New York Times Article Misleads on British Rail Privatization

British commentator Owen Jones was published yesterday by the New York Times, with a piece entitled “Why Britain ’s Trains Don’t Run on Time: Capitalism. ” I’ve learned through experience not to judge articles by headlines, but this one seems especially curious, given89.1 per cent of trains were, in fact, on time in 2015/16 —a figure thathas improved somewhat since 1997, just a couple of years after some of British Rail was part-privatized.Yet aside from the bizarre opening assertion we might judge the state of a nation by how the railways run, the purpose of the article and headline soon becomes clear: to push the case for the British left ’s hobby horse—full renationalization of Britain’s rail industry.The hook this time is the dreadful ongoing dispute that has been rumbling for almost a year between Southern Rail and the rail unions, resulting in the substantial strike action Jones cites.For those uninitiated, the dispute mainly centers around a proposed business decision by Southern rail (a train operating company granted the running of trains between London and the south coast by government) to reassign the duty of operating train doors from conductors to the train driver, allowing onboard conductors to focus solely on dealing with passengers. The unions fear this because they believe it will render the role of conductors obsolete, and reduce their power. The reason is simple. If drivers control the doors, conductor strikes will no longer be able to bri...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs