It is just staggering that we can even be thinking of discussing renationalisation and repeating all the old mistakes. This is all known stuff: so successful were Thatcher's privatisations in improving service, stimulating innovation, boosting the economy, and reducing costs that they were subsequently copied in almost every country in the world to varying degrees, except in North Korea and Cuba. Admittedly there has been some back-sliding in a few places, notably Venezuela, but that should merely serve to remind us of the consequences. Why on earth is anyone advocating it?
It is a natural consequence of man-on-the-street voter thinking when times are hard. The "JAMS" as Miliband put it.
People see things like gas and electricity, the Royal Mail, or the trains, as being essentials - nobody spontaneously thinks "ooh, I'll go out and buy a few more stamps today! and maybe a little extra gas..." ...nor do they generally wander up and down the railways for fun (Sunil - an execption).
Everyind of thinking that could easily propel Corbyn to power.
That's an excellent post, and says exactly how I feel about re nationalisation. It probably wouldn't work- as Josias points out, you just couldn't trust the government not to milk it to death, but people see the utilities as a basic human right nowadays, and paying some French company to give you a so-so service and rinse you for the privilege is starting to stick in the craw. Corbyn will ride that wave all the way in.
Usually a state owned French company.
Which UK rail routes are run by French companies?
SouthEastern, Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern
Perhaps JJs survey didn't cover their satisfaction adequately either.
What I think you will find is that even amongst the small number of strikes in the private sector most are within companies or industries that are formerly state controlled and where old attitudes prevail (in fairness the very low quality of management in former public sector bodies may also be a trigger). But these are the figures, even including Southern Rail.
In the 1970s pre Thatcher this country almost destroyed itself between recalcitrant and politicised unions and incompetent management. Thatcher changed that in many important ways and privatisation was an important part of that. Of course, as Joff would immediately point out, our management could still do with much improvement!
I remember the Seventies well, but Trade Unionism was not all bad. It was the Trade Unions that pushed for higher wages, job security, pension schemes, paid holiday, reasonable working hours etc etc. As a result, unionised workers were very well off by the late Seventies, and our Gini coefficient at its lowest level.
What the gig economy and ZHC needs most is unionisation to reverse the current exploitation of the workers. Waiting for trickledown from tax dodging billionaires and corporations is a mugs game.
I don't disagree although our Gini co-efficient has been relatively stable for the last 25 years and improved slightly recently.
Unions that stick to their knitting can be very useful and can even defuse potential problems. Unlike the 1970s the unions in the car industry are a good example of that. But that didn't happen when BL was a nationalised company. The mind set was wrong. Nationalisation=sense of entitlement= self indulgent work force and management= very poor service and value for the tax payer.
Friend of mine was beaten by pickets for trying to go to work.
Yeah - lets have some more of that sort of thuggish behavior.
A foreign state owned enterprise running UK rail routes. But I accept they are only 35%. So how about c2c 100% operated by Trenitalia. Children, Crosscountry, Northern, Wales, London Overground all 100% operated by a division of Deutche Bahn. Anglia, Scotrail both 100% operated by a division of NedRail.
We know nationalised rail works in the UK because the majority of franchises are run by the state railways of foreign governments
This is a brilliant, textbook example of muddled thinking.
The problem with nationalised industries is, as @DavidL pointed out upthread, that the incentives are all wrong. It's just too easy for unions, and management, to blackmail the government into providing more loot - no need to bother with tiresome hard work or difficult decisions, as is necessary to achieve steadily improving efficiency as the private sector has done year after year after year since the Thatcher reforms revitalised the British economy.
If the franchise is run by a foreign company, whether or not it is partly or even fully state-owned, the same distorting incentive doesn't apply, and it's still a commercial operation which needs to operate efficiently. That is the difference.
