Two more scandals

Worst Late Western, that sad apology for a successor to the Great Western Railway, has finally put its hand up to admit that its record is unsatisfactory and has pledged to invest £29 million to improve customer service and to increase capacity.

And water industry fig leaf Ofwat has done its bit to hold the cost of living down by authorising the water privateers to raise prices to consumers by an average of 1.5 per cent over the 4.3 per cent inflation rate.

Firefighters, civil servants, teachers, local authority staff, prison officers, health workers and others have been told that they can have just 1.9 per cent, which means a sizeable cut in living standards, but the privatised utilities and transport services are a different kettle of fish.

Working people, who make a positive contribution to society, are ordered to tighten their belts, while parasitic shareholders sit back and see their dividends mount up.

It's the kind of comparison that used to be conjured up by Labour Party orators to put forward the need for nationalisation.

Our current Labour government regards such calls as old-fashioned and sets its sights no higher than reliance on free-market competition and the appointment of "regulators" who share its adoration of the profit motive.

These regulators take their instructions from the government, so they authorise the privateers to put profitability and shareholder dividends before consumers' living standards and the cost of living.

Indeed, so blatant is the disparity between the rampant price rises of the privatised utilities and the rigid constriction of workers' pay that it could be a carefully constructed pincer movement by government and private sector to squeeze consumer spending.

Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly's attempt to show that First Great Western has reacted positively to her firm approach is nonsensical.

Any action that it has taken is simply to prevent the loss of its franchise to another private company. It is protecting its shareholders, not the long-suffering passengers who have suffered lateness, cancellations, overcrowding and a plethora of replacement bus services.

The only comparison that can be made of the various private train operating companies is over the degree of inferiority that they display with regard to the services offered by publicly owned British Rail.

And this is despite a government subsidy that has risen since privatisation to be, like for like, five times that paid to British Rail in those days.

Water charges in Britain were once so small as to be added to the annual domestic rates bill. This year, the average charge per household will be £330.

This is despite the promise of hard-nosed private-sector management delivering efficiency and lower prices.

Yes, there had to be investment to improve water purity levels, but that requirement played second fiddle to profit maximisation through selling off the huge property portfolio handed over by the government, making thousands of staff redundant and pushing up charges.

With every scandal that emerges from the mad world of privatisation, the stronger must be the calls for renationalisation and the development of a strategic public sector.