Oh god ..politics.......boring as ever. Can someone please direct me to the "Religion" thread..........
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions from that. By inserting the words 'New Zealand debt clock" into the Google search engine (other search engines are available), I found this: http://http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/newzealand
In today's news, 19 British water companies made profits in 2013 totalling £2.05 billion and paid just £74 million in Corporation Tax, whilst paying dividends to shareholders totalling £1.86 billion. Meanwhile, the East Coast Mainline is to be handed back to the private sector after being successfully, and profitably, run by the public sector since 2009 following two private sector failures. Why don't we take all the Utilities and the Railways back into public control?
I agree with you on this one. Consumers need protecting from utility companies and it could be argued that a consolidated whole would have more influence over prices coming from the continent while being given the right focus on moving towards renewable energy targets. The trains are a careful balancing act between making (some) money and providing the most viable alternative to the road travel. I suffer repeatedly at the hands of Arbellio Greater Anglia who always favour goods trains over passengers and have a spectacular lack of ability to notify customers (either in advance or actually at the stations (I could go on a lengthy rant at this stage). I wouldn't say that a government run train service would necessarily proritise passengers but a balance in tergets between utilisation, satisfaction and profitability would at least have a positive affect on the whole service.
Of course, we have an outstanding record of running efficient, customer friendly and self sufficient nationalised industries. We have armies of state paid regulators to sort this stuff out. They should get on with it. Windfall tax/ reduced prices for the water companies, fare capping and poor performance fines for the railways.
Its the fact that these train and utility companies are invariably owned by the french, german, dutch nationalised train and utility companies (who plough the profits back into their own systems for improvements and reducing costs) that gets me.
I don't think the nationised versions were worse though. I can stand on the third busiest station in Suffolk (not exactly a bustling metropolis but it is manned during office hours) while train after train gets cancelled with nothing more than a tannoyed robot thanking me for my patience with no hint of a resolution or bus replacement. Laughable excuses like "This train was delayed due to transferring passengers from another train." Read as another train was late. I've had customer services telling me to get home as best as I can (and that was a helpful one). The throng of impotent watchdogs is as much comfort as the rest of the management levels that New Labour shoehorned into all public sectors without any tangible returned (and massively stretched resources that they introduced, usually at the expense of the lower paid staff who actually did the jobs). A legacy of red tape and talkers.
British trains have always been expensive and unreliable mate, no matter who runs them. For a brief period (mercifully) I commuted from Retford in Nottinghamshire to London. It was hellish and completely random if the trains would arrive or depart on time. Couple of weekends ago I went from Berlin to Wolfsburg 150 km, in a hour, train got up to 247 kmph at one stage. It cost 25 euros return. And bottles of Berliner Kindl Pilsner were 3 euros from the buffet. I think most European railways are heavily subsidised (as, amazingly, are ours) and I think its worth it. Costs me 6.5 euros to get to the centre of Brussels from the airport by train, whereas to Paddington from Heathrow its £20 something. Same distance. Our infrastructure is knackered, we can't carry more passengers, and apparently the only alternative is to spend tens of billions on things like HS2. I don't mind paying for quality, which is why I rarely use trains in the UK. I'd rather sit in a traffic jam. I am taking the Chiltern Line down for the match on Saturday, because I intend to drink a bit, and that is costing £34.00, more than the match ticket. We used to be the best in the world at this kind of stuff, engineering and things.
Too many wrong decisions made in the past as part of the typical British "Yah-Boo" politics have ruined the so many facets of Utilities, Transport, Education etc that we are too far gone to put it right now...
The regulators are toothless. We are being royally ripped off by utility cartels that are largely foreign-owned. Sometimes 'the market' just doesn't work. Some industries are natural monopolies and should be publicly owned.
Indeed. the railways were nationalised in the first place due their financial problems, across the world railways in general need to be subsidised to run in an efficient manner so nationalisation is the only logical way. As for utilities water is the worst, in London one gets a single bill from Thames Water but down here in white van land we get two each greater than Thames water with the waste water bill (based on water meter readings) greater than the actual water bill. Then there's RBS.
But you also get large, aggressive, parrot like things, boiling mud and earthquakes.........actually NZ is probably the most beautiful country I've visited, sounds like you've got a bargain Kiwi.
Ok, lets nationalise/ renationalise all of these critical industries. But can we get the Germans in to run them? This would include pretty regular strikes, and creations of Works Councils (a very good idea, in my view), so not all beer and skittles for customers. Re electricity and gas, you'll be paying more in most of the rest of Europe - scroll down to the charts in this: http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25200808 Can't find any comparisons on water.
In the UK, the price of energy including margins is 58%, distribution is 26%, energy taxes 11% and VAT 5%. Compare this with Copenhagen, where the cost of energy comprises less than a fifth of bills while taxes make up more than half. They may be paying more, but most is in tax, which goes back to the exchequer. Here, most of the charge is the price of energy including margins.
Good spot, I only looked at the pictures. Though I suspect the consumer looks at the total and if you asked them to accept Copenhagen prices and told them the profit magin for suppliers would go down but taxes would rise by 400% you would get a pretty robust answer. Looks like plenty of space for a middle way though.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with such high levels of taxation on energy Stan, but I'd rather that than have so much go in profits to shareholders.
It seems difficult to judge exactly, but I get the feeling a decent percentage of the extra money across Europe is put back into future proofing against further price rises through investment in renewable energy generation. If I haven't just wildly invented my interpretation, then I agree with that extra cost in principle although the extra financial burden would be too much. That said, the usual pre-election buying of votes could start with worse initiatives than government financing that gap (with an expected return years on, after renewable energy passes some break even point and before consumers see any benefit). I think that my expectations of the government (in terms of mobilising and enforcing such a scheme) are unrealistic and largely unfair though. I'd also guess that my hopes for a renewable future are a bit fanciful too. NB I've just looked up the average consumption per capita, per country and was surprised that the UK is pretty low for Europe (beaten mainly by warmer climate countries and the underheated Latvians and Lithuanians (as per the original BBC link). So, with lower price per unit and lower consumption, perhaps we are mistaken about how bad we have it (or perhaps we really are planning less for the future than other countries for the sake of cheap election buying promises). List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
