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Renationalisation
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I think it's about time the main industries came back to central control. When Thatcher killed industry, she had nothing to back it up and I see the social and economic fallout from this everyday. I'm sure she could've had her Libertarian revolution without antagonising the Unions or wrecking peoples lives.
In 1997, I thought "thing really can only get better".
Labour has let the old working classes/lower middle classes down big time.
We've seen our Steel industry fall into Dutch hands and wither away.
The railways have without a doubt got worse under privitisation.
Our car "industry" is now either directly or indirectly in foreign hands.
Labours spin on the employment figures is a below the belt blow.
Steelwork used to be a well paid job, it still is where it exists.
So why are those who could be building the foundations for a future Britain now working in McJobs?
We have a great economy now, but we could secure our future when the consumer bubble bursts by renationalising the hard industries.
In 1997, I thought "thing really can only get better".
Labour has let the old working classes/lower middle classes down big time.
We've seen our Steel industry fall into Dutch hands and wither away.
The railways have without a doubt got worse under privitisation.
Our car "industry" is now either directly or indirectly in foreign hands.
Labours spin on the employment figures is a below the belt blow.
Steelwork used to be a well paid job, it still is where it exists.
So why are those who could be building the foundations for a future Britain now working in McJobs?
We have a great economy now, but we could secure our future when the consumer bubble bursts by renationalising the hard industries.
0
Comments
And why is there THE NEED to renationalise former state utilities??
2. Because the emphasis is put in improving the service, not in lining the pockets of shareholders
Economically she was. Socially she was an authoratarian.
Because the national infrastructure should not be in private hands. It should be run for the benefit of society,
That said, I have never understood why services affecting the whole national infrastructure, and water particluarly, are better served by private business
There have been too many incidents to mention where the pure greed of private companies has had a negative impact in the service provided. From the water company that reduced the pressure of the water when being told to reduce the amount of water lost through leaks instead of spending money repairing the network... to the train service that cancelled all weekday services to some Welsh town because "the curvature of the station makes it impossible for trains to stop and receive passangers". Incredibly weekend services were left running, presumably because at weekends the station mysteriously straightened itself... :rolleyes:
I might argue the case for BA... but no water, train, bus, underground, health, air traffic control service should be run by private enterprises.
Another argument is whether things are now getting worse than they were 3 years ago. But for the first 4 years of the Labour government there were improvements everywhere... and in some areas there are still improvements today.
My grudge against New Labour is not so much against their domestic record as their foreign policy, humilliating submission to a certain other nation and thier abandonment of left wing politics.
New Labour failed to drastically improve public services in the first term. Their only acheivements in this period were constitutional ones like devolution, Human Rights Act, removal of most of hereditary peers, etc.
As with everything, there are good and bad things.
Take railways. Whilst everyone is bleating about how expenisve the railway is, nobody takes a moment to look at GNER, who operate the main London- Leeds- Newcastle- Edinburgh line. They have increased services, brought in new trains, and pay £20million a year to the Treasury. But the success is always conveniently forgotten.
A lot of industries that were privatised were right to be. British Airways are better as a private company, Rover are better as a private company, BAe are better as a private company. The coal is no worse in private hands than it was in national hands, despite the moaning of the NUM; the telecom industry is no worse in private hands, and nor are the suppliers of gas and electricity.
However, a lot of things should never be about profit. The postal service shouldn't be, the water shouldn't be, the gas and electricity infrastructure shouldn't be, and nor should the railway infrastructure. I'm still undecided about the buses, to be quite honest; the buses are crap, but no worse than in the days of the National Bus Company. National Express have certainly improved since privatisation, at any rate.
Unfortunately it does depend on whether you believe that the state should provide literally everything, and hang the expense, or if private initiative is better. In key services, such as education, health, the utilities and transport as a general rule nationalisation is the way to go; in industry and the service sector privatisation is the way to go. Like it or not, profit is the only incentive people have to do well and be efficient; look at Rover now, and compare them to the pathetic, militant, British Leyland.
The Unions had had to coming to them for fifteen years, and they deserved what happened to them. People were sick and tired of three-day weeks, of having no heating during the winter, of having their electricity turned off at 10.30 in the evening. People were sick of the militant Unionists bending the country over a barrel in the name of pure greed, and people were sick of being held to ransom so that the unionists could get their huge pay rises, paid for by extortionately high levels of taxation.
The Unions deserved to be killed off, because they thought that they were a law unto themselves. Thatcher told them that they were not, and made them behave.
It is regrettable what has happened since then, especially in the former mining areas, but the NUM caused it with their illegal strike. By the time the NUM realised that they had lost all the power stations had switched to Romanian and Australian coal because it was cheaper and could be relied upon to arrive.
I do think the balance has swung too far the other way now, and workers and jobs are not protected like they should be, but the simple fact is that trade unionism has no place in a decent society, because it is all about holding the country to ransom until they get their own way. Sometimes I support the cause of the strikers, like with the Fire Brigade, sometimes I think the strikers should be instantly dismissed to teach them a lesson about greed, but the fact remains that a decent country cannot afford to be held hostage by a small group of people, like it was in the late 1970s.
