Patrick Crozier has been reading

Patrick Crozier has been reading my blog! Here, he mentions my name in connection with his suggestions to privatise the road network.

It's a pity John Major's regime didn't consider the consequences before 'pressing the button' on rail privatisation. They could have tried privatising a few self-contained routes like the LT&S running from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness, known in BR days as the 'Misery Line' due to it's dismal performance. Or started with freight, one of the success stories of privatisation. But they didn't; they chose to take a great leap into the unknown and hastily privatise the whole lot before an election they knew they were going to lose.

Patrick wonders why I read his blog if I disagree with his politics. Is it like a car crash that I can't look away from? Well, not exactly. I find a lot of his ideas thought-provoking; sometimes we accept the status quo without considering if there's a better way. Blue-sky thinking is always useful; even if many ideas turn out to be impractial, there will still be some that are worth considering.

Politically, I'm a non-ideologue. For example, I don't really care who runs the railways as long as the train runs on time to the destination I want to get to at a price I can afford. If continued state subsidy is needed to avoid closing large parts of the network leaving entire regions with no services, then I'm willing to pay the taxes needed, after all, plenty of my taxes go on things that are no use to me. If there's a good way of running those services with a much smaller subsidy, I'm all for it.

As for my "I am not a Libertarian" quote, this is a bit of a reaction towards the large number of annoying libertarian trolls and winguts I've run into on Usenet and places like Pyramid Online, often teenage sociopaths quoting Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, and saying things like "Democracy is like two wolves and a sheep deciding who to have for lunch" at every possible opportunity. See David Edelstein's Wingnuts and Trolls page for some gruesome examples.