Mike4 wrote:SalvorHardin wrote:I suspect that many of those who support nationalisation weren't around (or weren't paying attention) when these businesses were publicly owned - they were inefficient, hugely overmanned and frequently indifferent (often hostile) when it came to customer service.
Worryingly true.
On another forum I use almost everyone posting on the politics board seems not to remember this. Calls for nationalisation as a fix for the woes of the Post Office, railways, water companies, electricity and gas are both shrill and near-universal.
There is a widespread groundswell of support for nationalisation AFAICS. Most if not all of the politicians nowadays are too young to remember what it was like when the government ran it all to massive public discontent, which Mrs Thatcher tapped into so successfully.
Perhaps they're grateful that without the romantic candle lit dinners (power strikes) at home (staying in due to refuge piles in the streets and bodies uncollected due to strikes) - that they might otherwise have never been born.
The failures in the likes of private water/sewage are more a case of being down to the state, regulatory bodies not doing their job, permitting under-spending and breaking of laws without penalty, larger dividends and bonuses than otherwise might have been paid instead being used to offset the water/sewage/rail ...etc. in other countries (their benefit, UK cost).
I see that public servants are contemplating strikes due to being asked to go into the office two days/week rather than remaining as home workers full time. Whilst 40 minute + call waiting times to get through to public servants ... are increasing.
If anything we need the complete opposite. Sack public servants so they lose their pensions, as per the private sector. And instate more private like alternatives, that actually do some work and earn their wage rather than reading/posting social media. End the inefficiencies of where for instance it takes four days of a motorway closure to knock one bridge crossing down. A day to put out bollards, another day to assess, half a day to do the work and clear up, another day to remove the bollards. To where instead its all planned out and done in a single six hour overnight session.
8000 Councillors, with offices filled with support staff that are largely working from home, often not even bothering to answer phone calls. A NHS with three with clipboards following each front line staff member around measuring/reporting their time and motion ...etc. ... is all abuse of the taxpayers purse.
If the inefficient public sector that is around the same size as the private sector were halved, then the 33/67 balance would see costs to the private sector/public substantially more sustainable and viable. Whilst the productivity of the public sector could actually increase despite the size having been halved.
The plethora of bankrupt councils could be a good start ... dismissed and declared bankrupt, loss of pensions, re-form a more efficient replacement. Level the terms to be fairer, same as how if your private sector company goes belly up you also lose your occupational pension along with it.