This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers estimates that Virgin Trains has received more than £3 billion (the equivalent of $5 billion) in subsidies since British railways were privatized in the late 1990s—significantly more than Branson pledged to the green fund. As recently as 2010, Branson and the Virgin Group received £18 million in dividends from Virgin Trains. Branson insists that the characterization of him as a freeloader is “garbage,” pointing to sharp increases in the number of passengers on Virgin trains and writing, “far from receiving subsidies, we now pay more than £100m a year to the taxpayer.” But paying taxes is part of doing business. So when Branson pays into the Green Fund, whose money is it really—his own or the taxpayers’? And if a substantial portion of it originally belonged to taxpayers, wouldn’t it have been a better arrangement never to have sold off the rails in the first place?