Socialise the essentials.

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Salty seadog

Senior Member
Gas, electricity, water, healthcare and public transport.

All privatised with the common result of getting the lowest possible service for the highest possible price. Thank you capitalism. 👍

I've always maintained the idea that at the very least these essential services should be socialised.
I don't buy the line that is often trotted out that 'The private sector has the best expertise'.

Well, pay those same experts the money they need to provide the services needed and stop the pound notes flowing out of the industries into a few private wallets.
Change the incentive from making profits by draining the assets to providing the service.
 

mudsticks

Squire
Gas, electricity, water, healthcare and public transport.

All privatised with the common result of getting the lowest possible service for the highest possible price. Thank you capitalism. 👍

I've always maintained the idea that at the very least these essential services should be socialised.
I don't buy the line that is often trotted out that 'The private sector has the best expertise'.

Well, pay those same experts the money they need to provide the services needed and stop the pound notes flowing out of the industries into a few private wallets.
Change the incentive from making profits by draining the assets to providing the service.


And make access to (healthy nutritious) food a 'public good'.
And housing too.

As healthcare and education are.

ATM that's left entirely up to 'the market'..

And that has clearly failed in large part.
 
Gas, electricity, water, healthcare and public transport.

All privatised with the common result of getting the lowest possible service for the highest possible price. Thank you capitalism. 👍

I've always maintained the idea that at the very least these essential services should be socialised.
I don't buy the line that is often trotted out that 'The private sector has the best expertise'.

Well, pay those same experts the money they need to provide the services needed and stop the pound notes flowing out of the industries into a few private wallets.
Change the incentive from making profits by draining the assets to providing the service.
Hard to argue against this. Those that do would probably hark back to the era of waiting months for a phone line or gas installation but it doesn’t have to be that way. That was a management failure and nothing to do with the ownership model.

Competition and profit can stimulate better services in some markets but what we actually have is poorly regulated monopolies. Try engaging a new water and sewage supplier and see how you get on.

It feels as if most people instinctively agree with your proposal but are somehow easily scared when it comes to voting to make it happen. Thatcher’s lies still cast a long shadow.
 

ebikeerwidnes

Well-Known Member
The privately owned bits can work pretty well if the government sets up a proper regulator that sets up strict rules and has the power, ability and will to enforce it all.
Which would include - for example - being able to show that they have a business plan that allows for fluctuating gas prices without going bust

The problem with nationalised industries is that every time the energy prices go up it is a political matter and people blame the government rather than the price of the raw materials or wages
Then every time the workers want a wage increase it is also a political matter

so without strong politicians you end up with the industry costing everyone lots more money for a decreasing service level and quality

having as as privately owned utility controlled by a strong regulator should be a good option - where the government operates as a supervisor of quality and service
At least in theory

problem is that having a strict forward looking regulator affacts business and the companies involved can lobby to change the regulations - and on top of that some regulators can easily 'go native' and regulate to the advantage of the companies
which is where teh government neeeds to keep an eye on them

It is basically a good idea in an ideal political world
but then in an ideal political world you could nationalise the industry anyway with no problems

So maybe we need a proper string regulator supervised by a strong ministry - both of which watch carefully for the businesses and looking to the future in a carefully considered, moral, ethical and effective manner without politcal influence etc etc

hmmm - yeah - OK
 

Rusty Nails

Country Member
It is a good idea in theory but the problems occur when the theoretical meets the practical. The old nationalised (or socialised) industries were not well run and that made it easier for Thatcher's government to push its privatisation policies (that and greed on the part of big business and individuals).

That the state is not exactly well known for its ability to run big organisations is clear from the way the NHS is run and interfered with, the delays and overspend on major projects, or the well documented struggles to deliver major IT systems.

The fact that we seem to have a huge divide in the approach to nationalised/privatised organisations in our major political parties and that power regularly passes between them does not give me any confidence that a major program of "socialisation" would have the stability needed to work. I would like to see the Labour Party show that it has the ability to gain and keep substantial governmental power before embarking on such a program.

Until then it is theoretical pie-in-the-sky, no matter how laudable it is as an aim.
 

presta

Member
Professor Mildred Warner at Cornell has researched thousands of utilities all over the world, and found no systematic difference between public and private, one way or the other.

having as as privately owned utility controlled by a strong regulator should be a good option - where the government operates as a supervisor of quality and service
This is what's wrong with healthcare: HMG is funder, provider, regulator, inspector, investigator and prosecutor of the NHS. With HMG marking their own homework like that, there's little surprise that there's no accountability, and we have one scandal after another.

