it or not.
The best/100% correct way to understand the situation is this.
MONEY rules the world, not trades unions, or just as corrupted governments.
ALL big business and public corporations are run using the same corporate pyramid structure of command and control.
This system is inherently inefficient, whether share holders are supposed to be in control, or the business( which they very rarely are ). Or supposedly democratically elected governments ( which could not actually control anything, other then their own breakfast menu.)
The TRUTH of the matter, is that it matters not to the BIG CENTRAL BANKS where the cash comes from, BECAUSE it ALL in the end comes from the same place. This so long as the interest is payed by someone, either by the tax payer or the share holders.
In fact The WORLD CENTRAL BANKS, would always rather lend the lolly to governments, given a straight choice. This because all of the capital and interest is covered by future taxation on the wealth producing sector of society, which is the ordinary people.
Please be reminded that taxation takes many forms. However the biggest and most damaging of them all is INFLATION TAX, not income or any other type.
I contend that the evidence of a high up conspiracy between so called left right government and the people who TOTALLY and ABSOLUTELY control, and create out of thin air, ALL of our money, is a gimmi.
An obvious conspiracy to control the worlds population by periodically bankrupting just about everything in its turn, that not even The BBC can hide this scam for much longer. Trades unions and their corrupt/or mind controlled leaders, such as Scargil, are simply tools used by the BIG MONEY.
This utterly dishonest bullshit, is no longer a conspiracy theory, but has long since been a simply massive CRIMINAL fact of life, and very much, and horrifically often DEATH.
Atlas shrugged
Completely agree with Hitchens' views on the railways. Something entirely different though with his views on Iraq. Does the BBC highlight these views as well. To be fair it is not suprising that a staunch conservative calling for rail nationalisation would be highlighted.
Now stuff like this is worth highlighting as appalling BBC bias:-
Nick Robinson: "The Tories boast that they're being honest about the need for spending cuts but are they being honest about what they'll cut and what the impact will be?"
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2009/06/how-not-to-be-prime-ministerial-on-a-pm-visit.html
You will also find an unusual deference to the views of the Vatican in this story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8132084.stm
All allies are acceptable in support of the BBC's favourite causes, such as unrestricted third world immigrastion.
There's also a nice bit of smearing of the Italian government, by adding gratuitous references to Mussolini, along with a pic of a chap who looks as if he might be about to essay a fascist salute.
Even by the BBC's standards, it's one of their more biased offerings.
AndrewSL's right. The railways were never properly private. Not only were franchises awarded to former BR regions under heavy state regulation, but the gap between the award of the last operating franchise and the appropriation of Railtrack's assets was in the order of months. Less than six, I think.
It's almost as if someone wanted to “discredit” privatisation, because if you really wanted the market to direct how best to run the thing, you'd have done almost everything differently. What a way to run a railroad…
Renationalising a couple of million non-white immigrants to these shores would be a very good idea. I don't think Peter would agree, though.
It's no coincidence they picked up on this – they will do anything to undermine anyone of the right.
Anon at 12:38 on July 3rd is correct. Transport was nationalised, which included both rail and commercial road business. The tories returned road haulage to the private sector after their return to office in 1951, but left rail under state control where it remained until 1993. As others have remarked, whilst Beeching was commissioned under the tories, labour under Wilson carried much of the demolition job it proposed into effect.
For reasons I can't fathom, the BBC never mentions the fact that the structure of rail privatisation used by the tories in 1993 (dividing infrastructure from train operators, and the root of many of the post 1993 practical problems) was based on European competition law rules, set out in the Community Railways Directive of 1991:-
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31991L0440:EN:HTML
Isn't that curious?
The Beeb should commission David Irving to do a series on the history of Israel.
The BBC will be less keen on his opinions in the Mail on Sunday
John Kelly has tried for years to get the BBC to listen to his justified complaints about its blatant pro-EU bias. He has got nowhere, so he has – wrongly in my view, since I believe in the rule of law – stopped paying his licence fee. Oddly, the TV licence people have done nothing about this for years – but they have now suddenly summoned him to court for non-payment. And there is nothing he can do. There is no option for jury trial, where he might hope for a symbolic acquittal. He cannot plead that the BBC fails to fulfil the terms of its Charter, as it does. He must either pay up, or be fined, or go to prison. He has checked with Human Rights experts, who tell him he has no case. Such a pity. I long to see the BBC in court, explaining its persistent partiality and forced for once to answer the questions it now airily evades.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1197502/PETER-HITCHENS-Dave-leader-Heather-Mommies-Party-.html
It seems to me that the latest round of "it was better nationalised" has been motivated by the problems of National Express paying the government the agreed Franchise bid price.
Well what of it? NE bid too much. It needs to hand back the Franchise and a second bid take place. If a business fails to make it profit it should fall and given that some believe they can earn a profit from that route, they should be allowed to try. That surely is what the system is designed to do.