The Chairman Mao resembling, Monarchy hating, threat to Britain, Labour Party thread

[chrisp65]

48 minutes ago, bickster said:

It is still Labour / Starmer policy to re-nationalise the railways as far as I'm aware

 

 

The pledge on his website is common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water.

Yes, I should have used mail, energy, or water in my example. 

 

[cheltenham_villa]

4 hours ago, bickster said:

It is still Labour / Starmer policy to re-nationalise the railways as far as I'm aware

 

 

Do people want these things nationalised? I can't think of many national institutions that seem well run. 

[chrisp65]

6 minutes ago, cheltenham_villa said:

Do people want these things nationalised? I can't think of many national institutions that seem well run. 

My guess, is that the majority of people want a better service rather than stories of CEO bonuses.

That people can’t understand how an energy crisis has lead to both higher bills which cannot possibly be helped… and record multi billion pound profits for some private companies.

People don’t like the idea of water companies tripling dividend pay outs whilst we all tut at pictures of dead fish in shit filled rivers.

The FT

Quote

Britain’s privatised water and sewage companies paid £1.4bn in dividends in 2022, up from £540mn the previous year, despite rising household bills and a wave of public criticism over sewage outflows.

How we get there is of little interest to most. One area we can run some sort of comparison would be rail. Some rail companies have been nationalised, from my experience they have been a slight improvement on the older private companies and no money is siphoned off to share holders. But that’s an admittedly limited experience.

[ml1dch]

44 minutes ago, cheltenham_villa said:

Do people want these things nationalised? I can't think of many national institutions that seem well run. 

Overwhelmingly so, yes.

66% support nationalisation of utilities, 16% oppose, the rest don't know.

Not that public support for a complex issue should really be a signifier for something definitely being a good idea. Y'know, Brexit, Boris Johnson, Mrs Brown's Boys etc.

Edit - the specific poll is actually energy, rather than utilities. If someone wants to find something that says energy is an anomaly then I'll happily concede the point. 

Edited May 14, 2023 by ml1dch

[tinker]

8 hours ago, cheltenham_villa said:

Do people want these things nationalised? I can't think of many national institutions that seem well run. 

I don't,  just legislation to make their priorities the service they provide and then dividends. At the moment they are providing the minimum amount they can to maximise the dividends. 

With water, a national scandal, they are being allowed to pump sewage into our rivers and onto our shorelines at will, this has to be stopped ASAP. 

[Demitri_C]

Something i like the sound of is labours working from home policy that they want to introduce - manager's wont be able to contact staff out of hours

Sounds good on paper but not sure how you enforce that?

[Davkaus]

26 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Something i like the sound of is labours working from home policy that they want to introduce - manager's wont be able to contact staff out of hours

Sounds good on paper but not sure how you enforce that?

I'm not familiar with any details in Labour's proposals, but we're a bit behind the curve on this, I think France and Italy have similar laws

I think you enforce it the same way you enforce any employment laws

[Demitri_C]

19 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I'm not familiar with any details in Labour's proposals, but we're a bit behind the curve on this, I think France and Italy have similar laws

I think you enforce it the same way you enforce any employment laws

They basically want it illegal for managers to contact staff outside of work hours (mainly weekends). The argument is that services will get worse if this happens. 

Im nit sure how that works a manager could just turn ariund say i had to allocate more work so how do i do this if i cant contact staff?

[Davkaus]

1 minute ago, Demitri_C said:

They basically want it illegal for managers to contact staff outside of work hours (mainly weekends). The argument is that services will get worse if this happens. 

Im nit sure how that works a manager could just turn ariund say i had to allocate more work so how do i do this if i cant contact staff?

How it works in other countries, from what I understand, is that it's not a blanket ban on "you must never ever contact workers out of hours", it's an obligation on companies (with very small companies excluded) that they must set out the terms under which workers are and aren't allowed to be contacted, and ensuring their staff follow those policies.

So where there's a genuine business need for something that can't wait the next day, these should be accommodated, and there will be some roles where out of hours rotas apply, etc, but it's designed to combat the problem of some roles essentially just becoming continuous work throughout the evening just because.

You'd probably want something in place to prevent the company policy being "we own you and we'll do what we want", of course.

[bickster]

10 hours ago, cheltenham_villa said:

Do people want these things nationalised? I can't think of many national institutions that seem well run. 

And the railways and Royal Mail work so well in private hands 

[tinker]

32 minutes ago, bickster said:

And the railways and Royal Mail work so well in private hands 

There run to make money, if making money was dependent on good service then maybe they would up the game. At the moment they get money regardless of any performance issues they have because the government,  as I understand it, pays them £500m a year without any conditions attached,  the worst of both worlds.

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

And the railways and Royal Mail work so well in private hands 

As does the councils and the people running the nhs. Works both ways

[bickster]

50 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

As does the councils and the people running the nhs. Works both ways

Funding is an entirely different issue though. The NHS has been deliberately sabotaged by the Tories to make it the mess it is, with a view to getting the population to want it privatised. COuncils (particularly Labour ones) have been chronically underfunded as a political act by the Tories and that bollocks has been going on since Thatcher introduced competitive tendering.

[Demitri_C]

8 minutes ago, bickster said:

Funding is an entirely different issue though. The NHS has been deliberately sabotaged by the Tories to make it the mess it is, with a view to getting the population to want it privatised. COuncils (particularly Labour ones) have been chronically underfunded as a political act by the Tories and that bollocks has been going on since Thatcher introduced competitive tendering.

So what makes you think the royal mail wont get under funded? I mean where will labour if they win the election get the money to not only nationlise royal mail and the trains but also be able to run both services?

You see where we are going here?

