The Great Global Warming Swindle

[B. Royce 0]

ewv, thanks for the review of Chase's book. I'll be looking for it.

[oldsalt 0]

It struck me while reading the review of Chase's book, that the source of the dangers we now face is the same. We are in danger from the Islamists only because of a lack of understanding and will brought about by the social engineering that has taken place in the educational system, particularly since WWII, becoming more intense since the 60's. Environmentalism is a danger brought to us by the same people, using the same methods; i.e., the destruction of reason in all areas. They are of a piece, both manifested in today's politics of International Progressivism, the latest mutation of Kant, Hegel and Marx.

The consequences will be another dark age. The viros think they will be in charge, but it will most likely be the more philosophically consistent Islamists, whose first act will be to behead the infidel intellectuals of those who let them in, the same bunch who will think they deserve a piece of the action as a reward.

Considering the plain nose on the face of the destroyers of the Enlightenment, I don't understand how anyone can think that our greatest and most immediate danger is a Christian theocracy.

[jdperren 0]

evw,

With respect (though there's no way you would know this), I know all that already. I've read every publicly available word by Ayn Rand, many of them many times over a 30 year period. I'm also intimately familiar with German history, particularly as it relates to the rise of ecology both there and in 19th century America.

I was hoping to read, in your own words, a definition of the word facism that suits your use a few posts above. Just a definition. I don't get the sense that the one you used, following Rand, that that highly abstract political statement fits what you had in mind. But perhaps I'm wrong.

I hope I don't sound hostile here, which isn't my intention. But I find that Objectivists, conservatives, viros, leftists in general, and a great many others use the word to mean essentially 'people who do harsh things I dislike'. It's used simply to arouse emotion, with no particular referents. I ask primarily because it's used by so many to mean whatever they want, that I was hoping you could clarify your use in this instance.

Fascist, in relation to the viros, in my judgement doesn't fit the meaning you stated. They're not interested in maintaining even nomimal property rights; they don't believe in private property. That concept is far too advanced, even as cover, for them to give two cheers to. The primitive tribalists who power the viropaganist movement don't even believe in collective ownership of property. The Native Americans, for example, (one of the viros favorite groups) didn't believe in private property or tribal property. Even the latter idea would view objects as belonging to someone. The concept was simply not part of their conceptual scheme. The human, the rock, the bird, the tree, the river... to people such as these, are all just part of one great monistic plenum, an inseperable union of matter and spirit -- in fact there really is no distinction between the two in their philosophy.

Thoreau is one of the clearer expositors of this particular nonsense. (He was influenced in part by the German sources you cite.) See my article in the current Free Radical for details.

[MichaelJ 0]

Considering the plain nose on the face of the destroyers of the Enlightenment, I don't understand how anyone can think that our greatest and most immediate danger is a Christian theocracy.

I was one of the people who didn't like George Bush during the last election and recommended voting for the democrats but I was too busy at the time to get involved in the debates. The reason I don't like George Bush, is not because I am scared of a Christian theocracy but when he brings in stuff similar to the "Faith based initiatives", the Christians think it will benefit them but it actually weakens the barrier between church and state, making it easier for Islamic people to take over from the inside.

No, the muslims won't suddenly get themselves elected. I mean by using the cracks generated there to squeeze in small policies here and there slowly over time in order to either 1) Get funding for spreading their hate(they are a faith based movement too) or to protect themselves from criticism making it very hard to fight them intellectually locally, while they use the ideas vacuum to paralyse us from taking them on effectively overseas.

I have seen it done down here in my own local state. The Christians used the government to stop the left from condemning and making fun of them, but then found that the laws that they pushed so hard to bring in, are now being used against them by Muslims.

But will this election decide the fate of the nation and the world? I don't believe it will. Our votes are unfortunately, still a small minority and we have only a limited amount of time / energy for debating other people. If we focus all our energy on fighting against environmentalism or theocracies, then we will lose because evil is a perpetual whack a mole. As soon as one is discredited, another takes its place. Witness how quickly the Communists jumped ship to the Environmentalist movement in the 90's when the USSR collapsed.

