Well it's politicians that have delivered us a privatised energy industry that has been accused of acting as a cartel, a rail franchise system that prints money for the likes of Virgin and you will never get politicians away from industries that are essentially private monopolies such as the railways.

You will always need a regulator because they aren't naturally something that belongs in the private sector where competition freely exists and the rules the regulator enforces will be controlled by politicians. It can never be otherwise and so to me there is no point in them being privatised.

All it does as should be obvious now we have had a few decades of the results is line private companies pockets at our expense. The idea Network Rail or the East Coat mainline is better off run by a private company doesn't wash. They had to be taken back into state ownership due to failings of their previous private owners.

There is plenty of stuff that isn't for public ownership but the statistics in the article do not suggest it would be any better if run differently.

Indeed. And the continuation of a policy of paying privatised companies a subsidy – buying the rolling stock, for instance, and then paying them to run it - is absurd, given what they then charge and make.

The problem, ultimately, is that we have a political elite that is terrified of anything that looks 'public' and convinced that everything that is private is always better, no matter what amount of public funds still needs to be shifted into private hands.

Perhaps if we'd subsidies the railways to the same sort of extent before privatisation, we'd have enjoyed a service comparable with those in, say, Germany and France.

When I raised a railway-related question with our MP (self-professed "right-wing Tory") Peter Lilley, he thought he was on ssafe ground locally by talking about how much better things were post-privatisation. I disagreed rather strongly and eventually the other people plucked up the courage to disagree with him. By the end of the evening he appeared a more than a little chastened having found out just what his constituents thought, although I doubt his mind was changed. He still like to look back fondly at the halcyon days of Thatcher.

Ah, the thoroughly despicable Peter Lilley, the toadying Tory conference-pleaser of 1992, with his sickeningly vindictive speech and his "little list" (available for viewing on a well-known videoclip website, if our younger readers don't know of him).

I think that those unfortunate enough to know me we well would describe me as a fairly peaceable sort of chap ... well, I wouldn't be if I ever bumped into that arrogant, snivelling, self-serving, snobbish little @r$e.

If you call his name up on Wikipedia you can see the words of his effort.

I can't be the only one who's heart skipped a beat on reading this!!

While the East Coast main line was in the hands of Directly Operated Railways (after National Express failed to make it pay), it generated a pre-tax surplus of close to £200m, a chunk of which went back to the Treasury.

Customer satisfaction also rose by 2 percentage points.

State operated railways can be fiscally sound and deliver good service. The belief that they can't is just political dogma.

Spot on.

Network rail are a non-profit making enterprise and they are hardly chucked money, you do remember how much money was chucked at Railtrack don't you?

As for the stations they are what makes them money, catering outlets create income in case you didn't know...