It is just staggering that we can even be thinking of discussing renationalisation and repeating all the old mistakes. This is all known stuff: so successful were Thatcher's privatisations in improving service, stimulating innovation, boosting the economy, and reducing costs that they were subsequently copied in almost every country in the world to varying degrees, except in North Korea and Cuba. Admittedly there has been some back-sliding in a few places, notably Venezuela, but that should merely serve to remind us of the consequences. Why on earth is anyone advocating it?
It is a natural consequence of man-on-the-street voter thinking when times are hard. The "JAMS" as Miliband put it.
People see things like gas and electricity, the Royal Mail, or the trains, as being essentials - nobody spontaneously thinks "ooh, I'll go out and buy a few more stamps today! and maybe a little extra gas..." ...nor do they generally wander up and down the railways for fun (Sunil - an execption).
Everyind of thinking that could easily propel Corbyn to power.
That's an excellent post, and says exactly how I feel about re nationalisation. It probably wouldn't work- as Josias points out, you just couldn't trust the government not to milk it to death, but people see the utilities as a basic human right nowadays, and paying some French company to give you a so-so service and rinse you for the privilege is starting to stick in the craw. Corbyn will ride that wave all the way in.
Usually a state owned French company.
Which UK rail routes are run by French companies?
SouthEastern, Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern
Govia is 65% UK owned and 35% French owned. And Keolis, who owns that 35% is a private company albeit with a majority state owned shareholder.
A foreign state owned enterprise running UK rail routes. But I accept they are only 35%. So how about c2c 100% operated by Trenitalia. Children, Crosscountry, Northern, Wales, London Overground all 100% operated by a division of Deutche Bahn. Anglia, Scotrail both 100% operated by a division of NedRail.
We know nationalised rail works in the UK because the majority of franchises are run by the state railways of foreign governments
No. All that says is foreign companies can run railways in the UK.
It is just staggering that we can even be thinking of discussing renationalisation and repeating all the old mistakes. This is all known stuff: so successful were Thatcher's privatisations in improving service, stimulating innovation, boosting the economy, and reducing costs that they were subsequently copied in almost every country in the world to varying degrees, except in North Korea and Cuba. Admittedly there has been some back-sliding in a few places, notably Venezuela, but that should merely serve to remind us of the consequences. Why on earth is anyone advocating it?
It is a natural consequence of man-on-the-street voter thinking when times are hard. The "JAMS" as Miliband put it.
People see things like gas and electricity, the Royal Mail, or the trains, as being essentials - nobody spontaneously thinks "ooh, I'll go out and buy a few more stamps today! and maybe a little extra gas..." ...nor do they generally wander up and down the railways for fun (Sunil - an execption).
Everyind of thinking that could easily propel Corbyn to power.
That's an excellent post, and says exactly how I feel about re nationalisation. It probably wouldn't work- as Josias points out, you just couldn't trust the government not to milk it to death, but people see the utilities as a basic human right nowadays, and paying some French company to give you a so-so service and rinse you for the privilege is starting to stick in the craw. Corbyn will ride that wave all the way in.
Usually a state owned French company.
Which UK rail routes are run by French companies?
SouthEastern, Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern
Govia is 65% UK owned and 35% French owned. And Keolis, who owns that 35% is a private company albeit with a majority state owned shareholder.
A foreign state owned enterprise running UK rail routes. But I accept they are only 35%. So how about c2c 100% operated by Trenitalia. Children, Crosscountry, Northern, Wales, London Overground all 100% operated by a division of Deutche Bahn. Anglia, Scotrail both 100% operated by a division of NedRail.
We know nationalised rail works in the UK because the majority of franchises are run by the state railways of foreign governments
They win the franchises in competition with private companies and the franchises are up for renewal periodically (no idea about the criteria for re-awarding them, that said).
It is, of course, entirely possible that I'm wrong.
My knowledge comes entirely from a documentary I saw which basically said the APTs were unusable because they were unstable in corners and drinks got spilled everywhere. It said that a decade later, modern technology had improved to a level where trains could be constantly adjusted and therefore the tilting motion was much smoother.
