Train nationalisation or not ?

[Finnegan]

Even as a Tory

Are you quite sure Mick? You sound less and less like it recently. You’re to the left of Starmer these days.

 

[ks.234]

Even as a Tory I have to accept that privatising the Royal Mail, Rail structure and Water supply was purely a money making opportunity for those who bought up the shares. All it did was to replace a government monopoly with a privately owned monopoly and the shareholders are sucking it dry with no improvement to the services. The pressure to improve services is virtually nil and they take full advantage of it. To quote Ted Heath, it is the unacceptable face of capitalism.

We need to teach these shareholders who buy into an infrastructure without any competition a lesson that will be long remembered and that is to take the shares back without any compensation. They will squawk and make a noise but the lesson will be learned for any future potential acquisition, - do not replace one monopoly with another.

Was he looking sideways at Thatcher when he said it?

He was trying to warn us way back then.

Ted Heath, our last real Social Democratic PM.

Who‘da thought?

 

[Mick P]

Are you quite sure Mick? You sound less and less like it recently. You’re to the left of Starmer these days.

Come on, Starmer is a Tory and that's why he will win the next election.

Privatisation is a good tool if it takes a flabby state owned industry such as electricity, gas and telephones into the private domain. There was competition to compel price reductions and service improvements in these privatisations and they can be judged a success.

However, Mail, Rail and water have been a total flop.

Those who took part need to suffer and taking their shares off them without recompense will teach them to be more moral in the future.

 

[Mick P]

Was he looking sideways at Thatcher when he said it?

Thatcher was strongly opposed to privatising the Royal Mail.

 

[ks.234]

Thatcher was strongly opposed to privatising the Royal Mail.

She was indeed, but only because she saw Headlines about privatising the Queen. As it has happened, there has been no major backlash to privatisation ever since.

Here opposition was strategic, not principled.

Besides, all she had to do was wait a few years for those other filthy, rampant, duplicitous, thieving, moral vampires and Tories in disguise, the Lib Dems, to do her dirty work for her.

 

[paulfromcamden]

Those who took part need to suffer and taking their shares off them without recompense will teach them to be more moral in the future.

No need for confiscation. Thames Water's largest investor announced last week they had written off their entire investment and considered it worthless.

Make it clear there will be no bailouts and a lot of these firms will quickly have a market value of sfa.

 

[ks.234]

Those who took part need to suffer and taking their shares off them without recompense will teach them to be more moral in the future.

Morals do not figure.

They should. But they do tend to get in the way of business, so best just look at the balance sheet

 

[Mick P]

Yes, but only because she saw the backlash to privatising the Queen, as it has happened, there has been no major backlash to privatisation ever since.

Here opposition was strategic, not principled.

Besides, all she had to do was wait for those other filthy, rampant, duplicitous, thieving, moral vampires and Tories in disguise, the Lib Dems, to do her dirty work for her.

There has been a continuous backlash to all privatisations. Some justified, others not. The LibDems fiddled their expenses more than any other party (pro rata) and sold their principles just to run around in a government limo for five years.

The people you should be blaming are those who bought the shares knowing that because they were buying into a monopoly, they were on to easy money with little risk.

 

[Mick P]

Morals do not figure.

They should. But they do tend to get in the way of business, so best just look at the balance sheet

Privatisations are done for the public good. They bring private money into to government coffers and make the industry concerned more efficient.

The moral aspect was not to privatise certain industries.

 

[ks.234]

Privatisations are done for the public good.

Moral considerations literally do not figure

They bring private money into to government coffers and make the industry concerned more efficient

The overall transfer of money is from public funds to private enterprises.

For numbers and stuff here’s another plug for this book recommended @Somafunk

The moral aspect was not to privatise certain industries.

No, it really was fear headlines like this in The Mail

Royal Mail Privatisation: The prospect of the Queen's head juxtaposed with Virgin ought to offend all who care about her dignity

It was right to privatise British Rail, Coal and Gas. But forgive me, in the case of Royal Mail, if I don’t rejoice with my fellow capitalists and wave the true blue Tory flag with my political compatriots.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Finnegan]

Privatisations are done for the public good. They bring private money into to government coffers and make the industry concerned more efficient.

Piffle and balderdash. The selling off of the public utilities was done as a consequence of Thatcher and her guru Keith Joseph‘s ideological opposition to public ownership. Efficiency was not a consideration. It was enacted solely to enable a bunch of spivs to become extremely rich at the expense of the majority.

In short, profit was privatised, debt was nationalised.

 

[ks.234]

I joined the PO in 1982 and by then it was making a damn good profit. I was with it for 22 years and they made a loss of £450mm for one year only.

What is the price of moral objectives?