I personally dont think nhs is under funded apart from on wages for nursing staff. Its mainly a lot of money wasted in my opinion. But we have had this discussion a few times no point going over old ground there

Edited May 15, 2023 by Demitri_C

[bickster]

4 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

You see where we are going here?

Prior to the breakup of BR the Railways had been nationalised since 1914, with the exception of the years 1921 to 1939 where over 120 former rail companies were grouped into the Big 4 (LMS, GWR, LNER, SR),, each had their own geographic region and didn't compete (there were a few joint lines where they did but they were a rarity). Even the grouping did not work, all the Big 4 lost money despite having their own monopolies.

Excluded from the 1921 act were the London Lines and they were nationalised in 1933 and have been ever since and they remain the best run, most efficient, co-ordinated railway system in the country

Every time the railways were de-nationalised, it was by the Tories and every time it failed.

Don't get me started on Beeching and the deliberate shift away from freight to passengers....

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Prior to the breakup of BR the Railways had been nationalised since 1914, with the exception of the years 1921 to 1939 where over 120 former rail companies were grouped into the Big 4 (LMS, GWR, LNER, SR),, each had their own geographic region and didn't compete (there were a few joint lines where they did but they were a rarity). Even the grouping did not work, all the Big 4 lost money despite having their own monopolies.

Excluded from the 1921 act were the London Lines and they were nationalised in 1933 and have been ever since and they remain the best run, most efficient, co-ordinated railway system in the country

Every time the railways were de-nationalised, it was by the Tories and every time it failed.

Don't get me started on Beeching and the deliberate shift away from freight to passengers....

Thanks for that goid to know these kind of things.

Why did they keep de nationalising them? 

[VILLAMARV]

6 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Thanks for that goid to know these kind of things.

Why did they keep de nationalising them? 

Oh, sorry Dem, dunno what happened there mate, err inefficiency, yes that's it, they were inefficient.

[bickster]

4 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Why did they keep de nationalising them? 

Tories being Tories. (well on paper it was Lloyd Georges Lib / Con coalition in 1921 but it was very Tory driven) There are very few rail networks in the world that are in private hands and make money. They initially de-nationalised in 1921 because they were handing things back to their owners after WW1 (yeah the coal mines went particularly well in that respect - handed back, wages cut, strike, coal rationing in next to no time) but even then they didn't do that, they formed the Big 4 with the railways, they were previously over 120 different companies. So even though they effectively created 4 big monopolies in private hands... it didn't work.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Every time the railways were de-nationalised, it was by the Tories and every time it failed.

Just using this as a starting point for something, I'm not disagreeing, btw. But it seems like (leaving aside alleged motives like "Labour is in hock to the health Unions, or the Tories want to sell it to their mates, or insert theory of choosing here) there's some fundamental things which point to or against having a nationalised [service] - for example, Rail - there's the tracks, the signalling infrastructure, the electric power lines, the locomotives, the carriages, the timetabling, the stations (and surrounding stuff like car parks), there's the ticketing....so absolutely loads of quite different aspects of rail travel. There's also then the ideal of co-ordinating trains with bus and air timetables...it makes a lot of sense for all those disparate entities to be under a single set of management, because of the need for very close integration between all the elements. If one part goes awry, it messes up most of not all of the other parts. If it's all subject to inter-company contracts, commercial agreements and such like it's more complex to adapt and adjust to conditions like flooding or cancellations or delays on one part of the network.

With some of the other big infrastructure things, while there's also complexity, obviously, it's not nearly as complex. Water, for example - it falls from the sky, gathers in reservoirs and flows down pipes to houses and businesses and then flows away down pipes, where it should be then be cleaned and released back into the environment.

Power generation and distribution is another more complex one, mail a relatively less complex one and so on. The NHS is huge, but largely a (in each area) localised, with some national speciality parts in just one or two locations in the country. But the problem (or one of them) is there's an internal market (created by the tories) which seems to make it more bureaucratic and less coherent and joined up than it should be, though there are big economies of scale in procurement of drugs and equipment and stuff.

So it seems to me like, to make things work better, it's not necessarily about who ultimately owns [whatever] it's about removing impediments to cohesive operation of all the different elements. Whether nationalised with internal markets, or seperate companies all cross contracting - that's a crap way of running anything big and important to the nation.

It also needs paying for and investing in, to keep it modern and fit for purpose, whether that's rail or hospitals or pipes or delivery centres or whatever.

The (whichever) government has to ensure that it [water, power, NHS...] works properly and effectively. They're responsible. But they don't necessarily have to own the [whatever] as long as they regulate so that the thing does what it should do. It's more important in my thinking that it's worked out whether it will work more effectively as one entity (e.g a single national rail body/company/service) or as a set of different (e.g. regional) "services" with each controlled according to the needs in that area.

I think where I'm getting to is that Rail should be nationalised/a single entity, Power too, but stuff like Post and Health and Water could be run as largely regional services on a not for profit/ regulated profit level service(s)/ publicly owned. It's more about working out how much money is direct government funding and how much is "user" paid for.

Tories are like "hands off" - so the investment and debt and stuff around a new power station or whatever is not "on the public books". Labour are more like "the public relies on this stuff, so the Government on behalf of the public must own it". Neither are really right as an across the board thing, I don't think. Whether it's private rail companies or the public NHS, none of it works remotely as well as it should. Swapping ownership model fixes next to nothing in the short term. In the long term monopolies need controlling and regulating and funding appropriately.

TL:DR **** the Tories.

[Chindie]

Rail just strikes me as one of those things that being privatised doesn't make sense. It's so big, so diverse, and so much a public need in many respects (especially if we're to push public transport harder) that trying to run it for profit ends with something being screwed over. Which is basically what we're seeing now - mental ticket costs, staff getting **** every which way, cost cutting and failing services, all sacrifices on the altar of profit.