If it's a 5 year franchise and if the franchise premium is yearly which it looks like then at 233 million a year for 5 years then the government over the five years gets a bit more than a billion and doesn't have to fork out 40 million in new stock.
I'm open to be persuaded , but before privatisation was there any profitable and sustainable industries , I vaguely remember steel being bad , Did coal loose money? ?? Not sure , gas I think was profitable but that's run out now, you've got to admit British rail was bad how long should the tax payer have paid to keep them afloat.
Don't get me wrong I'm not anti national industry but in the past they've all been run so appallingly and abused by staff , management and governments alike in ways that would not be tolerated in private hands ( usually ) because private money is treated differently to public money, public money was wasted and unchecked in the past on all sorts of nonsense, Brit rails tilting train was a good example , millions wasted only to be scrapped then to be used by European train builders and is called pendolino and in use on rail services in Britain
I think the public sector bad dogma isnt just Tory , wasn't PFI in the NHS one of Tony's good ideas or implemented by them, I was working in a hospital as a porter , Pfi initiative came along to build a new wing with all the Portering , cleaning and catering given to Sodexo a European private backer of the wing , we all had to re apply for our jobs at minimum wage. I know people who work at a council in various management positions and you would not believe the money and time wastage that goes on at all councils but then it's only public money there's loads of it to keep paying for everything isn't there ?
What's the left wing answer to it all take back national industry ,tax bankers bonuses , tax the rich , problem of losing money solved .. that worked well in the 70,s 84 p in the pound everyone with money buggered off not wanting to subsidise that crappy rail service and strikes
Then there's MPs with their expenses and second homes and free canteen and bar telling public sector workers that 1% is maximum pay rise then voting them selves much more % even though they too are public sector employees, I've never voted on my own pay rise have you ? but then its public money and it's treated differently