Said documentary is probably on YouTube, but I accept that you are far more likely to know what is correct in this case than either me, or the documentary maker.
Perversely, AIUI it's actually the other way around. On an early press trip, journalists complained of nausea. This was excused on them having over-indulged on the free drinks.
Whilst there may have been some truth in that, there were other reasons. The tilt system kept the train too level laterally, inducing nausea in some. This was fixed by not quite tilting perfectly, from memory just a degree off would cure it. Also, at first it would tilt too rapidly; a smoother transition also helped; again, this was a relatively simple change. Neither of these reduced the maximum speed.
It was a classic case of engineers coming up with a brilliant solution and forgetting the human factors.
Years ago I was lucky enough to talk to an engineer or two who worked on the project, and it was a Derby project, so I'm biased .
Why would people get nausea if the train was too level laterally? Obviously I don't have a clue about it which is why I'm asking.
I suppose the nausea comes from the disparity between the information coming from the visual system and the vestibular system, as in other forms of motion sickness.
It is just staggering that we can even be thinking of discussing renationalisation and repeating all the old mistakes. This is all known stuff: so successful were Thatcher's privatisations in improving service, stimulating innovation, boosting the economy, and reducing costs that they were subsequently copied in almost every country in the world to varying degrees, except in North Korea and Cuba. Admittedly there has been some back-sliding in a few places, notably Venezuela, but that should merely serve to remind us of the consequences. Why on earth is anyone advocating it?
Because to the current Labour leadership throwbacks "this time it will work"
Plus there are a lot of voters who can't remember the 70's and early 80's
I see all elective surgery is being cancelled for this month. Single sex accommodation waived too. My surgical colleagues won't know what to do with themselves:
This is 10 times the number of operations than were cancelled in the junior doctor strikes, but methinks there will not be 10 times the outrage from PB Tories...
What is the point in outrage when it is being driven by what is shaping up to be the worst flu epidemic in at least 50 years? Sometimes you have to respond to unforeseen events in the best way possible.
It may be that this Australian Flu turns out to be not as bad as expected - but it is better to have a plan in place in case it is.
We can never have a healthcare system that is ready for every possible eventuality and level of demand. Pretending otherwise is just ludicrous.
I see all elective surgery is being cancelled for this month. Single sex accommodation waived too. My surgical colleagues won't know what to do with themselves:
This is 10 times the number of operations than were cancelled in the junior doctor strikes, but methinks there will not be 10 times the outrage from PB Tories...
What is the point in outrage when it is being driven by what is shaping up to be the worst flu epidemic in at least 50 years? Sometimes you have to respond to unforeseen events in the best way possible.
It may be that this Australian Flu turns out to be not as bad as expected - but it is better to have a plan in place in case it is.
We can never have a healthcare system that is ready for every possible eventuality and level of demand. Pretending otherwise is just ludicrous.
The #aussieflu hasn't started yet. It has only just arrived, according to the PHE flu report. We should get a better picture by the weekend.
A foreign state owned enterprise running UK rail routes. But I accept they are only 35%. So how about c2c 100% operated by Trenitalia. Children, Crosscountry, Northern, Wales, London Overground all 100% operated by a division of Deutche Bahn. Anglia, Scotrail both 100% operated by a division of NedRail.
We know nationalised rail works in the UK because the majority of franchises are run by the state railways of foreign governments
We know from general experience that the British government is exceptionally shit at running things - not as bad as the Americans, but definitely very, very bad. So it seems like obvious common sense to contract it out to a government that's proven reasonably good.
Just watched Die Hard 2 on Film4 - like its predecessor, it finishes with Vaughn Monroe's "Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"
The best Die Hard movie is the third one!
For about 60% of its run time, Die Hard 3 is a brilliant movie. It falls off dramatically when they spot the trucks driving out of the city: everything after that is just silly. It's one of those films where if you just lop off (a lot of) the ending it becomes *much* better: see also "A.I.".
If you're of a mind, you can also make "Passengers" much better by moving the first act revelation to the third act...
