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I must admit I'm not a fan of anything Branson or Virgin, so I would tend to put his remarks down to sour grapes - but he has a point. First Group has bid so much for this franchise that it is difficult to see how they're going to make it work, let alone improve the existing service. Several contributors to this thread have hit the nail on the head: no privatised rail company cares for anything whatsoever except profit. I suspect First may milk the franchise for all it's worth for a few years, then claim it's bankrupting them and hand it back to the government. As long as we have this crazy system that lets private companies walk away from their franchises when it suits them, I'm not hopeful about things changing for the better.
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