I feel sorry for commuters because they have little alternative.

yes, cows to milk. me thinks ...

I pay £200 a month for a 25min journey on the most run down line into London

I have sympathy for the rail commuters, but I don't see why my taxes should go to rail fair subsidies.

It's clear that many people who commute to London do so because much of London housing is unaffordable, so I'm not about to trot out the live where you work BS; but why should I pay? I don't see anyone handing me a fiver when I fill up the car.

No, but taxes did pay for the road you're driving to work on.

And the rail network the trains run on!

I don't have kids, I'm never ill, why should my taxes be used to finance hospitals and schools?
Point is, you don't get to pick how your taxes are spent. They are spent for the greater good.

rail, energy, water, road, health, social security, civil service, armed forces, education, courts, police, prisons, mail etc etc etc
all built and put in place by the tax payer

not one of the above have been built by private enterprise, yet private enterprise know own and charge us for some/most of the above services, we the tax payer paid for

feeling short changed ...

That's not strictly true. Most of the railways were built by private organisations which were then nationalised.

Given the government's utter inability/desire to do anything that can be done by private enterprise, even if it ends up costing several times more, you can assume that in a relatively shorty period of time (on a national scale) all power generation in the UK will have been built by private companies. Apparently the UK government's 'energy security' strategy doesn't mean what those words mean to everybody outside government.
Plus several of the others (education, NHS, prisons etc) are effectively being outsourced without consultation, or competitive tendered under legal requirements such that outsourcing is the only realistic option, 'competition' the state itself is not allowed to compete in.

I suspect that within the lifespan of the generation currently being born, there will be no national assets in public hands at all, and very few 'public services' left in any real sense.

Which is partly why I'm glad I don't have kids.

There could be a massive change in attitudes when they get the bill for these privatised services. PFI will cost several hundred billion over the lifetimes of the projects.

That doesn't sound too bad. say £50 per week, £10 per workday. For peak time travel that isn't too bad.

No. You're missing the point, despite the obvious fact that hospitals are not just for childbirth, and that you attended a school.

My taxes go towards paying for and maintaining the infrastructure - since when should I be paying your rail fair?

Actually yes, I attended a school, but not here so your argument is invalid . Railways actually make a profit, otherwise the private owners would have chucked them back to the government immediately. If it was run by the government with all profits reinvested, the running cost would be much lower and tickets be sensibly priced. Right now the government pays for a lot of railway improvements and gets little return on them.

Also do you know the cost of a decent motorway? It's in the order of several hundred thousands to millions of £ per mile. There's thousands of miles of roads in the UK to maintain. Railway investments are insignificant in comparison.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk