rail, water and energy re-nationalisation.

[Midlands Yellow 4,134]

On 29/06/2023 at 09:48, Mello Yello said:

Special Teflon coated people being rewarded (gargantuan salaries) for abject failure....Whereas the likes of normal folk would be out on our/their ear and more than likely fined....or depending on the ignorance or severity of our abject failure.....a possible custodial sentence....

Think of the stockholders, shareholders, dividends, perks and profits etc.....Who really cares about the customer?....

They say you have to pay the best salaries to get the best people.....'yeah right'.....

Sound familiar?....

Webber to a utility company? He’d fit in very well. 

[Barbe bleu 838]

15 hours ago, dylanisabaddog said:

 

And of course we have now been presented with an ideal opportunity to make investors think. It won't be taken. 

Im not sure it makes sense to go threatening investors. I agree with you thet utilities companies should be properly regulated ans that this might very well mean that shares get cheaper but no government is going to set put a policy that deliberately aims to drive down share prices in order to nationalise on the cheap.

I've not actually looked but I sternly suspect that labour is proposing some form of regulated middle ground whilst focusing criticism on 'tory incompetence'. If I am right, you should probably ask why a government in waiting would do so.  If I am wrong then I take it all back and extend my apologies for doubting you.

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

Nationalising the Utilities will not achieve what you are hoping for. There is nothing the government runs that runs well with the exception of the military and even there that is beginning to fall apart as the dreaded Diversity nonsense has reached to senior levels of our armed forces. The problem with Utilities is that while each service has a regulator Ofcom, Ofwat, Ofgen etc. the regulator simply isn't enforcing the regulations the the companies re supposed to follow. Nationalising the companies will have no effect unless regulators do there job properly. But I imagine the Ofwat staff are all working from home and never bother to visit a water company or check on processes. Some of us are old enough to remember the days when Utilities and Rail were nationalised and hey were even worse run than the companies today.

[dylanisabaddog 5,109]

7 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

 Some of us are old enough to remember the days when Utilities and Rail were nationalised and hey were even worse run than the companies today.

I'm not sure they were worse run but it wasn't great. But the big difference now is that the utility companies are largely foreign owned and the profits therefore leave the UK. So we are in a situation where our infrastructure is slowly crumbling due to a chronic lack of investment but the profits being made are leaving the country. If the companies were wholly UK owned it would be less of an issue but when you pay your electricity and water bills you are making the Chinese and French richer. And when you buy a train ticket you make the Dutch and Italians richer. Selling the utility companies was probably the single biggest political mistake ever made in the UK.

Unfortunately it's once again the younger generations that are going to pay to put it right. 

[Naturalcynic 691]

7 hours ago, dylanisabaddog said:

Unfortunately it's once again the younger generations that are going to pay to put it right. 

That’s been the way ever since income tax was brought in.  It’s the younger generations, i.e. those that are of working age, that always have to fund the rectification of previous failed policies. 

[TheGunnShow 6,151]

Privatisation basically only meant that foreign governments held shares in our utilities/transport. Nationalisation meant our own government owned them. It also meant that profits were privatised, losses weren't.

I don't much care for the state being the owner of last resort but if these companies really aren't doing the job properly then it might be an idea whose time has come.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

15 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Nationalising the Utilities will not achieve what you are hoping for. There is nothing the government runs that runs well with the exception of the military and even there that is beginning to fall apart as the dreaded Diversity nonsense has reached to senior levels of our armed forces. The problem with Utilities is that while each service has a regulator Ofcom, Ofwat, Ofgen etc. the regulator simply isn't enforcing the regulations the the companies re supposed to follow. Nationalising the companies will have no effect unless regulators do there job properly. But I imagine the Ofwat staff are all working from home and never bother to visit a water company or check on processes. Some of us are old enough to remember the days when Utilities and Rail were nationalised and hey were even worse run than the companies today.

So you really think services have improved?

[Worthy Nigelton 1,099]

Renationalise water, energy, BT, railways and virtually everything else that horrible witch privatised. Do it now and never sell them off again. The world has changed. It is not 1979 anymore and neoliberalism has failed spectacularly several times over. Bin it and never speak of it again. A huge arch to the economic left is coming in the next 10 years or so and there's no way of stopping it. Of that I am utterly convinced.

[Creative Midfielder 2,007]

16 hours ago, Rock The Boat said:

Some of us are old enough to remember the days when Utilities and Rail were nationalised and hey were even worse run than the companies today.

You may well be old enough but your memory clearly isn't very good if you actually think our Utilities were worse back then than they are now.

Not only that they weren't anything like as outrageously expensive as they are now - these privatised public services are a big part of rip-off Britain that could (and should) be taken back into public ownership - and if you think that public owned can't work better than privatised that I suggest you take a long hard look at the East Coast main line where the private franchises have repeatedly failed whilst in-between those failures a publically owned not-for- profit company ran it far better and more economically than any of the private companies.

Or alternatively you could just go for a dip in your local river.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Creative Midfielder

[Canary73 174]

For rail for example, you have to factor in the freight, open access and heritage operators alongside side those that operate under the contractual frameworks set by the governments in Cardiff, Holyrood and Westminster. Even in BoJo's Great British Railways reforms that were designed to bring track and train together under a single 'guiding mind', it foresaw the differing sectors continuing to exist. At the moment, decisions are being made on how much the governments are willing to fund for the operation, maintenance and enhancement of the network against the backdrop of an ever decreasing return from the farebox due to changes in working patterns.

