Coronavirus and Nationalisation of UK Rail service - 23 march 2020

Today the government announced the nationalisation of all the profiteering private rail franchises.

This move tells us three vitally important things about the rigged economic system, and the lies the greedy establishment order tell to defend it.

⛔️ The privatisation lie ⛔️

Hard-right pro-privatisation fanatics have continually tried to argue that public services (transport, health services, education, energy, mail delivery ...) need to be transferred to/kept in private hands because the private sector is supposedly 'more efficient' than the public sector.

If this was even remotely true then the natural reaction in a crisis would be to transfer as many public services as possible to private ownership, in order that they can be run more efficiently for the duration of the crisis.

That the opposite is happening, and the government is transferring essential public services from private ownership to public tells us that they know perfectly well that their privatisation ideology is based on a massive lie, and that the state is more efficient than the private sector when it comes to the crunch.

⛔️ Socialism for the rich ⛔️

Another factor to consider is the stated justification for this temporary rail nationalisation. It turns out that the profiteering private companies running the rail franchises will not be able to spin corporate profits out of the network because of the fall in passenger numbers.

Instead of just letting these parasitical companies fail, the government is freeing them of their contracted obligations in order to run the entire rail network at the public expense.

It's essentially a huge bailout designed to save shareholders and corporate executives at the expense of the public purse.

But in doing this the Tories are making it absolutely clear that these private franchises, and shareholder payouts, and bloated executive salaries are entirely unnecessary, because the rail system works without them.

⛔️ Unaffordability ⛔️

When Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party proposed gradually bringing the rail network back under public ownership the Tories and the obnoxious liberal capitalist 'centrists' sneered, and mocked, and ridiculed.

'Where are you going to get the money to do that' they scoffed 'from your magic money tree?'

But now it turns out that it was always perfectly possible to do stuff like that all along, but now that it's the beloved capitalist establishment class doing it, rather than a democratic socialist outsider, the 'where's your magic money tree?' droolers have suddenly gone absolutely silent.

They know perfectly well that 'there isn't enough money' was always an absolute bullshit excuse for opposing investment economics and progressive social reforms, but the mindless rote learning idiots kept on repeating it, so they kept on pushing it.

And they know that nationalising vital public services and infrastructure allows them to be run more efficiently and cost-effectively, because if it didn't, then why on earth would they be doing it in the middle of a crisis situation?

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