The way to win, is to argue consistently *for* reason and to focus primarily on improving our own lives by using reason. Our own lives are the best argument that anyone can see for Objectivism because the people who value, who desire success for themselves, the motor of this world in other words, when they see people succeeding, they will ask the most important question - "How?" because they desire it so much for themselves too.

[oldsalt 0]

The way to win, is to argue consistently *for* reason and to focus primarily on improving our own lives by using reason. Our own lives are the best argument that anyone can see for Objectivism because the people who value, who desire success for themselves, the motor of this world in other words, when they see people succeeding, they will ask the most important question - "How?" because they desire it so much for themselves too.

I agree with this, and this is how I act on things in general. I don't ignore the fact of the danger, however.

[MichaelJ 0]

I don't ignore the fact of the danger, however.

I don't either, but I also know my influence is quite limited

Hence focusing all my effort on what I said.

[ewv 0]

With respect (though there's no way you would know this), I know all that already. I've read every publicly available word by Ayn Rand, many of them many times over a 30 year period. I'm also intimately familiar with German history, particularly as it relates to the rise of ecology both there and in 19th century America.

I was hoping to read, in your own words, a definition of the word facism that suits your use a few posts above. Just a definition. I don't get the sense that the one you used, following Rand, that that highly abstract political statement fits what you had in mind. But perhaps I'm wrong.

I hope I don't sound hostile here, which isn't my intention. But I find that Objectivists, conservatives, viros, leftists in general, and a great many others use the word to mean essentially 'people who do harsh things I dislike'. It's used simply to arouse emotion, with no particular referents. I ask primarily because it's used by so many to mean whatever they want, that I was hoping you could clarify your use in this instance.

The "anything harsh" meaning has become a very commone, alternate definition in general, not just among the people you cite, but that is a different concept that only arose from the consequences of the orignal meaning of economic fascism. This common usage makes it more difficult to refer to actual fascism without being accused of "name calling". That is why I began with the meaning that Ayn Rand used.

Fascist, in relation to the viros, in my judgement doesn't fit the meaning you stated. They're not interested in maintaining even nomimal property rights; they don't believe in private property. That concept is far too advanced, even as cover, for them to give two cheers to. The primitive tribalists who power the viropaganist movement don't even believe in collective ownership of property. The Native Americans, for example, (one of the viros favorite groups) didn't believe in private property or tribal property. Even the latter idea would view objects as belonging to someone. The concept was simply not part of their conceptual scheme. The human, the rock, the bird, the tree, the river... to people such as these, are all just part of one great monistic plenum, an inseperable union of matter and spirit -- in fact there really is no distinction between the two in their philosophy.

And that mentality is one reason why the multiculturalists' accusations that we "stole the land from the Indians" is so preposterous and insidious. They had no concept of ownership, only tribalist control over the individual, which is the exact opposite, but that rhetoric is used to make people feel guilty in terms of modern concepts that did not apply. "Property rights" is used as a substitute for the worst kind of collectivist, tribalist, political and social control in order to undermine property rights. Talk about "stolen concepts".

But the viro movement, even with its "intrinsic value" nature mysticism, is far more complex and sophisticated than the tribal primitives. It is true that there are extreme elements espousing what you describe, such as the Wildlands Project, but they are not the ones currently implementing viro politics and do not have the resources to do so -- but are also still not ignorant of the concepts they want to destroy. You can't just pick what appears to be the most philosophically bizarre, extreme primitivist elements and use that to characterize the whole movement and what it is actually doing. To do so is to dangerously miss what they are after and how they are doing it, to say nothing of understanding how to fight them most effectively. The viro movement is run by very wealthy, intelligent, educated and politically strategic people in influential positions throughout society. If they were all literally at the mental level of primitive Indians or were directly trying to impose such a mentality as their top priority, they wouldn't be a threat against a modern civilization.