Nationalising water, Royal Mail and transmission would be around £110bn and would add something like 7% to the national debt. I don’t see why that would be so hard to buy an income generating asset.
This is OK as long as you don't put it in the same manifesto with the normal reason for wanting to do it in the first place, which is to stop it being optimized for profits instead of customers. If you plan to change that then you need to work out how to pay for the income that you're not going to be generating.
It is just staggering that we can even be thinking of discussing renationalisation and repeating all the old mistakes. This is all known stuff: so successful were Thatcher's privatisations in improving service, stimulating innovation, boosting the economy, and reducing costs that they were subsequently copied in almost every country in the world to varying degrees, except in North Korea and Cuba. Admittedly there has been some back-sliding in a few places, notably Venezuela, but that should merely serve to remind us of the consequences. Why on earth is anyone advocating it?
You sound a bit on the defensive.
I'm entirely on the defensive. It beggars belief that the country, or at least a large chunk of it, seems intent on repeating the same old mistakes, on something which has been sorted and well understood for decades. It's as though the US was about to reintroduce prohibition or something equally daft.
Somehow British politics is pretty much 100% nostalgia right now. Was 1972 really that great?
It is just staggering that we can even be thinking of discussing renationalisation and repeating all the old mistakes. This is all known stuff: so successful were Thatcher's privatisations in improving service, stimulating innovation, boosting the economy, and reducing costs that they were subsequently copied in almost every country in the world to varying degrees, except in North Korea and Cuba. Admittedly there has been some back-sliding in a few places, notably Venezuela, but that should merely serve to remind us of the consequences. Why on earth is anyone advocating it?
You sound a bit on the defensive.
I'm entirely on the defensive. It beggars belief that the country, or at least a large chunk of it, seems intent on repeating the same old mistakes, on something which has been sorted and well understood for decades. It's as though the US was about to reintroduce prohibition or something equally daft.
Somehow British politics is pretty much 100% nostalgia right now. Was 1972 really that great?
A British remake of Good Bye, Lenin! would probably be a smash hit.
A foreign state owned enterprise running UK rail routes. But I accept they are only 35%. So how about c2c 100% operated by Trenitalia. Children, Crosscountry, Northern, Wales, London Overground all 100% operated by a division of Deutche Bahn. Anglia, Scotrail both 100% operated by a division of NedRail.
We know nationalised rail works in the UK because the majority of franchises are run by the state railways of foreign governments
We know from general experience that the British government is exceptionally shit at running things - not as bad as the Americans, but definitely very, very bad. So it seems like obvious common sense to contract it out to a government that's proven reasonably good.
Weirdly, the British government used to be very, very good at running things. During WW2 it executed well-laid plans to mobilise virtually the entire population and implemented a near-as-dammit command economy. After WW2, there was the great nationalisations of rail, coal, steel, medicine, and the rationalisation of the aircraft industry. We ended up with a fantastic civil nuclear program (when it wasn't irradiating lots of people on the quiet and nearly melting down), the elimination of polio, a huge reduction in infant mortality, a thirty-year increase in life expectancy, an independent nuclear deterrent, an embryonic British space programme that didn't involve science-fiction, an indigenous computer industry, and the motherfucking Concorde.
It stopped for one very simple reason: because we could.
You could pile in a whole shed of reasons: we couldn't compete with the whole world on everything, the pace of change was too fast, the integrated circuit, the death of the inhouse browncollar worker, the fact that it was easier to subcontract everything out, the abandonment of Buskellism, the oil shock, Nixon abandoning Bretton Woods, blah, blah.
But ultimately the reason was: we could make more money by doing other things. So we did.
A foreign state owned enterprise running UK rail routes. But I accept they are only 35%. So how about c2c 100% operated by Trenitalia. Children, Crosscountry, Northern, Wales, London Overground all 100% operated by a division of Deutche Bahn. Anglia, Scotrail both 100% operated by a division of NedRail.
