BT was NOT propped up by the tax payer it was a net contributor to the exchequer to the tune of many tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds each year. Those of us that were adults will temember the sale well and dhould remember the profits BT produced.
The Toties sold our company (mine and yours) for a short term gain and in reality stole all the profits that eould have saved government borrowing so much. IT WAS OUR PROPERTY.
The railways were hopelessly underfunded and political cowardice - becsuse they wouldn’t find the money - were too cowardly to put up fares so they ‘sold’them out.
I use the word sold advisedly because they gave grants and tax breaks to those foreign goverments. And because business isn’t afraid they jacked up the prices. Showing the government were too gutless to do it.
But of course what happened was business wanted quick snd big profits despite government subsidies they and the track companies invested jack sh:t in health snd safety & maintainance resulting in two or three horrendous rail crashes and loss of life in the South East of England.
Not over-unionised but safety under-funded.
I am well into retirement snd lived through these events, so I am catsgorically saying this is not HOGWASH and it’s not FAKE NEWS.
I see you've picked up on my age, so you must have read my post about Labour taking away free university education.
I lived through privatisation too. In fact, I remember it well.
The idea behind the railways was that they'd go back to the pre-nationalisation system when the railways were entirely self sufficient. They also hoped to emulate a system that had been introduced in Sweden that had been very successful. The idea was that it would be of less cost to the taxpayer and increase investment in the railways.
As for BT, maybe that was unnecessary. But you do know that it was in 1997, under a Labour government, that the "Special Share" which allowed the government to block the takeover of the company and appointment two board members, was relinquished, don't you?
So with privatisation (which they both contributed to) and university tuition fees, both parties have done things that, at face value, haven't been in the interests of the general populace. So your argument that the Tories privatise things to financially benefit their mates doesn't follow. I mean, did Tony Blair bring in tuition fees to earn a few more quid for his mates that ran universities? There has to be a different reason for these unpalatable things being done. Such as they are financially necessary or will benefit the populace in the longer term.
So now we've seen that both parties do these unpalatable things, how can anyone cling to the false narrative that Conservatives = evil and Labour = good?
The truth is, both are trying to achieve broadly the same thing and all we can do is vote for the one that will be the least harmful for the next 5 years.
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