If you look at what the movement is doing, you find that they are in fact fascists with their own version of communist slogans, and that fascism is what we are getting. They are called eco-fascists because of the emphasis in the kinds of controls they impose. Ron Arnold's Trashing the Economy, which I have refered to before, has an interesting discussion on the aims and different segments of the viro movement in the chapter "Meet the Economy Trashers".

The Federal government currently owns over 30% of the US, but despite the demands of viros for more "public land", that is mostly for historical reasons because the western states had to turn over control of unowned land to the Federal government as a condition for statehood -- which subsequently became a tool for viros to destroy ranching, mining, timber cutting, etc. on the unowned land in the vast Federal estate today. With all the problems with government condemnation of private property for parks and wilderness accelerating in the 1970's, the movement for control over private property became even more extensive through abusive laws like ESA and the Clean Water Act (taking property as "wetlands") and the agenda for Greenlining private property modeled on parks in England. As bad as Federal acquisition is, the problem for property owners has become far more complex than even that in the face of additional growing sophisticated control techniques over private property in the last 30 years while pretending that we still have an institution of private property rights.

Most of the viro initiatives are in fact maintaining "nominal property rights". They still recognize deeds, real estate transactions and some nominal "right" to keep trespassers out of their refrigerators, etc. But the kinds of controls they are imposing are anything but respectful of actual property rights. Their view is that property rights are in principle defined and delimited by whatever the laws give the government the power to do -- which is always as much as they can get. In the end, all these variants of statism amount to the same thing and we are only talking about implementation. For now, even the most philosophically primitivist among them know that it is too soon to have any kind of public support for their goals if they openly state what they intend to do and are doing to property rights, so they add the pretense on top of their own fascist controls.

The radical journal Wild Earth once inadvertently summed this up. Paraphrasing because I don't have it in front of me, they said, "Who cares who holds the deed as long we get the control. We can get the deed later." So they certainly do have a "concept" of property rights, even though they don't like it.

In Maine for example, where the viro progressive left is virulent, you can observe an almost obsequious insistence, because of the unpopularity of eminent domain, that they are respecting private property and only buy from "willing sellers" . Yet they have politically sophisticated ways of creating "willing sellers" through prohibitive regulations and economic strangulation to force people to sell. This is on top of the growing controls they impose on landowners who still have "the deed". Viros deny and evade they are taking private property, but all the owner has left is "the deed and the tax bill" while the state and the viros grab all the control. This is not unique to Maine, but you can't help notice the obvious, deliberate pretense to be respecting private property in Maine. Of coures they also don't want to admit they are taking property because then they would have to pay for it under inverse condemenation, so they try to leave some nominal use to the owner on some part of his land to avoid that, but the PR image they pursue to be seen as "respecting" private property is unmistakeable. Whether the land becomes public or the new kind of "private", it is a question only of implementation of the same statist goals trampling the rights of the individual. The resulting political system is an accelerating fascism rather than eco-communism as Maine remains, unlike some western states, mostly "privately owned".

Here is a passage from George Reisman's Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics quoted in the conclusion of Ron Arnold's Undue Influence and which is well worth pondering:

The environmental movement openly declares its hostility to the Industrial Revolution, which masses of unthinking people take to mean opposition merely to black smoke belching from factory chimneys. It should be clear ... that the fact is that even if environmentalism does not succeed in removing modern technology from the world, it can easily succeed in re-creating pre-1750 conditions for the masses of people in the presently advanced countries, merely through thottling further rapid progress in agriculture and mining. The environmental movement is often characterized as elitist. It is elitist. Economically, it is a latter-day movement of fuedal aristocrats, seeking the existence of a privileged class able to pocket the benefits of the economic progress that has taken place up to now, while denying those benefits to the broad mass of the public. It is a movement of monopolists, typified by the mentality of homeowners of the type who, having gotten 'theirs', seek to stop all further development of land in their area. It is the movement of neofeudal mentalities who desire a world of broad open spaces for themselves, spaces that are essentially ownerless, and who care nothing for the plight of crowded, starving masses, who are to be denied the benefit of access to those open spaces, which are to be closed to all development. Essentially it is the old story of the feudal lords who are to have vast forests set aside for their enjoyment, while the serfs dare not remove a log for their fires or kill an animal for their meal.

