Yup, I don't particularly follow the unions' tack on this one.
It was clear to most intelligent people in 1996 that splitting up the railway into little pieces, and divorcing S&T (Railtrack) from the operations departments was just plain stupid. The fundamental flaw is that railways run on Communication & Cooperation. Competition just shuts the whole thing down.
I don't personally care who OWNS the railway, so long as it is INTEGRATED, and run as a public service (ie, put the passengers needs FIRST) rather than a get-rich scheme for speculators.
As we've touched on before here, I personally think what's happening is merely political window dressing. But at least they're beginning to accept that Franchising is poop.
IMHO, a really good start would be putting it back to Chris Green's Network South East model. That bloke knew how to RUN a railway, bless him.
/rantmode
Cheers, John.