UK Politics

it used to be quite abnormal for the political class to slate the entire country. “Problem families”, maybe; “feral youth”, quite possibly – but to talk about a nation sinking into chaos, as Sunak also did last week, describing “a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule”, while you are actually in charge of it … I don’t even know what to call that. What combination of melodramatic overstatement and strategic disloyalty could describe it? Whatever else it is, it’s damn peculiar.

The problem now is that everything is fucked, so it's become increasingly difficult to victimise specific groups as being the reason, so they have to blame the lot of us. As the polls suggest this isn't working and the majority of people, rightly, suspect it might be down to the party that has relentlessly torpedoed the country under the waterline because their rich friends want more cash or just from serial incompetence.

Opinion.

I have recently come to the conclusion that the tory Party and right of centre politics in genral. Do not think managing the day to day running of the nation Is their responsibility.

TLDR. This is going to go on a bit and as I am visually impaired and typing on a tablet will likely need lots of edit. My crap grammar and spelling I have no excuse for. But the TLDR is basically above. This is just why I think this.

Since 1979 the tory party has had a hard on for privatisation. Everyone knows this. But few recognise how much work the party has done to convince the rest of the UK. Back in 1979 i was only 10. But could clearly see the nation was less then comfortable with privatisation of non competing utilities. This was the case through most of my growing up. Even by the early 90s most did not support rail privatisation. Even after a decade of yuppie like idealism on privrate shares and companies.

Telecoms was privatised first. Because honestly it was the only agency where fair competition seemed viable. And even that took huge amounts of regulation and changes in laws specialised to the industry. To make it competing in any real sense. It really is only the last 20 years where folks feel the industry has any competition.

I was involved (worked for) transco in the mid 90s. Almost 10 years after it was privatised. At no point was it seen as a good idea by the majority of voters. Mainly because of the method used.

Rail was privatised as I worked there. And while support was higher it was still well below 50%. But this was the time media and the government was working bloody hard to paint the problems as being due to nationalisation. While much like the NHS. Any logical look could see no other EU nation expected its rail to be self supporting. Cost wise..

Public transport is a service all corperations need to survive. Even in the early 90s we all knew cars had a more limited future. Space and pollution will always make mass transite more practical in big cities. It was clear to anyone with a memory privatised buses had not improved service. Heck I remember as a kid. ( parents also blind so they never drove even though I could untill 2000 or so). I was able to get a bus my grandparents on Xmas day. If I tell you I lived south of Oxford in a tiny village. My gramps in Hailey near Witney. Anyone who lives near there now will be stunned a Sunday bus was available. Let alone Xmas day.

Privatisation has definatly reduced not increased public transport. And the disabled poor and elderly are hugly effected by this. As I and my family are now legally blind. We no longer have a choice to live in the village I grew up in. Disabled are now forced to live in the cities even when work is not an option.

But the media and right wing properganda in genral have convinced us nationalisation breeds inefficiency. Ask yourself where the logic of that comes from

If a company has competition it is forced to use efficency to survive. But if not the only thing forcing any behaviour is the government and regulations applied to it.

So why is any privrate company more efficient then a nationalised one. Nothing that company dose is not an option for a nationalised one as well. The only difference is who the company answers to. So if a nationalised company is inefficient why is a privrate one without competition different.

A privatised company answer to shareholders. So we are expected to think shareholder want profit. More efficency makes more profit. Well yes if you have no control over the price. But if you can convince your regulaters of a set cost. Then profit is based on what % over that cost they let you make. Share holders see the final numbers at the end. Not the price of staffing or other resources. The share holders cannot force efficency unless they are involved in the management of the company. Or other forces like competition lead to the company losing money compared to other share options.

Regulation makes government officials responsible for forcing the companies to be efficient. Just as those same ministers were responsible for ensuring nationalised companies provided good value for their voters.

So nationalised companies are exactly the same. The only real difference. When a nationalised company is seen as inefficient or poor service. We all instantly know who to blame. The ministers in charge of that company. Whereas we see an extra layer of blame for privrate non competing companies.

So without effective competition both nationalised and privatised companies can only work for us as a nation if our representatives do their jobs. Except privatisation create a extra layer between the customer and the people responsible for enforcing their behaviour. Shareholders.

Any actual activity that make non competing privrate companies more efficient (and honestlybit is all imagined by that right wing media and properganda corperations are as if not more wasteful when allowed to be. ) is totally available to a nationalised organisation to do if well managed.

We blame thames water etc for poisoning our rivers. And talk about punishing thames water etc. But the government is entirlty responsible for allowing it. And if the water companies were still nationalised. Those ministers would have to face the voters directly on the subject. As they did when we were called the dirty man of Europe for the same reason. Privatisation just give government someone to blame now the EU no longer enforces the rules on them.

Pretty much every action of right of center parties since the 1970s. Has been a clear separation of them managing the nation and voters being able to blame them for it.

No privatisation past telecom. Has given any advantage to us as a nation. If they are more efficient. We as tax payers or customers have seen no benifit. But instead raised costs. Non of them do a better job of servicing the nation then nationalised did. Unless you allow for modernisation that ministers should have been required to evaluate if still nationalised.

Railways. Nothing is better other then safty. Safty would have been required to change over the last 30 years. Privatisation bear no credit.

Water. Cleaned up during the EU requirements way worse since those requirements have dropped. Again ministers are to blam and privatisation has done nothing to improve it. Instead they sold off over 30 nations resivouirs for profit. Leavinng us short of storage now.

Royal mail well parcel delivery could be classed as a fair privatisation. But even the US has not been dumb enough to privatise letter delivery. Because no company want it in 2024. It is a needed service that costs not a profit option.

Every single privatisation has only had one of 2 benifits.

1. Money made by investors at the cost of tax payers.

And or

2. A separation of responsibility for the government to manage and face voter blame over.

Hence my first point. The right of center parties no longer think they arecresponsible for managing the every day working of the UK.

But worse they have managed to convince many voters they are not responsible for its downfall.

Edit: ill add. I really am not very left wing. I see privrate industry has its benifits. It is just the overton window has moved so freaking far right over the last 40 years. I seem like a lefty.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Football crowds need more leeway for carnival than the rest of the population, otherwise that guy would never have stuck a lit flare up his bottom at the Euros, and which of us could say our 2021 would have been as good?

When he stands in front of No 10 and calls the country riven and ungovernable, makes a hand-wringing plea for order to perfectly orderly, baffled people, you have to accept that he is doing that on the world stage, even if the rest of the world has its own problems and probably isn’t watching.

Is there any chance at all, when the prime minister announces that the country is a basket case, that it might affect Britain’s international reputation?

Like so many hideous breaches in the fabric of society, this can be traced straight back to George Osborne and David Cameron.

In 2012, the upstart intellectuals of the Conservative party (grim, hollow laugh) published a book, Britannia Unchained.

In among all the economically illiterate free market fundamentalism that would skyrocket everyone’s mortgage a decade later was this extraordinary line: “The British are among the worst idlers in the world.” No longer just benefits claimants, malingering fake-disabled people, generations of the workless: nope, the whole lot of us.

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