This is how they maintain the nature worship and "communist slogans" while imposing a third-world type combination of socialism and feudalism -- eco-fascism -- that we see now in fact happening. This modern fascism is far more insidious and dangerous than the view of viroism as a pure nature worship, primitive Indian view of ownerless land. Those elements are part of their slogans and aspects of the emotions driving their world vision, but the actual situation is far more complicated and dangerous than a bunch of primitives who would be helpless in a confrontation with civilization if thats all they were.

Thoreau is one of the clearer expositors of this particular nonsense. (He was influenced in part by the German sources you cite.)

The whole thread from European romantics through Emerson and Thoreau to George Perkins Marsh and Aldo Leopold to the rise of the New Left and the contemporary viro movement is something that should be thoroughly researched and written about.

See my article in the current Free Radical for details.

Where can we find it?

[jdperren 0]

ewv,

I was going to detail our areas of agreement and disagreement. But, after re-reading your post for the third time it became even clearer than the first: my wisest course of action here is just to shut up and learn.

In that vein, I appreciate the references, some of which are new to me. I'll be looking into them.

I also appreciate your taking to the time to respond at such length and depth.

Thanks,

Jeff

P.S. With respect to the Free Radical article, I wrote in haste. I see that the website (http://www.freeradical.co.nz/) hasn't been updated yet, still pointing to the prior issue. It's only available via subscription anyway, and I don't know whether the editor offers free samples or not. In any case, the article is about the philosophical relationship -- similarities and differences -- between what I call viropaganism and Christianity. Only a few paragraphs discuss history (Rousseau, Thoreau, et al) and, after reading your posts again, it's clear there would almost certainly be nothing in that part of the article that's new to you.

P.P.S. Sorry for getting your initials scrambled earlier.

[ewv 0]

I was going to detail our areas of agreement and disagreement. But, after re-reading your post for the third time it became even clearer than the first: my wisest course of action here is just to shut up and learn.

In that vein, I appreciate the references, some of which are new to me. I'll be looking into them.

I also appreciate your taking to the time to respond at such length and depth.

Thanks,

Jeff

Very few people understand the viro movement's power, resources, goals, means of implementation and the extent to which they have already become entrenched and are doing enormous damage. They are extremely dangerous and the lack of public understanding of what they are doing makes it much more so. There still isn't much written about its contemporary form, especially in book form. I know that my own research and direct experiences have revealed only a small part of it; the more I learn about them the clearer the pattern becomes and the more frightening it is.

Please don't "shut up"! Keep discussing it and building on your unusual knowledge of history and the roots of a movement for which you already know that you "can't think of any more loathsome creatures in the past 100 years or more than viros." Keep digging and keep speaking out.

[oldsalt 0]

Very few people understand the viro movement's power, resources, goals, means of implementation and the extent to which they have already become entrenched and are doing enormous damage. They are extremely dangerous and the lack of public understanding of what they are doing makes it much more so. There still isn't much written about its contemporary form, especially in book form. I know that my own research and direct experiences have revealed only a small part of it; the more I learn about them the clearer the pattern becomes and the more frightening it is.

For all that I thought I knew, you have certainly opened my eyes. It is so easy to dismiss most of what one reads or hears simply because most of those writing or speaking about any particular topic within the movement are so inarticulate, irrational, or obviously nuts. I've been aware of some of what they've done, but I had no idea of the extent of the damage, or of the power they've accrued to themselves to do more. I appreciate your efforts. I'm paying a lot more attention now, and I'm doing more to educate myself.

