Hays,
In the case of Railways think of subsidies as payment out of the tax payers pot into the Shareholders hands;
If the railways hadn't been allowed to deteriorate by subsequent governments after the WW2, it wouldn't have decayed into the state it had.
Before crowing over the success of British Railways and privatisation read the following and it continuing subsidisation.
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'Bust'
The bigger picture here is this - despite the fact that the railways were privatised nearly two decades ago, the industry is still propped up by bundles of public money.
Ministers handed over nearly £4bn last year. Successive governments have been working hard to get that figure down, mainly by charging more for tickets, hence the endless, above-inflation fare increases. But it is still more than 40% of the total cost of running the network.
All four rail unions (ASLEF, RMT, TSSA and Unite) together with the TUC are highlighting these figures as part of their ongoing "Action for Rail" campaign. They argue that the figures prove the franchising system is bust, because it just means public money that could be used to improve services, ends up in the pockets of train company shareholders.
They've worked out that train firms gave £1.17bn in premiums to the government last year, and got £3.88bn back in subsidies. Expect to see protests at many stations across Britain on Friday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19914219
Franchising - giving private companies contracts to run train services - is clearly under a lot of pressure since the government messed up its sums on the West Coast deal.
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And of course from what might be your favourite paper after party handouts.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/410039/The-great-train-robbery-How-we-subsidise-foreign-rail-fares
The great train robbery: How we subsidise foreign rail fares
BRITISH rail passengers are subsidising German trains by paying the highest fares in Europe, a powerful union claimed yesterday.
By: John InghamPublished: Tue, June 25, 2013
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The RMT argues that profits earned in Britain are helping to subsidise fares overseas The RMT argues that profits earned in Britain are helping to subsidise fares overseas
The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers said 65 per cent of this country’s rail firms – 17 out of 26 – are foreign owned.
Nearly one in four operators are owned wholly or in part by Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway.
SNCF, the French state railway, part-owns six operators. three are wholly or part-owned by Dutch state railway Nederlandse Spoorwegen.
UK passengers can pay up to 10 times more for a season ticket to London than an equivalent journey in Italy and more than four times as much as in Germany.
The imbalance was revealed in a study by the Campaign for Better Transport last year. Since then British passengers have had another inflation-busting fare rise – the 10th year on the trot – as the Government tries to reduce its subsidy to the industry.