Posts Tagged ‘Public Ownership’

Why Britain needs a pay rise

by Mike Hedges.

Tomorrow the TUC demonstration will be highlighting why Britain needs a pay rise. The extent to which people’s living standards have dropped is greater than ever before. I was shocked when a Unite bus driver told me how every month his wife’s parents have to give them £200 to be able to pay their rent and […]

Is UKIP taking some progressive stances that Labour is afraid of taking?

by Guest.

UKIP is stealing important weapons in the progressive armoury, and Labour seems powerless to respond, almost losing a safe seat in a by-election, says Damien Hockney, former UKIP member of the London Assembly and Deputy Leader of Roberty Kilroy-Silk’s breakaway party, Veritas. Since then, UKIP has apparently been in discussion with a sitting Labour MP who […]

To reinvent our economy we need to reframe the debate

by Dave Watson.

The left needs to reframe the debate by imagining a different way of running our economy. In his Guardian column last week, Oliver Burkeman commented on the reclining airline seats ‘war’ by saying, “Stop arguing. Capitalism already won this stupid war“. It’s not the fairness of reclining or not, it’s because airlines cram so many […]

Privatised railways have failed passengers and taxpayers

by Grahame Morris.

This week began with protests at Northern Rail stations, including Seaham, campaigning against the introduction of higher fares, threats to rail services, and job cuts on the rail network. Northern Rail has been pressed by the Department for Transport to raise extra revenues as sixty nine percent of their costs are covered by subsidies they receive […]

Privatised railways: a right royal British rip-off

by Mick Whelan.

The inflation figure used to calculate increases in regulated rail fares, such as off-peak and anytime day tickets, will be announced on Tuesday 19 August. The new fares will come in at the start of January and we know that, even if they are capped at the level of inflation, they will still be running […]

Publicly owned railways, not just right but popular

by Diane Abbott.

As the National Policy Forum in Milton Keynes draws nearer, all eyes are on Labour’s policy formation process. Left Futures has discussed bringing back rail into public ownership before. But it is worth returning to the subject because it illustrates everything that is wrong about the way that our party currently makes policy. We know […]

Why won’t Ed Balls nationalise the railways?

by Phil Burton-Cartledge.

If you were to glance at this headline, you might think Labour is tearing itself apart over rail renationalisation. It isn’t, but that the bulk of members and supporters think the rail should be taken back into public ownership reflects its popularity in the wider population. Pretty consistently, over half of the electorate would like to see this […]

Why is Labour now fighting shy of nationalisation?

by Michael Meacher.

It is bizarre that the Labour Party, or at least Ed Balls, is now tying himself up in such contortions to avoid renationalisation of the railways at any cost when the polls constantly show 70-80% of the electorate, which must include a very large number of Tories, is demanding just that. Is the Labour Party, […]

Official: the banks are the new enemy within

by Michael Meacher.

One couldn’t put it better: ‘Some prominent firms/banks have been mired in scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms’. ‘Unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the essential social capital’. ‘A fierce industry push-back by the banks’ is blocking much-needed reforms and risks destabilising the global economy. When the high priests of capitalism at the IMF […]

State ownership of rail is only the start

by Michael Meacher.

As the 31 Labour parliamentary candidates are demanding in their letter to Miliband, the case for returning rail to the public sector after the botched privatisation of 1996 is overwhelming. Private ownership has produced for the UK the highest fares in Europe, extensive overcrowding on commuter lines because of giving priority to dividends for shareholders over […]

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