[Vespasiano 0]

An interesting piece by Joseph Loconte at The Daily Standard which goes very much to EWV's excellent post:

The Global Warming Industrial Complex

[ewv 0]

For all that I thought I knew, you have certainly opened my eyes. It is so easy to dismiss most of what one reads or hears simply because most of those writing or speaking about any particular topic within the movement are so inarticulate, irrational, or obviously nuts. I've been aware of some of what they've done, but I had no idea of the extent of the damage, or of the power they've accrued to themselves to do more. I appreciate your efforts. I'm paying a lot more attention now, and I'm doing more to educate myself.

Commentators like Rush Limbaugh properly denounce them without qualification, but do a great disservice when they refer to viros only in such terms as "wackos" because it covers over the seriousness of what they are already doing and the kind of very real power they have threatening more destruction. This is very serious.

[ewv 0]

A chilling stampede for fascism?

Time for Congress to address

global warming

...There are no more excuses; it's only the flat-earth crowd who believe that global warming isn't a problem that we must try to control. It's time to get to work.

They really said that as the conclusion.

Full editorial Kennebec Journal, Maine.

[oldsalt 0]

A chilling stampede for fascism?

They really said that as the conclusion.

Time for Congress to Address

global warming

...There are no more excuses; its only the flat-earth crowd who believe that global warming isn't a problem that we must try to control. It's time to get to work.

Full editorial Kennebec Journal, Maine.

I won't comment on the cheap argument from intimidation used in the sentence you quoted. I've heard it before. I wrote to the person who used it and told him that "flat-earth" didn't really work for him the way he thought it did. Once the consensus was that the earth was flat--but it didn't make it so, anymore than his "scientific consensus" made global warming a crisis.

[~Sophia~ 0]

This is frightening.

[ewv 0]

Notice that there are two ways to read the sentence "It's only the flat-earth crowd who believe that global warming isn't a problem that we must try to control". Given the nature of the viros, in practice they mean the same thing.

[PhilO 0]

Re: the flat earth insult - the rejoinder that comes to mind would be to say: Yes, once upon a time most people believed in the total falsehood of a flat earth, except for a few thinking individuals who knew otherwise. Manmade global warming is just like believing in a flat earth...

[ewv 0]

Re: the flat earth insult - the rejoinder that comes to mind would be to say: Yes, once upon a time most people believed in the total falsehood of a flat earth, except for a few thinking individuals who knew otherwise. Manmade global warming is just like believing in a flat earth...

Even the flat-earther's didn't demand to control those who disagreed in order to impose their false beliefs by force.

[dwisehart 0]

Even the flat-earther's didn't demand to control those who disagreed in order to impose their false beliefs by force.

Actually the flat-earther's do say the space program is a farce that should be abandoned. It is not on the same level as the environmentalists who want us to live without batteries and--what was that story from the other day--toilet paper.

[ewv 0]

The Flat Earth Society at MIT getting in the way again. Clearly something that should be politically controlled for the sake of the new fascist "consensus science" and politics.

Why So Gloomy?

By Richard S. Lindzen

Newsweek International

April 16, 2007 issue - Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.

A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now. Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate. There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way, according to scientists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which released the second part of this year's report earlier this month). Indeed, meteorological theory holds that, outside the tropics, weather in a warming world should be less variable, which might be a good thing.

In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown. Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age. When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year). There's even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth's surface.

Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now. Interpretations of these studies rarely consider that the impact of carbon on temperature goes down—not up—the more carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Even if emissions were the sole cause of the recent temperature rise—a dubious proposition—future increases wouldn't be as steep as the climb in emissions.

