Rolling stock firm’s £80m dividend payout fuels calls for UK rail nationalisation
www.theguardian.com
Unions describe Porterbrook’s figures, despite downturn in wider rail industry’s revenues, as ‘shocking but unsurprising’
  • @[email protected]English
    23•1 day ago

    “[…] The privatisation of the RoSCos, the rolling stock companies, by John Major in 1994 was the most egregious example of all the Tories’ privatisations”

    I’d put privatisation of the water companies in the first spot, with RoSCos in second.

    Given how predictably these privatisations failed (iirc even Thatcher was against the water companies privatisation), and how the warnings were ignored, would it be possible to take legal action against the people responsible for these privatisations?

    • @undergroundovergroundEnglish
      5•20 hours ago

      Imo, the most egregious would be the tories forcing the UK to sell its controlling share in BP, the very second we discovered ALL the oil in the North Sea for a fraction of its cost.

      If Putin, trump, Johnson, Blair or Starmer had done it, they would know exactly what they were looking at: corruption.

      Theres nothing we can do within our legal framework. If we had any justice in this country, they’d be doing some very hard time.

      Edit: although the figures here are a great example of why you should ignore most large companies profit figures. They fiddle them, making them next to useless. If you don’t have access to their cash flow, dividends payouts cuts through the BS just as well.