The majority of people in a new poll think the railways should be fully nationalised. Great. Even 31% of Tory voters think it’s a good idea. By jings, we’ll reach a Socialist utopia yet at this rate, although you have to wonder about the value of opinion polls.
The last one out claimed people thought the Tories would make the best job of running the economy. The same party, it should be noted, that gave us rail privatisation in the first place.
There is little doubt, though, that putting private companies in charge of public services has been an expensive con. In Falkirk we had schools built under the tragic PFI scheme that will cost people an arm and a leg locally while delivering a profit for the construction firms involved.
These schools created luxurious facilities which should have been of enormous social benefit to the communities that surrounded them. Except that the profit-driven firms that owned them put them out of the reach of the people who should have been hiring them.
And then there’s energy. A whole industry has grown up around creating a market for gas and electricity supplies. And what has happened ? Instead of competition driving prices down we have seen companies put the cost to the consumer up. And they say they are simply at the liberty of the global price of the raw commodities.
Whereas, if we had a unified system of energy supply we could have a national policy giving the country a bigger say in the control of wholesale supplies. In theory, that could have kept the cost in check and people would not have faced quite so hard a time paying to heat and light their homes.
Oh, and while we’re at it, banks. Yes, banks in Britain have never been state-owned, but hell, they are now. Capitalist greed once again, paying billions for assets that turned out to be worth hee-haw and putting the savings of ordinary people very close to the bottom of the toilet bowl. But for the intervention of the state.
And now the state’s got cold feet about the whole thing. It wants to hive off Northern Rock to Tesco and has been very un-interventionist with the Royal Bank of Scotland by meekly agreeing Stephen Hester can have a £10 million salary.
People are queueing up to tell ministers to be more hands on. Get more involved in the running of our services, not for private gain, but public benefit. And the best we might end up with is The Postbank.
It’s a farce. While we demand certain functions returned to their proper place, the state, politicians worry about the effect on public borrowing and national debt. Spending has to be cut, all they argue about is by how much and where the axe will fall.
And it looks increasingly like mainstream politics will not be shaken from its mantra of low taxation and minimal, light-touch, intervention despite those calls.
Surely if a majority of Tory voters think rail nationalisation is OK now is the time to be getting more stateist. Maybe not East Germany, but perhaps Sweden circa 1975 ? Listen to Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Darling and weep. Not a chance.
The last one out claimed people thought the Tories would make the best job of running the economy. The same party, it should be noted, that gave us rail privatisation in the first place.
There is little doubt, though, that putting private companies in charge of public services has been an expensive con. In Falkirk we had schools built under the tragic PFI scheme that will cost people an arm and a leg locally while delivering a profit for the construction firms involved.
These schools created luxurious facilities which should have been of enormous social benefit to the communities that surrounded them. Except that the profit-driven firms that owned them put them out of the reach of the people who should have been hiring them.
And then there’s energy. A whole industry has grown up around creating a market for gas and electricity supplies. And what has happened ? Instead of competition driving prices down we have seen companies put the cost to the consumer up. And they say they are simply at the liberty of the global price of the raw commodities.
Whereas, if we had a unified system of energy supply we could have a national policy giving the country a bigger say in the control of wholesale supplies. In theory, that could have kept the cost in check and people would not have faced quite so hard a time paying to heat and light their homes.
Oh, and while we’re at it, banks. Yes, banks in Britain have never been state-owned, but hell, they are now. Capitalist greed once again, paying billions for assets that turned out to be worth hee-haw and putting the savings of ordinary people very close to the bottom of the toilet bowl. But for the intervention of the state.
And now the state’s got cold feet about the whole thing. It wants to hive off Northern Rock to Tesco and has been very un-interventionist with the Royal Bank of Scotland by meekly agreeing Stephen Hester can have a £10 million salary.
People are queueing up to tell ministers to be more hands on. Get more involved in the running of our services, not for private gain, but public benefit. And the best we might end up with is The Postbank.
It’s a farce. While we demand certain functions returned to their proper place, the state, politicians worry about the effect on public borrowing and national debt. Spending has to be cut, all they argue about is by how much and where the axe will fall.
And it looks increasingly like mainstream politics will not be shaken from its mantra of low taxation and minimal, light-touch, intervention despite those calls.
Surely if a majority of Tory voters think rail nationalisation is OK now is the time to be getting more stateist. Maybe not East Germany, but perhaps Sweden circa 1975 ? Listen to Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Darling and weep. Not a chance.
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