Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
I get the feeling there's two aims to this change to the railways.
One is to do somthing to address the chaos that Major's privatisation of the railways has caused for the last quarter century, while keeping the profits flowing to private companies.
The other is to neuter Labour's occasional forays into championing rail renationalisation, which is always a popular policy when they go there. By creating a nationalised brand, with the old logo that makes people go dewy eyed with nostalgia for a lost past, while underneath that is a confusion of private companies that not many people follow or care about, it might kill the issue for another generation. That approach has worked well with privatising the NHS - many people barely notice that the NHS is increasingly privatised as our NHS logo is splashed all over whoever won the contract to deliver this or that part of the service.
It'll probably work too. Nationalised risk, privatised profit. Trebles all round!
One is to do somthing to address the chaos that Major's privatisation of the railways has caused for the last quarter century, while keeping the profits flowing to private companies.
The other is to neuter Labour's occasional forays into championing rail renationalisation, which is always a popular policy when they go there. By creating a nationalised brand, with the old logo that makes people go dewy eyed with nostalgia for a lost past, while underneath that is a confusion of private companies that not many people follow or care about, it might kill the issue for another generation. That approach has worked well with privatising the NHS - many people barely notice that the NHS is increasingly privatised as our NHS logo is splashed all over whoever won the contract to deliver this or that part of the service.
It'll probably work too. Nationalised risk, privatised profit. Trebles all round!
