Ok, as we seem to be in a more rational mind tonight, (****in' bewdy) is privatisation a benefit to the country, or should Nationalisation be the order of the day, in these global hard times?
On the coffee thread Grange vented his spleen about the sell off of state owned goodies, did he have a point, or was he spouting hot air?
I was spouting hot air as usual but there is an underlying serious point. British industries were on their knees and not very efficient in the late 70's and 80's. Thatcher had seen what the Unions had done to Ted Heath and used the winter of discontent as a back drop to the reforms she introduced. Miners, steelworkers, car workers, print workers - all run by head in the sand Trotskyist union leaders all took one hell of a beating (inserts football reference) and if it moved it got sold off. Fast forward a couple of decades and look at what the free market philosophy of the Thatcher era has done for us as a nation. She took a giant turd on the Scottish (poll tax, closing most heavy industries etc), now they want rid of us and are being given the chance of independence. Everyone leapt at the chance to buy their Council house and we now have a housing crisis. Along with owning your own home the Tories pushed for us all to buy shares ("If you see Sid, tell him") so that you could become proper snobs. And what happens when the banks were about to go tits up? The government bought them out thus creating a nationalized banking sector. When (not if) Cameron gets into sole power at the next election the Tories will off-load the NHS and we will become more like the Americans with separate contributions or insurances used to pay for health care. The days of walking into your Doctor for free treatment are numbered. The genie is out of the bottle and nobody is going to buy back these industries, we will have to look on as all the profits go to the international conglomerates who own them now.
As we all still pay for all of these ****ing privatised companies, just take them all back and tell the shareholders to go **** themselves.
I don't know enough about this stuff to know if the they were a large drain on the public purse when they were state owned. From what I've read, the reason for privatisation is because the industries concerned are bleeding money and needed to be sold off so that the moneys that were lost can now be used for real help. That of course means that no company is going to buy a business that will constantly bleed, so they have to take steps to turn things around. Costs then go up as a result. The question then is; Was more money saved by the sell off, than is now spent in more expensive services? I have not seen figures to support either argument.
It was a little strange when BT, British Gas etc were floated on the exchange. Everyone at the time who had a bit of spare cash could buy shares in companies that we already owned. So your average working person bought as many shares as they could afford, waited for the float, sold them for a big gain and got their holiday in Mallorca paid for. Now mainly the elite/rich own the companies and the future generation sold down the river. Same with council houses, something we already owned sold to tenents for peanuts leaving future generations ****ed. Most won't even get the profits of the house as inheritance because the elderly generatiion owning them will have to sell to fund their place in a nursing home when they can't look after themselves amymore. Thatcher is the obvious target to blame but the whole greedy bastard baby boomer generation have ****ed us and our children good and proper.
Interesting view from the Housing point of view. In the 80's Thatcher and the Tories attempted to off-load their responsibilities to the lower classed Council tenants by allowing them to purchase their properties at massively discounted rates. Even at the levels of property value in the 80's the discounts were substantial and, needless to say, hundreds of thousands of tenants opted to buy. This has resulted in massive housing price rises with all profits gone into the hands of individuals and not the state. The state still needed to provide social housing and got around needing to use Council houses (of which there were now far fewer) by getting Housing Associations to take on homeless people. All well and good when there were restrictions in place which prevented Housing Association tenants being able to buy their properties. That was until Cameron and the Tories changed the law to allow H.A. tenants to do exactly the same as Council tenants did 20 years ago. The result is fewer available properties and an ever increasing number of people requiring homes. The cost to the tax payer is homeless people moving in to private rented accommodation and being paid housing benefit. There have been horror stories of families being put up in mansions to the tune of thousands a month and it can all be traced back to the housing policy of the Thatcher regime. Should there be so many people expecting cheap housing? Do we have to house everyone? Are we collapsing under the weight of immigrants demanding to be given a house? All completely relevant questions. My own Borough are putting people up in what used to be Council houses which have been sold off then rented back to the Council at the going market rates. The leaseholders even get the Council to carry out any maintenance and repairs in the properties if they put a tenant in there. What they used to get £60 for in rent is now being given back for £300 a week or more depending on the location. The Free Market seems rather an expensive market to me. As I said, blame Thatcher, works like a charm.
