Ben's blog and articles

The privatisation porkers have grown even fatter since the days of Cedric the Pig

In 1994 the chief executive of British Gas, Cedric Brown, was awarded a 75 per cent pay rise in a single year, taking his remuneration to...

Water privatisation is a burst-pipe dream

Last year Thames Water was hit with a £20m fine for polluting the waterways of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire with a billion and a half...

Both the left and right have their ideological blinkers on when it comes to Carillion’s failur

Psychologists have identified a phenomenon they call “confirmation bias”. This is the tendency for people to interpret new information in...

Right or wrong, Labour is offering a solution to the legitimacy crisis of our privatised railways

As I wearily forked out for my monthly rail travelcard this morning I felt the pain of hundreds of thousands of other commuters around...

INTERVIEW: Jean Tirole

Jean Tirole throws his head back and laughs. “You’re kidding!” he exclaims. I’m not kidding, I insist. It’s true. I explain to him, once...

Would renationalisation work? It depends on whether you live in 1945 or 1979

For Labour it’s the glad confident morning of 1945 all over again. “Rail, water, energy, Royal Mail – we’re taking them back,” John...