What will history's verdict be on the privatisation of everything over the over the last 40 years or so? For decades it's been an accepted fact, that private enterprise can run anything way more efficiently, dynamically and cost effectively than stodgy old, state control dinosaurs. Plus the bonus of big incomes from the sell offs, which can be spaffed on political sweeteners and a penny off a pint etc. When it was happening, we lefties pointed out that the idea of running vital services for maximum profit rather than as a service would be disastrous. Nobody was interested. Our arguments were just seeds on stony ground. Many were just interested in making dirty cash and boasting about how their gas shares had made them over £37 on the first day! Is there anyone left who would like to argue that it was a fine idea? Anyone like to point out the privatisation success stories?
I have always been of the opinion that essential services, where there is very little opportunity for real competition, should be in the hands of the government. Water and power are the obvious ones. But, with the need for safe and affordable public transport and the push for a greener society, I think Rail and buses should have remained in government ownership. The driving (excuse the pun) force for both should be to maximise usage and service not profit. Perhaps even making some routes free to alleviate road congestion would be worth considering. If you balance the cost against the savings, in both reducing road delays and reducing greenhouse emissions, I think it could be a financial benefit for the country. No private company will ever consider that as a factor. The one "success" is telecommunications imho. If BT had continued to hold a monopoly as we moved into the mobile phone and broadband era I think we wouldn't have the relatively cheap and well run networks that we enjoy today.
What about things like the privatisation of prisons, the probation service, parts of the NHS - even the Building Research Establishment at Garston which failed so miserably at Grenfell in pursuit of keeping its customers sweet and the profits coming in. What about the post office? As for BT, they were planning to rip out all the old outdated copper cables and install a complete fibre optic cable network for the whole country. 4 factories around the regions would be making the cables. Then they got privatised and atomised. Who can say how things would be now if that sort of 'service' outlook had prevailed over these years, rather than a myriad of different shady companies wasting a great part of their effort and time on advertising and marketing. I reckon rather than being a success story, the privatisation of the country's communications network is only a 'possible' at the very best in terms of having made things better.
My grandfather had a sheep dog called Sid at that time. An extremely intelligent dog, even for a border collie. Whenever asked, he was adamant it would be a disaster. As usual, he has been proven correct.
Don’t worry soon advertising will brainwash the recycled poo water coming from your tap as a normal thing that has always been that way
Water was not nationalised until 1973. Before that it was a hotch potch of municipal and private companies running the water supply and sewage system. Watford council sold its water business to the Colne Valley Water company in 1971 to avoid it being nationalised and becoming part of Thames Water Authority. They used the money to build the original Woodside sports centre. it’s not ownership as such, but the regulatory framework around naturally monopolies that has failed. Until 1983 when the ten water authorities were privatised there was a regulatory framework that ensured that returns were reinvested in the industry. Basically the financial model was based on cost recovery. The last 30 years as seen venture capitalist strip money out of these companies. That’s the disaster.
I know people want to go back to ‘the good old days’ but I doubt they realised that might mean 16th Century sanitation levels.
I would prefer that ALL my money from my water bill went into updating the infrastructure as opposed to someone's bank account . Ditto Leccy , Gas etc.....
Are you some sort of dangerous Commie? Aren’t you in awe of the wonders of rampant ‘free’ (sic) market economics?
Lol! I just want the water utilities to work and for them not to pollute the rivers by filling them with untreated waste. If that makes me a Commie , then I'm a Commie !.
With the right turn of events I can totally see people saying this. All it would take is sewage in water to affect a poor area with lots of minorities, an MP deemed as left wing because they went to uni to be the face of the issue wanting to have cleaner water, and the government spending money on it in the same budget as raising fuel duty
As a concept? Maybe. As missmanaged by successive governments, in most cases yes. There are notable exceptions Telecoms as previously highlighted is one of them.
If the whole concept is flawed - i.e. running a vital service in order to make ever increasing profit - then I'm not sure how you manage it makes much difference. You say 'maybe' regarding the concept. Could you expand on this? What positives are there to privatisation? Where are the examples of these in practice? I gave my answer re telecoms previously. What a nationalised entity, investing for the national good and charging customers on as not for profit basis, may have been able to achieve in the information age is a complete unknown. I strongly think it would be more than 101 seedy assorted companies investing in marketing, promotions, advertising and undercutting one another on price by a few pennies on a product that in many cases around the country is still in 2024 a crappy, antiquated, century old ADSL copper line waving in the wind and with pigeons sitting on it.