Apropos of nothing, for the first three years of the Labour administration it was Conservative spending and taxation plans that were followed. And much as the most rabid Labour supporter would try to deny it, it's all in black and white. The only major distractions from this were the issue of university funding, and then Blair brought in tuition fees and loans not grants, something that even Thatcher had the decency to avoid; and the issue of welfare payments to single mothers, that were cut drastically.
And I haven't even got around to mentioning PFI, fraud and corruption going right to the door of No. 10, the dismembering of the House of Lords to suit Princess Tony's political ambitions (a HoL with no power suits Bliar right down to the ground, don't expect any change in a hurry), the fiasco of Frank Field being told to "think the unthinkable" then being sacked for doing so, and so on...
Now, as far as I'm concerned they don't go far enough. But that was just about the only true Labour policy introduced, and the most significant.
They've at least started to reform the Lords (though again, the reform doesn't go far enough) and implemented devolution. And regardless of the free market fundamentalists' cries to the contrary, the NHS is improving.
More remarkable achievements than I can think of in 18 years of Tory rule.
however things where the companies have virtual monopolies and that we neeed ALL over the country, ie railways, house to house postal services, water
and kermit said about GNER, okay their trains are crap but im sure when BR was around they were just as bad but least GNER are reliable etc
that is why i dont see why the underground had to have PPP because it actually made quite a profit everyyear, going back into london government so i dont see why its better off in shareholders pockets
British Rail proved it could run its trains on time, keep its rolling stock in good condition and mantain the railways in operating condition without breaking sweat.
For every 'successful' story of an efficient private train operator there are dozens of horror tales of innefficiency, delays and cancellations. And let's not forget the immense subsidies the private companies have received since privatisation (without which they would have gone bankrupt rather rapidly) and the massive hikes in ticket prices they have been allowed to carry out. And all of that for zero improvement in most services and an actual deterioration in some.
Those responsible for train privatisation should suffer a slow and painful death.
GNER have just spent £10million refurbishing all their trains that were bought just before privatisation by British Rail. GNER paid for it.
Aladdin, the actual TOCs are an irrelevance when it comes to the privatised railway. The TOCs don't tend to get much more subsidy than they did under British Rail, rural lines need heavy subsidy regardless of who operates them. The big cost of rail privatisation has been elsewhere- the TOCs are a smokescreen.
What you won't read in the papers is why the TOCs need to be subsidised more. Under British Rail the trains were owned by the people who ran them, i.e. BR, but Major, in his infinite wisdom, sorry, moronicness, decided to sell all the rolling stock to leasing companies, and then get the TOCs to rent them back. A two-carriage class 142 "Pacer" (the ones that are a bus on train wheels) costs nearly as much to rent for a year now as it did to build the damn thing in the first place. The extra subsidy is going into the back pockets of, among others, the HSBC, who own one of the leasing companies.
The other big cost hike has been infrastructure. British Rail did all it's own engineering, and it was cost-effective- the East Coast Main Line was electrified and modernised for a fraction of the cost of the West Coast "modernisation", and it was done to time and to budget. But when Railtrack was privatised it "out-sourced" all it's engineering division to our good friends at Jarvis and Balfour Beatty, and, would you believe it, costs shot up as quality shot down. Railtrack couldn't choose another company to do it as all the old BR staff were now at Jarvis and Balfour, so market forces meant those companies could charge what they wanted, and they did.
The Underground privatisation won't make the same mistake, because the lines are being leased off lock, stock and barrel, rather than in little pieces; but because of that, there doesn't actually seem to be much point in doing it at all.
Basically PFI is the Governmental version of "buy now, pay later". It means they don't have to find the money now, and they don't have to borrow now- just pay a private company back for building the hospital, school, tramway, whatever. And we will pay it back- several times over.
And that goes for all the political parties, not just the Conservatives. When huge swathes of the national rail network were closed in the 1960s it was under a Labour government, though everyone seems to forget that Beeching was a Labour appointee brought in to "inspire better business practices".
Two words: European Union. If the minimum wage hadn't been part of the Social Chapter we wouldn't have one.
They haven't started to "reform" the HoL at all, they've just hacked all the opponents of Labour out of it. Blair won't take the reform any further because it isn't in his interests to; the rump HoL has lost it's teeth.
Though I will grant you devolution, it hasn't exactly been a total success. Will the Cardiff Bay building ever get built?
If getting rid of an ante-diluvian system whereby people earned their right to become Lords and sit in the chamber by accident of birth is not a reform, you tell me what it is.
Blair might have done it for the wrong reasons, but a reform was indeed needed. Who can deny that Lords were an elitist, closed chamber deeply out of touch with public opinion and completely unfair in the way new members were chosen?
No, probably not... And the devolution hasn't been perfect either (the issue of Scottish MPs voting on English issues in parliament remains, for instance).
