UK's crying need for a publicly owned railway

An excellent selection of letters on the need to re-nationalize the railways and to rescue our national rail network from the Tories.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/18/uk-crying-need-publicly-owned-railway

See Christian Woolmar in particular:

• I am delighted Ian Birrell gets to Liverpool 37 mins quicker to watch Everton. However, that's thanks to a £9bn upgrade of the west coast mainline track paid for by taxpayers, £2bn in franchise subsidies to Virgin Trains paid in the past 15 years, new rolling stock bought as a result of these payments and the share of Network Rail's annual direct subsidy of £3.5bn allocated to the west coast. So Mr Birrell is deluded if he thinks his faster journey is one of the fruits of privatisation, which are as sparse as cherries in January.
Christian Wolmar
London