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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

LutonSpurs said:
Yeah state ownership works with competent people in government. Across the political spectrum we have very few exceptional people to to do this stuff.
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This is the thing. I dont like the public/private debate as the most important thing is to have good competent management. There are private companies that are poorly managed and end up going under (e.g. Debenhams). There are private companies that are really successful and well managed. Similarly there are NHS trusts and police forces that are highly competent and well run and then there are the basket case ones.

There was nothing stopping the government intervening in Thames Water over the last 35 years. Absolutely nothing. The failure of water privatisation is a failure of successive governments.
 
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Gutter Boy said:
£85b for stealing our rain and pumping brick into our rivers.

How anyone sees non-public ownership of amenities as viable is completely beyond me.
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£85 billion over 35 years = £2.4 billion a year ÷ 23 water companies = £100 m a year per company which is about right in terms of what you'd expect from a large private company bearing in mind also that dividends are paid per share and shares purchase require capital to be injected to be able to call on dividends and so the real issue here isnt about this figure being out of line with what we should have expected in 1989 when privatisation happened but about how well managed our water and sewerage systems are....
 
Silly McSilly Face said:
This is the thing. I dont like the public/private debate as the most important thing is to have good competent management. There are private companies that are poorly managed and end up going under (e.g. Debenhams). There are private companies that are really successful and well managed. Similarly there are NHS trusts and police forces that are highly competent and well run and then there are the basket case ones.

There was nothing stopping the government intervening in Thames Water over the last 35 years. Absolutely nothing. The failure of water privatisation is a failure of successive governments.
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The difference is the motivate. Public service or profit maximisation. Do the people running it want to do good, or deliver the least for the most they can get away with
 
Gutter Boy said:
The difference is the motivate. Public service or profit maximisation. Do the people running it want to do good, or deliver the least for the most they can get away with
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With the motivation to do as you say comes something you dont get often with the public sector: efficiency. As I've said, ultimately while private companies may be awarded contracts to deliver public services, it is still a public service and the buck for this outsourcing arrangement stops with ministers who at any point can intervene if they believe performance is below expectations. Reality is that as I've said numerous times on here the contracts awarded were to keep the current performance "ticking over". The kind of infrastructure upgrades needed to handle the volume of sewerage now requiring processing were never in scope of those contracts and always a matter of central government strategy and funding. Its like expecting private rail operators operating the east coast main line etc to fund and build HS2. Er, no. Just as ministers hide behind privatisation of water to avoid their own responsibility so they blame private rail operators for issues when the infrastructure the trains run on has been under public ownership for years and HS2 is probably one of the biggest public sector rooster-ups of all time....
 
Silly McSilly Face said:
With the motivation to do as you say comes something you dont get often with the public sector: efficiency. As I've said, ultimately while private companies may be awarded contracts to deliver public services, it is still a public service and the buck for this outsourcing arrangement stops with ministers who at any point can intervene if they believe performance is below expectations. Reality is that as I've said numerous times on here the contracts awarded were to keep the current performance "ticking over". The kind of infrastructure upgrades needed to handle the volume of sewerage now requiring processing were never in scope of those contracts and always a matter of central government strategy and funding. Its like expecting private rail operators operating the east coast main line etc to fund and build HS2. Er, no. Just as ministers hide behind privatisation of water to avoid their own responsibility so they blame private rail operators for issues when the infrastructure the trains run on has been under public ownership for years and HS2 is probably one of the biggest public sector rooster-ups of all time....
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Bollox. The companies will look and see is it more beneficial to take the punishment.
We see it in football. Chelsea, forest took the ffp hits on purpose.
 
Lilbaz said:
Bollox. The companies will look and see is it more beneficial to take the punishment.
We see it in football. Chelsea, forest took the ffp hits on purpose.
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Its not gonads. Government can nationalise or remove and re-reward these contracts at any time they want if performance is deemed unsatisfactory. So where does the blame for the current literal sh*t show ultimately lie?
 
Lilbaz said:
They can.

Or they can just have tight regulations and punishments that hurt.
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You can have all the regulations you want. And fine them as much as you want. It doesn't change the fact that the sort of investment to upgrade the sewer system to cater for the 11.5 million extra people that now live in the UK since 1989 (when water was privatised) could only have come from a central government infrastructure programme similar to the scale of HS2 and that what was necessary was completely out of the scope of the terms of operation handed out (which as I said was to managed the existing infrastructure based on "status quo"). So you now have got to a point where you regularly have people making decisions based on either discharging overflow into waterways or letting it back up into people's homes and businesses. And while there have been some fines dished out for avoidable discharges ultimately, the relatively poxy fines reflect the overall picture: that the waste water system is at maximum capacity and the slightest event like a bit of excess rainfall causes the whole thing to fall over.....this would have happened if it had stayed in public hands and the root cause is successive governments kicking the can down the road due to the political hurt of saying "i'm cutting other services/raising taxes to modernise the sewer system"....will no politician ever say ever....
 
Silly McSilly Face said:
You can have all the regulations you want. And fine them as much as you want. It doesn't change the fact that the sort of investment to upgrade the sewer system to cater for the 11.5 million extra people that now live in the UK since 1989 (when water was privatised) could only have come from a central government infrastructure programme similar to the scale of HS2 and that what was necessary was completely out of the scope of the terms of operation handed out (which as I said was to managed the existing infrastructure based on "status quo"). So you now have got to a point where you regularly have people making decisions based on either discharging overflow into waterways or letting it back up into people's homes and businesses. And while there have been some fines dished out for avoidable discharges ultimately, the relatively poxy fines reflect the overall picture: that the waste water system is at maximum capacity and the slightest event like a bit of excess rainfall causes the whole thing to fall over.....this would have happened if it had stayed in public hands and the root cause is successive governments kicking the can down the road due to the political hurt of saying "i'm cutting other services/raising taxes to modernise the sewer system"....will no politician ever say ever....
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Population went up. Demand went up. Prices went up.
If the demand for cars went up. Then ford would get investment and open a new factory.
Household use is only about 3-5% of the water the country uses.
 
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