As the SKWAWKBOX covered earlier, Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald has responded to the announcement of the biggest hike in rail fares in five years with video and personal campaigning to reaffirm Labour’s commitment to renationalising rail – a policy supported by around six in ten people in the UK.
In a ‘you couldn’t make it up’ moment, his personal campaigning has been interrupted by – you’ve guessed it – a broken down train:
My day of campaigning has been interrupted by a broken down train on the recently bailed-out Virgin East Coast on the same day fares are hiked by 3.6%. Let’s take our railway back into public ownership! pic.twitter.com/Y6YrK0iTMT
— Andy McDonald MP (@AndyMcDonaldMP) January 2, 2018
The breakdown occurred on a train operated by Virgin East Coast – the bailed-out operator who this morning had to delete an offensive response to a tweeted complaint about sexism by an employee.
Privatised rail has suffered from under-investment, poor service and overcrowding under the Tories, to the detriment of passengers forced to pay more and more for less and less.
This latest #RailFail is a perfect backdrop to Labour’s excellent and widely-supported policy.
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Might mention that the taxpayers of this country have paid ridiculous amounts of money for the shareholders of the private companies, far more then was ever given in grant for the nationalised company who actually trained and employed more staff at better rates of pay and performed a public service.
To b fair, the train did not break down. I understand the overhead 25kVAC feed went down, for which is the responsibility of Network Rail.
What the heck is all this ‘to be fair’! When have any of the Tory Capitalist, money grubbing bastards been fair to the working people of this country? They were dragged screaming and kicking into the 20th Century, dragged us into a War which slaughtered a generation of us all for their profit and in the latter part of the same century, through lies and brute force destroyed the trade union movement (the only defence that the working class had against exploitation)! Then went on to steal all our public services and industries whilst at the same time flogging it off cheaply to their crooked mates in the City! All this was continued by the Blairite Tories who masqueraded as Labour people and then the Tories and those who called themselves Liberals took us to the cleaners plus continued to perpetrate foreign wars! After that the Tories continue, with their Capitalist mates to push forward policies which attack everybody in the UK who is vulnerable, to the point of killing them! Hey, yeah, let’s be fair! To be fair I’d make sure that they were all given a fair trial and then given severe punishment for crimes against the UK people and their democracy! Nough said!