I only visit London occasionally, but seems to me from the odd glimpse of
the Underground I get every couple of months that it's going downhill fast.
Am I just seeing the bad bits, or is this generally true? Took a Circle
train a couple of weeks ago and it was a complete pig-sty - covered in
graffiti, knee-deep in fast food wrappers (not to mention the actual fast
food) etc., and this was at 12.30pm.

I'm deeply cynical about the whole privatisation thing, so this obviously
colours my views. It no doubt looks like a wonderful idea on paper to the
Treasury economists with their theoretical models of how the world works.
Doesn't work in practice because people are greedy, inefficient and
generally behave in ways that no model can, er, model. (Just like that
other brilliant piece of economist's thinking: Marxism). I'd be fascinated
to know, for example, how many people are now involved in running the tube,
including all the private sector companies, lawyers, accountants, public
relations types etc.. I'd be prepared to bet that the number of those on 6
figure 'packages' (including directors, non-execs (pro-rated), etc etc.) has
gone through the roof compared with the previous arrangements.

Summary: it wasn't broke before, it was lunacy to try to 'fix' it like this.
Quote: for every economist, there's an equal and opposite economist.

Phew, glad I got that off my chest.

Pip pip


Andrew