Indeed, one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world's average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its "forcing"—its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn't been uniform—warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

Modelers claim to have simulated the warming and cooling that occurred before 1976 by choosing among various guesses as to what effect poorly observed volcanoes and unmeasured output from the sun have had. These factors, they claim, don't explain the warming of about 0.4 degrees C between 1976 and 1998. Climate modelers assume the cause must be greenhouse-gas emissions because they have no other explanation. This is a poor substitute for evidence, and simulation hardly constitutes explanation. Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record—an effort that is now generally discredited. The models have also severely underestimated short-term variability El Niño and the Intraseasonal Oscillation. Such phenomena illustrate the ability of the complex and turbulent climate system to vary significantly with no external cause whatever, and to do so over many years, even centuries.

Is there any point in pretending that CO2 increases will be catastrophic? Or could they be modest and on balance beneficial? India has warmed during the second half of the 20th century, and agricultural output has increased greatly. Infectious diseases like malaria are a matter not so much of temperature as poverty and public-health policies (like eliminating DDT). Exposure to cold is generally found to be both more dangerous and less comfortable.

Moreover, actions taken thus far to reduce emissions have already had negative consequences without improving our ability to adapt to climate change. An emphasis on ethanol, for instance, has led to angry protests against corn-price increases in Mexico, and forest clearing and habitat destruction in Southeast Asia. Carbon caps are likely to lead to increased prices, as well as corruption associated with permit trading. (Enron was a leading lobbyist for Kyoto because it had hoped to capitalize on emissions trading.) The alleged solutions have more potential for catastrophe than the putative problem. The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger Revelle—Al Gore's supposed mentor—is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate.

Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

[jdperren 0]

Such a delight to hear these things discussed as Lindzen does. Objective, but pulls no punches.

His work is only one reason I believe the viros will suffer serious setbacks in the coming years. I've been asked to support this view a couple of times and I intend to when I have a little time to write more at length. (Hopefully in the near future.)

Thanks for the post, Erich.

[oldsalt 0]

Erich, you beat me to it! I read Lindzen's article earlier today and had planned to post it. Great minds and all that.

It is so refreshing to read someone who writes to inform, as opposed to those viros who obfuscate and dissimulate.

[ewv 0]

It is so refreshing to read someone who writes to inform, as opposed to those viros who obfuscate and dissimulate.

Here is the link to the Lindzen article, which I forgot to include.

Viro obfuscation, etc. is just as much an entrenched part of their ideology in the media as it is in their "science". They have always manipulated science as a handmaiden of their envirochondria, mixing fact and ideology, and their idea of the role of journalism is no different. There is a whole "professional" "Society of Environmental Journalists" whose goal is to promote the agenda in the news media without regard to any concept of objectivity in telling people what is actually happening. This is now pervasive and shows up in almost every report on these issues, written in a formulistic manner by the gullible as well as by the promoters. It has become so repetitive that it only takes a minority to refute it, but it is so pervasively ingrained in the culture now that it is extremely dangerous, both misleading people on an enormous scale and ultimately destroying the credibility of science and journalism.

[Stussy88 0]

The ever disgraceful BBC has been running pieces lately on the benefits of growing your won food (seriously) where urban types get a small patch of land, spend hours in back breaking toil to produce some potatoes or whatever else will grow in the UK (so you can pretty much forget Blueberries, pineapples, oranges etc). They than interview them ad they say how good they feel because the food has such a small carbon footprint and doesn't have any 'food miles' (The next excuse for a tax I reckon).

Then they move on to the benefits of holidaying at home (ie don't you dare catch a plane) and when you live in the UK, the heritage is all very well, but warm it's not.

The irony is, the only successful transport initiatives in the last decade have been the private M6 toll road and low-cost airlines. I can get from London to Prague by plane, cheaper than I can get from Hampshire to London by train!

Guess which one my government favours?

[PhilO 0]

Guess which one my government favours?

Not only that, they only partially privatized the trains, as I understand it. It was essentially fascism (nominal private ownership, de facto government control), with the government setting budgets for repairs, expansion, and setting fees. After that mess fails to miraculously transform the railroads, we know who gets the blame.