Well I'm old enough to remember BR and it was significantly worse than what we have today by a significant margin. I don't commute by train so might have a different view if I did, especially if I lived in and around London, but from my perspective rail travel is far far better than it was back in the BR days. Far more investment has actually made it to the ground...stations overhauled and refurbished, new lines, new and upgraded infrastructure, new rolling stock, in the most part, and far better reliability. All this stuff takes time to happen and deliver benefits but at least it's happening. Back in the BR days train breakdowns was regular and eating around on a cold unheated carriage for rescue and I remember once even having to disembark the train in-between stations, walking across a muddy field to a bus to complete my journey, and there was little or no investment in any infrastructure, and what we did invest in was an abject failure and wasted significant chunks of public money.
The only downside is ticket prices, but hey, travel is expensive..all forms of travel has become more expensive over the years so no reason or justification why rail should escape this.
Just cant believe with everything else going on around us at t moment the re-nationalisation of the railways should be anywhere high up enough on the list of priorities that we're even talking about it...just demonstrates its actually a political stunt to appease the more militant and extreme end of the Labour Party.
Are those things not just things that would have progressed anyway? It was a long long time ago that it was privatised. Do we not already pay a huge amount to keep the railways running? It's not all come from private investment. If there was genuine competition then I'd imagine things would run much better, but I'd rather we took control of it than the current monopoly system.