Re: Well....
"APT failed because of politics in nationalised British Rail"
Most of said politics being the remnants of the nationalised companies scrapping with each other as if they were still competitors - the reason the Central Line (and several others) was torn up was because the operating company was bankrupted and subsumed into one of the larger 4 before nationalisation and those power rivalries just kept on giving all the way to the Beeching reviews.
THAT is typical British management failure at work. When you merge competing companies you don't LET the management in the old ones stay if they keep that shit up.
It's the same basic cause that did for British Leyland (the overall incompetent management and contempt for the customer who'd "buy british no matter what" didn't go away when the export markets started making their feelings about quality very clear by voting with their wallets)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
