Sunday, February 22, 2009

No state bail-outs for anyone else!

If Richard Branson opposes further state bail-outs as "companies need to stand on their own two feet, and the weak ones need to go to the wall", should Virgin Rail lose its £1.6bn West Coast mainline subsidy!?!
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have to disagree on that one Mr S. assuming you expect the answer yes, that is.

Surely there is a difference between a company taking public money purely to boost its own profits and taking it to provide a public service it would otherwise not undertake?

Without spending weeks going into the financial reports I cannot of course say if he is actually making an undue profit on this or not but he should certainly be making some, that is what private enterprise is about.

This quote is the typical leftist drivel one would expect from a rail union:-

“This is Robin Hood in reverse. The poor taxpayer is subsidising one of the country’s wealthiest individuals. This farce would not be happening if we had a publicly owned railway like the rest of Europe.”

I used to argue myself that some things like public transport were best left in public ownership but that view was largely killed off by people like the rail unions. What we overpay in providing profits to the likes of Branson we would certainly pay twice over to overpaid, early retiring, sick pay claiming, index linked pensioning, constantly striking public employees.

7:18 pm
Snafu said...

Xoggoth, I fail to see why the railways should be subsidised at all. If users are not prepared to pay the full cost of maintaining and running them, I fail to see why the taxpayer should pick up the tab.

Virgin takes public money purely to boost its own profits. I understand Richard Branson is paid £1m just for using the Virgin brand!

I hate the idea that Richard Branson of all people is overpaid with our taxes. Give me Union brothers and sisters any day!

8:55 pm

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