so they want to privitsie part of BT
 

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL THREAD PLEASE DO NOT TURN IT INTO ONE. IT IS ABOUT THE CWU.

Apparently if a certain party gets elected they say they will privatise part of BT. The CWU, Communication Workers Union brought their members out on strike against privatisation all those years ago.
I don't think it did the staff any harm, so I wonder, what is the CWU's position on this?

macafee2

I think the relevant unions have been caught on the hop over this. It certainly seems born of a lack of joined up thinking.

Not least because most Pension Schemes would suffer huge losses if they were forced to sell an asset at below market value. So their members would suffer a significant financial blow if this was to take place.

And of course - if it ever looked likely - sell off of shares would cause BT share price to collapse over night.

I’m no fan of BT having been subjected to appalling advise from their sales department - but re-nationalising is not the answer.

Like most of the previously publicly owned companies they were nationalised because the government of the day considered it essential to control an industry of national importance. It didn't used to be split on party lines, it used to be based solely on perceived need, whether it be for national security or social need. Some were natural monopolies able to make large profits, some were important to the country but financially were never viable in private ownership. Some made little logical sense to keep in public ownership over the long term, some made perfect sense.

They usually paid employees lower than average pay but gave better all round terms including pensions.

Whatever has been in manifestos we have gone further than many other countries in divesting ourselves of publicly controlled companies.

I know how much things have changed over my lifetime and the younger guys I work with cant believe how much used to be publicly owned.
The change in policy has been in place for about 40 years now. I guess only future historians will really be able to judge whether it was a good idea or not.
Personally (and this is an economic point rather than a political one) I was taught in 6th form about the "multiplier effect" how when a govt put money into the system it went round and round and multiplied. Seems to me that if so many of our companies are owned outside the UK then on each trip round that effect largely goes to others benefit. Also many of the businesses work in markets where competition just isnt effective. Finally (and this is a more social point) arguably it contributes to our feeling of loss of prestige & control.
Problem is, no matter the long term benefit of bringing them back into public ownership, its likely to be naffing expensive - certainly costing more than we got when they were flogged off. Guess its one of those things - can we afford to vs can we afford not to.

It's a problem of using highly estimable and valued 'national treasures' becoming weaponised for the sake of political dogma. It's currently a huge part of competition between organisations in their manifestos and represents who can give away the most with little conscience for the future. I have a suggestion for the maintenance of these nationalised industries:

An arm's length Department for the safeguarding of quoted shares in nationalised insitutions listed on Footsie. Shares bought and owned only by the State with outside auditing and secondary overarching forensic auditing by government departmental multi-party committee. Gains, tax free, to the Treasury for Chancellors to include as hypothecated subsidies for environmental issues with Listed average payments to investors which avoids the disgraceful virtue signalling epidemic of un-private charity donations for intrinsic gain. Our Security, Health, Transport and other strategic interests could be guaranteed.

I'm not against public or private ownership of industries. However those under foreign control tend to take profits out of the country, with no benefit to the UK economy.

The promise of free broadband for all would be the death knell for other broadband providers, and result in job losses. I don't want free broadband at the cost of someone's job.

Jim

Whilst that is true - it is also true that the likes of Diageo, GlaxoSmithKline, BP, Specsavers, Burberry and Dyson - to mention just a few - are UK based companies that make profit outside of the U.K.- and therefore bring revenue home to the U.K.

And I totally agree that “Free Broadband” is yet another gimmick thought up by those with a terminal ineptitude that renders them incapable of joined up thinking.

It would not just be jobs lost - tho’ that of course is truly bad enough! - but another issue is the effect such a plan would have on investment in this sector - investment that many working peoples retirement funds benefit from and which even the unions are now openly saying that such action would be devastatingly negative for their members.

I agree about the Free Broadband sounding like a gimmick. There is very little that was actually free even in the days when we owned the providers.
But it makes no sense to have a competitive market on things that have to be delivered to every house. 1. to be independently delivered it means each provider delivering multiple channels down each street. 2. if run over a common infrastructure you are then splitting the provision in an unnatural way when vertical economies of scale make more sense and 3. delivery in high density areas is more cost effective and you end up with lots of competition while delivery in remoter areas is not cost effective and gets neglected resulting in very expensive services or none at all. The same logic applies to lots of things - post, telephone line, broadband, bus services, mobile phone services, roads, rail, gas, electricity etc etc. We are currently paying for a very inefficient system. And yes, it does provide more jobs duplicating everything but the consumer is paying for that and, ideally, if these things were done more efficiently we could afford to provide more of some of the services we've cut recently - which would provide more jobs.
If we had a publicly owned system that involved multiple entities laying multiple cables etc all over the shop and employing more people than necessary to provide only subtly different services to neighbours we'd be in uproar about it. That we're taxed a £15 a month (ish) to use the road system grates, if we're being taxed £30 or whatever a month to receive broadband it would really grate yet many pay that happily to a private provider. We are odd creatures.

It would seem so.......

Fairy stories
 

Fairy stories normally begin with ..'Once upon a time....'

Today in UK

They begin..

'When I am elected..'

The whole lot of them are totally unbelievable

They usually end with the down trodden main characters mysteriously living happily ever after too. That's where the comparison ends.