The reforms have been imperfect (some of them highly imperfect) but they are welcome developements nonetheless.
And let's not forget the odious Section 28, finally repelled despite fierce oppostions from the usual suspects.
Still, I'm still deeply unhappy with some of the government's domestic record (I won't even mention the foreign policy), such as their broken promise to renationalise the railways or their lack of muscle in pushing through a ban on fox hunting. But I still believe they have achieved more for Britain than the Tories had in the previous 18 years.
Things were better under the Torys too which no Labour member could deny ... like reformation of the unions. So it's all swings and round-a-bouts really ...
'Some' areas perhaps but not the majority of areas. The best thing that Labour has done was pass the responsibility of keeping inflation down to the Bank of England. Everything else they have touched seems to have turned to dust in spite of higher taxation etc
My grudge is that they cannot sort out this country first before trying to sort out the business of others ...
Not according to polls of NHS patients ...
The Torys got hugely arrogant over their three terms and deserved to lose. But they certainly put this country back on the right track after Labour and the Unions reduced the country to some third world state.
So the casualisation of labour, steady erosion of job security and employment rights, destruction of industry, rise of sweatshop conditions call centres etc etc. which were all a direct result of Thatcher's economic policies are a good thing? :eek: :rolleyes:
For what I've been hearing practically every report on the NHS in the last two years have shown improvements across the board.
At the risk of sounding patronising, asking the public or patients questions such as "do you think the NHS (or any other service) is improving?" a lot of people are going to say 'no' as an automatic response. It's what so many of us appear to do without thinking about it: assume that things were always better in the past and complain about it.
Is that what I said? Hmmmm .... must have been a different post then.
What I thought I indicated was that the crushing of the confrontational, Marxist unions that bought misery to almost all Britons was a good thing. The Tory's problem was that they went to the other extreme ... but this was still far preferable to the times of the Winter of Discontent etc
That would be what you have been hearing from Labour no doubt ...
That is patronising. They are entitled to vote so they should be entitled to complain when it's justified.
And why should we not complain just because it's not fashionable to be tired of Labour? Don't forget Eccleston, Keith Vaz, Mandelson, the underselling of our gold reserves, stealth taxes etc etc ... and culminating in a war that we did not want. Life is not really any better under Labour.
Where the best solution lies I'm not sure. I would say a fully elected second chamber, or at least the complete eradication of hereditary peers.
This 'good old days' attitude is well documented and ever-present, and applied equally to areas where improvements have been made as much as areas where things have indeed gone worse. It's just the way we are.
The reports in question have been released over the last year or so. Some of them undoubtedly come from the government and some come from independent watchdog bodies. MoK has posted several of such reports, and the majority seem to indicate that things are indeed getting better across the board.
Bear in mind that for every 'patient left in trolley for 18 hours' incident plastered gratuitously on every tabloid there are a hundred unreported cases of excellent performance and praise from patients. Unfortunately these cases don't sell as much copy and don't serve certain agendas well, so they're ignored.
Surely your not suggesting it would be better to have a second house providing checks on the executive that were all selected by the executive themselves? That's not a step in the right direct, it's the very worst outcome. I can't help feel you'd have more chance of convincing a lord who got his seat 500 years ago of something that was wrong in a government bill than a member who was appointed last Tuesday by Blair.
Be nice to see local elections that banned all political party involvement or PR.
Thatcher was a typical socialist and she shared all Marxist hate to individual freedom. The only thing that stands her above other European and British politicians is her intellect. She understood clearly the deepness of the ditch UK was rolling into and she didn’t want British parasitic classes to lose their incomes because they would have to feed on a poor population. I don’t know whether she knew about sad experience of Argentina and Uruguay ( one of the main lessons of 20th century… that nobody wants to learn from) but her strategy was right and she managed to add a drop of living blood to the dying body of welfare state. That saved UK from falling into Third World and made it much more dynamic, growing and prosperous society than its European stoned neighbours France and Germany. That also made her a hero among many politicians, journalists, economists over the world. She was and she is like a teacher for many progressive-( as they think about themselves) -thinking intellectuals in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.
The world is getting smarter and its ruling castes are not exception. Old-fashioned “leaders of the people” trying to “turn the country into one big factory” look like monsters nowadays, rulers of Thatcher and Pinochet style are in favour in any corner of the world while Mussolini-Roosevelt type looks idiotic for non-European intellectuals and can earn applause only in Euro-Politburo ( and its small subdivisions like British Parliament). It took seven thousand years only from pharaoh Hufu to Maggie Thatcher to realize that a fat cow gives more milk… really a progress.
But how can people name her a libertarian? It’s above my understanding. Is this a result of mental laziness, state-controlled education, complete absence of life experience, media brainwashing or anything else? Her modest reforms in ways of governing are named ’privatisation’, ’free market economy’, ’revolution’ even…
Are You ( I don’t mean The Sole Liber of course) SERIOUSELY Think Margaret Thatcher Was A Free-Market Libertarian?