Subject: RE: BS: If you see Sid tell him . . .
From: Peter K (Fionn) - PM
Date: 01 Aug 08 - 05:05 PM
SNIP
While you were swooning over ECML electrification, freight was moving from rail to road as never before, in direct consequence of Thatcher's policies - or "market forces" as they liked to say. I can't think of any country in the world that finished up with decent railways purely on the strength of "market forces."
SNIP


And what exactly WERE those "Market forces?" Might the move to road have possibly had somehting to do with the incessant union disputes accompanied by strikes and work to rule? Remember the ASLEF Flexible Rostering dispute? The disruption of that strike must have forced MILLIONS of tons of freight onto the road.

Ironic that a BBC R4 News team went to Westbury Depot, one of the most millitant of during the dispute, a year after the strike ended, to be told by the drivers there that they actually liked the system!