Suggestion

A suggestion for Chancellor Osborne which came to me over the wholemeal this morning; so obvious now that I have thought of it, that I do not understand why it was not implemented years ago.

So, follow the success of busting up British Rail by busting up London Underground and selling the bits off to enterprising chaps like Dominic Chappell and Sir Philip Green.

But rather than having an underground version of network rail, simply sell off the component lines of the underground network. So one entrepreneur gets the Bakerloo Line and another gets the Metropolitan Line, faithfully reflecting the structure envisaged by the Victorians who set it up in the first place - and, in the ground, as it were, still largely in place. No need to invent silly names after the way of the railways. Add a bit of spice by hiving off the signalling side of things, perhaps to Virgin with their unrivalled expertise in communications. And give the rolling stock to a holding company which would in turn be given, by way of a golden good-bye, to some of the more deserving public sector types being pushed out by the inbound top management teams, after the way of Porterbrook, the people who seem to own, inter alia, most of the rolling stock operated by Southwest Trains. Perhaps the public sector types most intimately connected with the whole busting up operation. Clearly the most deserving.

At which point I wonder whether Porterbrook operates out of that well known retirement paradise, the British Virgin Islands.

Reference 1: https://www.porterbrook.co.uk/.