You don't ask a plumber to rewire your extension and in the same respect government is not always best at providing services. British Telecom/GPO has transformed massively with respect to service levels and efficiency in an industry that is barely recognisable from pre-privatisation. If anyone on here can remember what it was like dealing with them back then they'll know what I'm talking about. Public sector efficiency and quality of service is an order of magnitude worse than anything that would be remotely considered acceptible in the private sector. Take it from soemone who has been involved in auditing both. Where the provision of non-emergency/essential services is concerned, a private contract with specialists running it, concerned with efficiency and effectiveness will always perform better than state control where money is no object as long as arbitrary targets are hit and if they're not hit there are no consequences. Where the private sector needs to be kept in check is with respect to proper regulation and management of the contracts otherwise the need for profitt overtakes the provision of service and the good old taxpayer gets shafted again. So I reiterate, as a concept privatisation isn't necessarilly a bad thing. The way successive governments in this country have structured and failed to run the contracts on the whole, is. It's down to the same old problem, **** politicians.
The telecommunications sector is a mess. Eye-wateringly expensive, poor service, contracts written with the consumer literally last in the list of priorities. We now pay an absolute fortune for telecommunications across a fractured marketplace. Not all the result of privatisation but comparing 1970s and 1980s public sector to 2020s private sector isn't necessarily a good one. Ditto Royal Mail / Post Office. Broken up, profit prioritised over service, now inefficient and expensive for the consumer. Fewer and fewer post office counters left to do basic services, meaning long queues. Do it yourself at home, they say, on websites that look like they were designed in the 1990s. Could say the same for trains. Expensive. Shambolic, exploitative ticketing. Little in the way of checks and balances. Ever tried dealing with any of the major companies in these sectors? Usually a terrible experience.
Do you genuinely think that is true of the water industry? Or the trains, for that matter? 'Acceptable'.
They're privatised industries that have been poorly regulated and contracts poorly managed which illustrate the point I am trying to make. Privatisation as a concept is fine. On the whole it's been fcked up A truly private company vs public sector is the yardstick. If you can properly regulate a privatised company and run it like a private company then that's the ideal. If you privatise it and then let them get away with whatever, abusing the monopolies they have then yes it will go **** up. The regulatory bodies on the whole are not fit for purpose. All opinion of course.
They also potentially illustrate the point that they would be better run publicly. Not sure you can prove it one way or the other, absent some abstract academic economic modelling.
Potentially of course. However my opinion and it is only that, is based upon my professional experiences auditing on an operational, service level and latterly financial & eficiency basis, where private sector operations are in a different league to some of the **** shows I've had the misfortune to look at in the public sector. The only ones that weren't, either no longer exist or in my opinion are not long for this world. You need an incentive to do a good job and a penalty if you do a bad one, doing the bare minimum should not be rewarded.
The problem is that truly private companies serve their shareholders. Their directors have two responsibilities above all others – to serve the shareholders' best interests and observe the law. I don't think private = bad, public = good. But I do think that inserting a profit motive into industries that are, above all, public services was a bad idea. Too many privatised public services have ended up having private dividends for shareholders and public subsidy from the taxpayer. The worst of all worlds and proof the model is broken.
Bare. It's perfectly possible to have incentives and penalties in public sector organisations, without the incentive/reward being directly financial. Thatcher, Major and Blair devoted much effort to precisely that.
Badger. In that case they did a **** job of it or ensuring the next pair of hands carried it on. Bit before my professional time I'm afraid.
Did they? I'd say most public services are now much more efficiently run than they were in the 70s and 80s.
70s and 80s is before my time. 90s and noughties they still don't compare to private sector so shudder to think what they are like if that is an improvement. Of course, on the whole and in my experience.
You can't expect every single public sector body to run exactly like the private sector, even assuming that that is a good thing to aim at. There's a reason they are still public.
