LutonSpurs
Eric Dear
Utilities should not be for profit. Not that I have huge trust in the government being able to build an efficient service (see the NHS). It's a tough one.
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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)
- Thread starter SpurMeUp
- Start date
Edf does fantastic for france. Norwegian publicly owned companies seem to do ok. Euro star was profitable.
Hong kong subway is very profitable while charging some of the lowest fairs in the world.
Silly McSilly Face
Pascal Chimbonda
Its simply a means of the government abdicating responsibility for having to raise revenue to tackle a problem while having some nasty neoliberal fatcats to blame for the failures rather than themselves
LutonSpurs
Eric Dear
Yeah state ownership works with competent people in government. Across the political spectrum we have very few exceptional people to to do this stuff.
Silly McSilly Face
Pascal Chimbonda
This is the thing. I dont like the public/private debate as the most important thing is to have good competent management. There are private companies that are poorly managed and end up going under (e.g. Debenhams). There are private companies that are really successful and well managed. Similarly there are NHS trusts and police forces that are highly competent and well run and then there are the basket case ones.
There was nothing stopping the government intervening in Thames Water over the last 35 years. Absolutely nothing. The failure of water privatisation is a failure of successive governments.
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Silly McSilly Face
Pascal Chimbonda
£85 billion over 35 years = £2.4 billion a year ÷ 23 water companies = £100 m a year per company which is about right in terms of what you'd expect from a large private company bearing in mind also that dividends are paid per share and shares purchase require capital to be injected to be able to call on dividends and so the real issue here isnt about this figure being out of line with what we should have expected in 1989 when privatisation happened but about how well managed our water and sewerage systems are....
Gutter Boy
Tim Sherwood
The difference is the motivate. Public service or profit maximisation. Do the people running it want to do good, or deliver the least for the most they can get away with
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Steffen Freund
That's golfist.
Why out golf club, why not just say club.
You play in Scotland, totally different sport in most of England and members are rightwing Tories.
The courses are owned by trump.
Silly McSilly Face
Pascal Chimbonda
With the motivation to do as you say comes something you dont get often with the public sector: efficiency. As I've said, ultimately while private companies may be awarded contracts to deliver public services, it is still a public service and the buck for this outsourcing arrangement stops with ministers who at any point can intervene if they believe performance is below expectations. Reality is that as I've said numerous times on here the contracts awarded were to keep the current performance "ticking over". The kind of infrastructure upgrades needed to handle the volume of sewerage now requiring processing were never in scope of those contracts and always a matter of central government strategy and funding. Its like expecting private rail operators operating the east coast main line etc to fund and build HS2. Er, no. Just as ministers hide behind privatisation of water to avoid their own responsibility so they blame private rail operators for issues when the infrastructure the trains run on has been under public ownership for years and HS2 is probably one of the biggest public sector rooster-ups of all time....
Bollox. The companies will look and see is it more beneficial to take the punishment.
We see it in football. Chelsea, forest took the ffp hits on purpose.
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Steffen Freund
He doesn't own the players.
Lol. The scotish are more right wing than the english. Nationalistic. They just vote for any party that gives them more sovereignty/money.
Silly McSilly Face
Pascal Chimbonda
Its not gonads. Government can nationalise or remove and re-reward these contracts at any time they want if performance is deemed unsatisfactory. So where does the blame for the current literal sh*t show ultimately lie?
They can.
Or they can just have tight regulations and punishments that hurt.
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Steffen Freund
I must be lucky I've never met a Scots racist or Tory
Not what i said.
Why would a nationalistic scot be a tory? You never met one that didn't like the english?
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Steffen Freund
Your hard lucky, my relatives seem to like me and I've never had a problem when I've visit on business, but I consider myself British and only English for sport.