CAN anyone explain why the Government is planning to privatise the East Coast Mainline?

It was taken out of private ownership because it was being run so badly by a series of private companies.

Since being nationalised it has become the most successful line in the country.

This year it returned to the exchequer £208.7 million and since April winning 13 industry awards including that of being Britain's top employer.

A total of 23,000 East Coast Line passengers have signed a petition demanding that it remains in public ownership and it has record levels of customer satisfaction.

So here we have a successful UK state owned company that generates income for the exchequer going to be sold off so that profits can go to shareholders often foreign state owned companies.

Arriva trains is owned by the German government.

The French SNCF is likely to put in a bid for the East Coast Mainline.

Does our government find it perfectly acceptable for railways to be owned and run by state owned companies as long as it's not the UK state? Or have we lost the plot? Are we so tied up with political dogma that we can't see the wood for the trees?

It would be hard to deny that in the last century the nationalised railways did not always do a good job, but that was not because they were nationalised, they were just badly run and starved of investment.

Is it not time to rethink attitudes to nationalised monopolies when it's in the interests of the people of the country?

Charlie Werner

Peppercorn House

Sandford