We know nationalised rail works in the UK because the majority of franchises are run by the state railways of foreign governments
We know from general experience that the British government is exceptionally shit at running things - not as bad as the Americans, but definitely very, very bad. So it seems like obvious common sense to contract it out to a government that's proven reasonably good.
Politically speaking being in favour of private companies running the railways is an easiesh argument to make. State ownership is also a pretty simple argument. Now being in favour of state ownership, but not our own state ( Yourself and Nabavi both make the case, I think Smithson junior too ....), well.. that is a somewhat trickier sell on the doorstep ^_^
This is some of the lowest hanging fruit Corbyn will ever see.
It is just staggering that we can even be thinking of discussing renationalisation and repeating all the old mistakes. This is all known stuff: so successful were Thatcher's privatisations in improving service, stimulating innovation, boosting the economy, and reducing costs that they were subsequently copied in almost every country in the world to varying degrees, except in North Korea and Cuba. Admittedly there has been some back-sliding in a few places, notably Venezuela, but that should merely serve to remind us of the consequences. Why on earth is anyone advocating it?
You sound a bit on the defensive.
I'm entirely on the defensive. It beggars belief that the country, or at least a large chunk of it, seems intent on repeating the same old mistakes, on something which has been sorted and well understood for decades. It's as though the US was about to reintroduce prohibition or something equally daft.
Somehow British politics is pretty much 100% nostalgia right now. Was 1972 really that great?
Gary Glitter was in the charts, Jimmy Saville was on the telly, everybody smoked, the Russians were trying to kill us, and the triumph of haute cuisine was Arctic Roll.
Just watched Die Hard 2 on Film4 - like its predecessor, it finishes with Vaughn Monroe's "Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"
The best Die Hard movie is the third one!
For about 60% of its run time, Die Hard 3 is a brilliant movie. It falls off dramatically when they spot the trucks driving out of the city: everything after that is just silly. It's one of those films where if you just lop off (a lot of) the ending it becomes *much* better: see also "A.I.".
If you're of a mind, you can also make "Passengers" much better by moving the first act revelation to the third act...
Are you aware that they initially filmed a VERY different ending? You can see what the movie could have been on the Special Edition DVD..... The "silly" stuff was a very expensive re-shoot.
I get that it's unlikely to be a success, but it is such a tantalising "What If?". Utilities for the people, not the multinationals. No adverts on the telly with wanky penquins in, just power for the people! It's never gonna work, I know, but you can't blame people for being drawn to Corbyn because of it.
Nationalised utilities seem to work fine in Europe/rest of the world.
I know, but ours are now privately owned, so I don't know how it can be bought back into public ownership. Plus, would you trust recent governments to run it without using it as a cash cow?
I don’t see the danger. Voters are not backing nationalisation so they can pay higher train prices or more for water. Any govt that tried to raise rates significantly and run it as a secret tax generation machine would very quickly be unpopular.
As for how you do it - trains you could let it happen naturally as franchises expire. For water companies I guess some version of compulsory purchase at the average share price of the past two years and borrow the money. Even if you changed nothing you could charge a bit less for water and still service the debt.
Once nationalised: 1) every decision becomes a millstone round ministerial necks, so they avoid making them. 2) every pound spent becomes a pound less for other ministerial budgets, so spending gets constrained by other departments. 3) the Treasury try to minimise infrastructure spending that has a rate of return longer than an election cycle. Overall this strangles the business. If governments were better at providing goods and services than private companies then communism would have triumphed.
This is a nice example of that ideological opposition you often see. The rest of the world seems to manage to fund its infrastructure and manage with nationalised utilities. Perhaps the UK is an exception where it’s impossible but I’m not convinced at all.
Sorry. I was offline for a few hours. I believe we need a better system for accounting for government income, expenditure and investment - especially ROI. Anyone have any knowledge of good examples from around the World?
Just watched Die Hard 2 on Film4 - like its predecessor, it finishes with Vaughn Monroe's "Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"
The best Die Hard movie is the third one!