There are arguments to be made for some privatisation, but taken overall those that have happened since 1979 have failed any moral test by bloody miles. It’s almost as if there isn‘t any!

 

[ks.234]

Piffle and balderdash. The selling off of the public utilities was done as a consequence of Thatcher and her guru Keith Joseph‘s ideological opposition to public ownership. Efficiency was not a consideration. It was enacted solely to enable a bunch of spivs to become extremely rich at the expense of the majority.

In short, profit was privatised, debt was nationalised.

Twas always thus.

Except when it wasn’t.

 

[Tony L]

We need to teach these shareholders who buy into an infrastructure without any competition a lesson that will be long remembered and that is to take the shares back without any compensation.

We need to teach thieving corrupt Tory scum a lesson, ideally with fire.

The Conservative Party created all this mess. They own it outright.

 

[ks.234]

There has been a continuous backlash to all privatisations. Some justified, others not. The LibDems fiddled their expenses more than any other party (pro rata) and sold their principles just to run around in a government limo for five years.

The people you should be blaming are those who bought the shares knowing that because they were buying into a monopoly, they were on to easy money with little risk.

That would require regulation, which wont happen.

Privatisation and deregulation go hand in hand with fat fingers first to the public purse. Those hands are Tory.

I’ll blame the architects of the problem first and foremost.

 

[paulfromcamden]

I think the real innovation has been the privatisation of Parliament.

For just a few hundred grand (brown envelopes optional) anyone can now buy an MP.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

There has been a continuous backlash to all privatisations. Some justified, others not. The LibDems fiddled their expenses more than any other party (pro rata) and sold their principles just to run around in a government limo for five years.

The people you should be blaming are those who bought the shares knowing that because they were buying into a monopoly, they were on to easy money with little risk.

People who live in glass houses, Mick...

SSE raise prices

For flips sake, SSE are putting up their prices by 8% How the hell do they get away with this shite when the inflation rate is just 2.7% and CPI is 2.8%

pinkfishmedia.net

 

[ks.234]

Privatisations are done for the public good. They bring private money into to government coffers and make the industry concerned more efficient.

The moral aspect was not to privatise certain industries.

I have taken this to be sarcasm, now I wonder

Genuine question, do you really believe this to be true?

 

[Mick P]

I have taken this to be sarcasm, now I wonder

Genuine question, do you really believe this to be true?

The answer is yes.

Firstly, the money raised by the new shareholders goes into the UK coffers. That is a fact.

The morality question is simple. If a privatisation is in a utility that is operating in a competitive field, then the competition lowers prices and increases efficiency. That happened in the electrical, gas and telecom sell offs. That is a morale sell off.

The immoral sell off is for the Royal Mail, Water boards and Railways. The was one monopoly replacing another. Thus prices have stayed high.

The worst one was the Royal Mail which was a good world class organisation that was sold by Labour headed by Peter Mandelson and Cameron had no option to finish it off and delegated it to Vince Cable one of the LibDem coalition members.

So it's not all Tory, Blair/Brown/Mandelson/Cable were the key players in the Royal Mail sell off.

 

[ks.234]

The answer is yes.

Ok

Firstly, the money raised by the new shareholders goes into the UK coffers. That is a fact.

We need to see the other side of the balance sheet in order to make a value for money judgment even if only in simple accountancy terms

The morality question is simple. If a privatisation is in a utility that is operating in a competitive field, then the competition lowers prices and increases efficiency. That happened in the electrical, gas and telecom sell offs. That is a morale sell off.

Yes, I understand the theory, but it all hinges on the “if”. So many economic models start off with an if, then a load of maths in which the if gets lost. And “if” something does go wrong, it is just a question of tweaking the maths.

Sometimes it’s the “if” that is wrong

The immoral sell off is for the Royal Mail, Water boards and Railways. The was one monopoly replacing another. Thus prices have stayed high.

They’re all sell offs done for the same reason, to say one is moral and the other not. Unless you measure morals on outcomes. In which case how do you measure those outcomes? How do you measure, and more important, what are you measuring?

If you are also including moral outcomes, which ones? Whichever ones you choose will require regulation and investment, the unit cost will go up.

It will never happen because cutting investment and regulation are the very tools of privatisation

If you have moral concerns, you have been voting for an amoral ideology in privatisation. It was brought in to edge out investment and regulation, not bring it in.

The worst one was the Royal Mail which was a good world class organisation that was sold by Labour headed by Peter Mandelson and Cameron had no option to finish it off and delegated it to Vince Cable one of the LibDem coalition members.

So it's not all Tory, Blair/Brown/Mandelson/Cable were the key players in the Royal Mail sell off.

I have said all along the it all started to go tits up in 1976, not 1979. It was Callaghan who turned his back on the ideas of government investment and regulation in Blackpool