If you bought back the interests of some or all of the private companies, you are then left with how much you are willing to spend over the short, medium and longer term. There isn't a lot of love for the railways within the Government and HM Treasury given the support it was given during Covid to keep trains running and they are keen to recoup as much of that as early as they can. 

[Creative Midfielder 2,007]

1 hour ago, Canary73 said:

If you bought back the interests of some or all of the private companies, you are then left with how much you are willing to spend over the short, medium and longer term. There isn't a lot of love for the railways within the Government and HM Treasury given the support it was given during Covid to keep trains running and they are keen to recoup as much of that as early as they can. 

As far as I can see there is no need to 'buy' back much, if anything, from the private companies. Network Rail is already back in public ownership, as are some of the train operating companies where the franchises have failed/given up or been cancelled due to failures in delivering the contracted services.

The rest of the train operating companies are time-limited franchises which will revert to public ownership in their own sweet time unless the franchises are renewed which they shouldn't be IMO. Although obviously decisions could be taken on a case by case basis if there were any genuinely well performing franchises. Genuine question - are there any that are really performing well, I can't think of one but I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility.

OK, that still leaves the train leasing companies and probably a few others that I've forgotten about but it seems to me that most of the problems lie within the franchised train operating companies and if we replaced them, even in a phased way as franchises expire, then our railways would be in a much healthier state and we would re-introduce some public accountability which at the moment is totally absent.

 

[nevermind, neoliberalism has had it 159]

On 29/06/2023 at 15:59, Yellow Fever said:

My real world commercial experience of 'not for profit' companies is that they are typically much more expensive for commercial services than normal 'for profit' ones! It's especially true of large government aided billion dollar/pound/euro enterprises.

they failed at Thames water and we will pay for their greed and inefficiencies. A debt free water company has been ruined. Most of the privatised companies are now filling CEO's/shareholders boots with more and more debts. Listening to mealy mouthed Stasi Starmer and his sidekick 'I was once a socialist W. Streeting' talking themselves into a corner created by US Health companies who ploughed funds into their campaigns, tells us that Labour has nothing different to offer than to sell off what is left of public services to private companies who are not accountable in the UK.

[Yellow Fever 3,861]

1 hour ago, nevermind, neoliberalism has had it said:

they failed at Thames water and we will pay for their greed and inefficiencies. A debt free water company has been ruined. Most of the privatised companies are now filling CEO's/shareholders boots with more and more debts. Listening to mealy mouthed Stasi Starmer and his sidekick 'I was once a socialist W. Streeting' talking themselves into a corner created by US Health companies who ploughed funds into their campaigns, tells us that Labour has nothing different to offer than to sell off what is left of public services to private companies who are not accountable in the UK.

I think Water and other 'natural monopolies' should indeed be state run/owned for reasons of control and accountability but I'm not naive about the economic efficiency of state run or indeed commercial 'not for profit' enterprises. The issue is usually one of bloat and complacency - no competitive pressure (or need to make a profit or in the case of Water a crap regulator) - leading to nice little earners for all involved. Have you tried to contact HMRC recently - 6 month delay last time I needed too. Too many people comfortably coasting. Can we out-source that and most of the civil service to an Indian call centre (half joking)?

[nevermind, neoliberalism has had it 159]

On 05/07/2023 at 09:53, Yellow Fever said:

I think Water and other 'natural monopolies' should indeed be state run/owned for reasons of control and accountability but I'm not naive about the economic efficiency of state run or indeed commercial 'not for profit' enterprises. The issue is usually one of bloat and complacency - no competitive pressure (or need to make a profit or in the case of Water a crap regulator) - leading to nice little earners for all involved. Have you tried to contact HMRC recently - 6 month delay last time I needed too. Too many people comfortably coasting. Can we out-source that and most of the civil service to an Indian call centre (half joking)?

can we outsource ourselves to a call centre, then we can make the decisions we most hate ourselves.

 

[Herman 9,877]

Don't go-a-swimming @keelansgrandad

 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

1 hour ago, Herman said:

Don't go-a-swimming @keelansgrandad

 

We have been discussing this for several months now amongst us good people of Kernow. To be honest, I have been using my hosepipe. Many others have as well and not one person has been fined. We will be having our annual summer bbq soon (weather permitting, its been raining!!!) and I may even fill up my hot tub so the great grandchildren have something to play in. If they did take anyone to court, there would be enough crowdfunding to pay the fine. And we would have our day in court.

We only have one reservoir that is not pretty full and that is notorious for its leaks. In fact one is 93%. I contacted SWW and asked if my bill would be reduced (I am not on a meter) as if I don't use my hosepipe, my veg and flowers will die. I was told to use a watering can. So as long as I take all day to water everything, I can use as much as I want.

We had a serious outfall recently and the excuse was it had rained hard and they had to get rid of the surplus. Of course it was the untreated surplus they got rid of.

Rather than invest in desalination, I can see the vast Atlantic from my house, they would rather invest it in the City. The sooner it is returned to public ownership and made virtually free the better.

[KiwiScot 1,504]

It's all to complicated for me, but public ownership in energy generation sounds a good idea otherwise what's the point.