How the Tories may yet end up converted to re-nationalisation

Okay, so we haven’t had a government for more than a year,but, when you look around the rest of the country, specifically England, it seems eminently reasonable to ask if they’re actually doing any better.

In the past two weeks the railways have gone into meltdown with some folks who pay many thousands a year to stand on a train for hours every day even failing to find a train as cancellations caused by new timetables have wreaked havoc.

The chaos prompted calls for Transport Secretary Chris Grayling to resign as it emerged that Northern, for example, has cancelled 165 daily train services until the end of July.

This comes just a fortnight after Mr Grayling announced that the East Coast rail franchise is to be, temporarily, brought back under state control or renationalised in a highly embarrassing move for the party that sold the railways off.

Lets just return to the cost of privatised travel for a moment and the shocking fact that some commuters can now look forward to spending £10,000 a year after Christmas.

For perspective, that’s 40% or two fifths of the average UK income, gone just to get to work.

This week there was additional joy from that ever-giving source, the banking sector.

The chief financial officer of Royal Bank of Scotland Ewen Stevenson announced that he is to leave the bank, telling reporters that “given the amount of stuff we have now cleaned up,” it was time for him to move on.

“The bank’s back in great shape,” he added, though some might disagree with its plans to axe more than 150 branches on top of the several hundred closures previously announced.

The bank is still more than 70% owned by us, the taxpayer, and while the Government is very keen to sell it off again, Mr Stevenson warned that now might not be the best time, what with the retail crisis, political unrest in Europe and, you know, Brexit.

Parliament is also unhappy with the closure plans and wants them reviewed. That won’t happen in the private sector and if RBS is forced to back down that will make it more unsellable which means we either have to hang on to it or sell it for even more of a loss.

See? It’s not just us that’s in a complete shambles.