For about 60% of its run time, Die Hard 3 is a brilliant movie. It falls off dramatically when they spot the trucks driving out of the city: everything after that is just silly. It's one of those films where if you just lop off (a lot of) the ending it becomes *much* better: see also "A.I.".
If you're of a mind, you can also make "Passengers" much better by moving the first act revelation to the third act...
Are you aware that they initially filmed a VERY different ending? You can see what the movie could have been on the Special Edition DVD..... The "silly" stuff was a very expensive re-shoot.
Is that the version where he meets Jeremy Irons in a restaurant/bar and kills him?
Train travel is subsidised for the traveller through general taxation of the population (including of those who do not travel by train).
Profits from the train operator are attrributable to the train owners who include those people who have pension investments.
As I said previously, appeals to logic, to economics, to statistics, and so forth, will have no effect on the average JAM who sees his or her wages falling in real terms year on year while the cost of the bare necessities - utilities bills, season tickets etc, continue to rise.
The average JAM needs to wise up.
And so the argument goes that the current generation - who never experienced a six to twelve week wait to have a rotary phone hard-wired into their living room (not that BT Openreach are much better) or chomped down on a BR sandwich (or used the grit that they laughingly called toilet paper) need to learn first hand.
However the grass is always greener. And the prevailing mood at the moment seems to be "why should Branson and his ilk be profiting from services that are basic needs, things I have to purchase in order to survive and put a roof over my head, when I can barely afford life's luxuries and haven't had a pay rise in years?"
Tell the JAMs to improve their skills, get promoted and/or move to another job with better prospects.
Stick that in the Con Manifesto 2022 and you may have just found a bigger loser than the dementia tax.
I'm not talking here about what is or isn't right from an economic, analytical point of view. I'm talking about what appeals to the electorate.
The fact is that "unsuccessful" people in your world, who have been failed by our crap education system, aren't savvy enough to get promoted, or are unable to move to places where there are better job prospects (have you tried buying or renting a family sized home in or near London lately?) have just as many votes as the successful ones.
People are being left behind and they are angry about it - see also Brexit, Trump, etc.
With the current free movement of Labour acrossthe EU I would have expected such dissatisfied people to have already moved to their favoured EU country with nationalised utilities and rail.
Comments
Yeah - lets have some more of that sort of thuggish behavior.
The problem with nationalised industries is, as @DavidL pointed out upthread, that the incentives are all wrong. It's just too easy for unions, and management, to blackmail the government into providing more loot - no need to bother with tiresome hard work or difficult decisions, as is necessary to achieve steadily improving efficiency as the private sector has done year after year after year since the Thatcher reforms revitalised the British economy.
If the franchise is run by a foreign company, whether or not it is partly or even fully state-owned, the same distorting incentive doesn't apply, and it's still a commercial operation which needs to operate efficiently. That is the difference.
Plus there are a lot of voters who can't remember the 70's and early 80's
It may be that this Australian Flu turns out to be not as bad as expected - but it is better to have a plan in place in case it is.
We can never have a healthcare system that is ready for every possible eventuality and level of demand. Pretending otherwise is just ludicrous.
If you're of a mind, you can also make "Passengers" much better by moving the first act revelation to the third act...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU
It stopped for one very simple reason: because we could.
You could pile in a whole shed of reasons: we couldn't compete with the whole world on everything, the pace of change was too fast, the integrated circuit, the death of the inhouse browncollar worker, the fact that it was easier to subcontract everything out, the abandonment of Buskellism, the oil shock, Nixon abandoning Bretton Woods, blah, blah.
But ultimately the reason was: we could make more money by doing other things. So we did.
State ownership is also a pretty simple argument.
Now being in favour of state ownership, but not our own state ( Yourself and Nabavi both make the case, I think Smithson junior too ....), well.. that is a somewhat trickier sell on the doorstep ^_^
This is some of the lowest hanging fruit Corbyn will ever see.
So, that's a "no" then...