Alvaro Uribe is found guilty of witness tampering and procedural fraud, reports NICK MACWILLIAM
Labour’s rail plan leaves private profiteers still riding the gravy train
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how rolling stock companies like Angel Trains will continue milking taxpayers for billions even after renationalisation, as Canadian pension funds and Texan oil billionaires cash in on our daily commutes
A Thameslink train
On the anniversary of the implementation of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, ROGER McKENZIE warns that the legacy of black enslavement still looms in the Caribbean and beyond
Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestine only as long as Israel continues to massacre its inhabitants has been met with outrage, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The creative imagination is a weapon against barbarism, writes KENNY COYLE, who is a keynote speaker at the Manifesto Press conference, Art in the Age of Degenerative Capitalism, tomorrow at the Marx Memorial Library & Workers School in London
RAMZY BAROUD explains why the world can no longer ignore Palestine
Starmer’s decision to suspend Diane Abbott yet again demonstrates a determination to maintain and propagate a hierarchy of racism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
LABOUR’S case for renationalising the railways is strong. But even after this renationalisation, all the actual trains themselves will still be privately owned. Recently published accounts for Angel Trains — one of the three companies that own our trains — show why this is a problem.
Labour’s renationalisation case is this: since Covid, passenger numbers collapsed and are only now beginning to recover. Without passengers, the train firms would have gone bust, so the Department for Transport gave the train operating companies — the firms that you buy a ticket from and run the trains, like Northern, Southern, Thameslink, or Crosscountry — new contracts.
Private train operators still run the railways, but the government collects all train fares, paying rail operators with a mix of those fares and taxpayer subsidies to make up the shortfall. That subsidy is huge, around £30 billion since 2019.
More from this author
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
US General Stanley McChrystal has been invited to advise on creating a ‘team of teams’ for healthcare transformation. His credentials? He previously ran interrogation bases where Iraqis were stripped naked and beaten, reports SOLOMON HUGHES