Here's an example of the sort of thing I mean, this is paragraph 7.69 of the PHSO (Health Ombudsman) Service Model Main Guidance:
1648911690518.png

So there you have it, if the bank robber tells the judge he's now stopped robbing banks, he gets off scot free.

And this is what that leads to, a PHSO caseworker, who's supposed to be an independent investigator, emailing the NHS Trust under 'investigation' coaching them on what to say:
1648912058152.png

Just good old-fashioned corruption.

The PHSO were referred to the Met Police on 32 counts of Misconduct in Public Office a few years ago, but the investigation had to be abandoned because the Police have no power of access to PHSO records. Why not? Well Hansard answers that question, here's the Parliamentary debate relating to the original creation of the PHSO:

“The Bill was always drafted to be a swiz, and now it is spelt into the Bill…………Anyone who contemplates an office of this kind is faced with the dilemma of making it either a Frankenstein or a nonentity—a Frankenstein if it has effective powers and a nonentity if it has not. The Government, quite rightly, has opted for its being a nonentity, and in that sense it is a fraud……… I congratulate the Government on its being a nonentity. A Frankenstein would, I think, have undermined the power of Ministers...... it is a noble facade without anything behind it

Hansard, 24th January 1967
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/jan/24/clause-5-matters-subject-to-investigation
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/jan/24/schedule-3-matters-not-subject-to

The Ombudsman is a fraud because Parliament wanted it to be.

That the state is not exactly well known for its ability to run big organisations is clear from the way the NHS is run and interfered with, the delays and overspend on major projects, or the well documented struggles to deliver major IT systems.
Not to mention the serial scandals. Just keep parroting "Lessons will be learnt" until the fuss dies down, then go back to business as usual.
 
Professor Mildred Warner at Cornell has researched thousands of utilities all over the world, and found no systematic difference between public and private, one way or the other.
An interesting listen but even if your statement is true I don’t know that garbage collection in Egypt and India is entirely relevant.

All things being equal I’d like any profits to be made available for investment rather than being shovelled into the accounts of rapacious capitalists.
 

qigong chimp

Settler of gobby hash.
Gas, electricity, water, healthcare and public transport.

All privatised with the common result of getting the lowest possible service for the highest possible price. Thank you capitalism. 👍

I've always maintained the idea that at the very least these essential services should be socialised.
I don't buy the line that is often trotted out that 'The private sector has the best expertise'.

Well, pay those same experts the money they need to provide the services needed and stop the pound notes flowing out of the industries into a few private wallets.
Change the incentive from making profits by draining the assets to providing the service.
Radical.
 

Unkraut

Master of the Inane Comment
Location
Germany
The old nationalised (or socialised) industries were not well run ...
I think that was generally true, although not all of them were run at a loss.

I have two friends who both experienced the change over from nationalised to private, namely the old Water Authorities and the railways. Regarding the former the complaint was how sleepy the staff were, no initiative just working by the rules. Regarding the latter, the attitude of old BR drivers to rules over having breaks - they put that first and getting trains out on time for the benefit of passengers second.

I worked very happily in local government for quite a while and I don't want to be too harsh on the public sector, but if jobs are overly secure because there is no need to make a profit to justify them then with the best will in the world this doesn't help with motivation to get on with things.
 

qigong chimp

Settler of gobby hash.
No, I'm all in favour.

Though I do think efficiencies could be made if we privatised and outsourced our political establishment.
 

Rusty Nails

Country Member
So he's gone from this...
View attachment 928 /energy
To this....🙄 I could think of better words than pathetic !

View: https://twitter.com/JamesEFoster/status/1509824251590852644?t=i1KlC_QmB1IZWksr_0gxlA&s=19

I agree that it is not that radical in reality...wehad it for a long time...but the political debate in this country is set up to make suggestions like that sound radical.
Starmer needs to be a lot more assertive in his statements, and get that poker from out of his a*se, and I have a feeling that the cost of living/fuel/energy crisis that we are heading into, could strengthen the moves towards nationalisation/common ownership/socialisation, whichever is the current preferred term.
 
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