Could public utilities be renationalised?

[Bernie Gunther]

Thing is, these are systems, optimised for one thing or another. I don't know of any convincing arguments that private ownership optimises particularly effectively for anything except return on investment and then only on a good day.

If you're optimising around the goal of producing a public service, then at least you have a fighting change of successfully deliving one, wheras if you're optimising for something else, I don't see any compelling reason to suppose that it's going to be effective at delivering a public service except by accident.

Crispy's example of unprofitable routes vs profitable ones illustrates this very well I think. Public service goals would presumably include providing decent transport to rural areas and so on, private investor goals only include this if you regulate to make it so, because such routes aren't in general profitable.

In effect, the goal of delivering a public service is only met in that case where it is no longer being run strictly in accordance with business principles. In the process, you end up generating more public sector work, so why not just let the public sector run things that are supposed to serve the public without that extra layer of complexity and contradictory goals generated by pretending to let the private sector run things?

Privatisation seems like a failed experiment to me.

 

[kyser_soze]

If you're optimising around the goal of producing a public service, then at least you have a fighting change of successfully deliving one, wheras if you're optimising for something else, I don't see any compelling reason to suppose that it's going to be effective at delivering a public service except by accident.

All well and good, but we had 40 years of monopoly industries, and all anyone can seem to remember of them is that they were crap at customer service, were still massively under-invested in and as with any monopoly had absolultely no incentive to deliver any of those things.

Talk to anyone who's worked with or for BT - it might be a private company but it still has a civil service corporate mentality. Your vision of great public services owned by the public is a good one, but how are you going to enforce stuff like service and innovation?

Privatisation seems like a failed experiment to me.

TBH from what I remember of it nationalisation wasn't exactly a resounding success either...

 

[tbaldwin]

Hurmmm...

Railways
Water

Telecomms, leccy, planes etc not at all - goverments have no business actually running these types of business (for that matter govt has no business running ANY type of enterprise), but YKWIM...

.

Why not? Competition to provide electric,gas,phones etc is a huge waste....And much as i like a bit of choice i dont really want to choose between 40 bloody companies all eager to take my money for gas,phones etc...

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

When I think of all those fat cat cunts who made a fortune out of privatisation my blood boils. How much has been skimmed off the railways by the various, generally useless franchises?

*editor needs a lie down

this is basically it with public funding the money isn't made for profit it's made for investment so allthe fat cat profits would in effect be gone...

except that the only people you get working for little or minimum dividend would be the shop floor peeps... which would in effect succpur the plan... gthe bob kylies of this world still would wnat their pund of fleash...

but possible but to what end... they are shitely run now because they were shitely runt hen it's not like they shed huge numebrs of staff or polices and were sold as new companies streamlined for the capitalist adventure they were cleved off in a bog awrful manner and then expect to continue under their own steam as before....

hence all the cock ups...

the very people who demanded privatiseation where the very people in the top jobs who stood to make a fortune when this happened....

 

[Bernie Gunther]

All well and good, but we had 40 years of monopoly industries, and all anyone can seem to remember of them is that they were crap at customer service, were still massively under-invested in and as with any monopoly had absolultely no incentive to deliver any of those things.

Talk to anyone who's worked with or for BT - it might be a private company but it still has a civil service corporate mentality. Your vision of great public services owned by the public is a good one, but how are you going to enforce stuff like service and innovation?



TBH from what I remember of it nationalisation wasn't exactly a resounding success either...

Well, as I said earlier, just as businesses don't always succeed in getting a good return on investment, the public sector doesn't always succeed in delivering quality public services, but at least the latter is actively trying to deliver public services, rather than trying to do something with no necessary connection to that goal.

Either may be more or less successful in their aims, but all other things being equal, which would be more likely to deliver good public services, the one that has that as a goal or the one that's trying to do something else?

Now one might want to argue that all other things aren't equal, for example that private enterprise is 'more efficient' or something. At this point I'd have to ask what are they more efficient at? Making money or serving the public? I've no doubt that in general they're mostly fairly efficient at the former.

 

[kyser_soze]

I just don't think expanding the scope of government responsibility into a market like telecomms does any good.

If someone could convincingly argue that you could have nationalised, monopoly industries that consistently delivered the best price, weren't even bigger nightmare bureaucracies then they are under the private sector and paid enough to actually encourage talent to work for them then fine. I was dicsussing this with someone at work today - the govt has privatised all the wrong bits of the health service - 'mission critical' functions like cleaning should be kept within the public bosom, while stuff like logistics and lots of admin functions would be better served by private operators who had legally enforceable goals to meet in order to be paid.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

As to service and so on, as someone who has been travelling regularly by rail since the late-70's, I'd be very happy to see the surly bastards of BR running things again, rather than the PR-sanitised plastic people of the useless Virgin.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Gas...plenty of people here going on about fuel costs etc etc, but it's worth bearing in mind that prior to the Russia-induced price-shock last year, the general trend of energy prices, both gas and electricity, was downwards; what exactly would have been different with that situation if BG was nationalised or not? The government would still have had to pay international market rates for the gas...plus there are cheaper suppliers than BG (in fact some who are substantially cheaper than BG) so I don't see a compelling argument for renationalisation of any of the energy markets. I can't comment on service quality, but I'd put money on it that response times to call outs, connection appointments etc are far better than when the service was a monopoly.

statisitaclly no they aren't better indeed the index of service level has fallen year on year... equally the costs are being aritficall inflatd becasue the BGT (british Gas Trading) euro russian pipline into the uk has had it's out put halved in the last year...

regardless of russias output which was never threatening the UK any way (british gas have their own pipelines through chechnya (can you say BGT threatend Russia with subsidy cuts and induced civil war over oil pipeline ...) so that didn't effect us... It's that BGT stopped pumping as mcuh gas to artifucally 'stimualte the markets' which then inturn stimulates the oil markets (which are index linked to oil) which then cause the cost of oil to rise and thus improved profits in effect they are making the same money for half the cost...

The pipeline into the uk atm is currently running on around 1/4 capacity... were it to run at 1/2 capacity things would be about half as cheap... you can see why this would then in effect bankrupt these compaines if it was run at 3/4 then it'd be 3/4 cheaper and if it was run a full then the prices would be a 1/4 of what they are now which is some pityfully cheap as to become acutally meaning less... it's no longer cost effective...

It was worked out at it's height of cheap gas that bgt weremaking just £7.77 out of each customer each year... if oyu had to give them £5 for a missappoitment (as it was at the time) plus £5 for pohne calls they were in effect gettign free fuel and costing you money... they decided to do something about this... and turned down the supply... volia they now make some where in the region of £70 per customer per year...

~As for improved services don't count on it transporation conneciton etc han't been opened up for competition in the same way so thes costs now get passed from the contractors to the ocmpany to you, it's more expensive and harder and there's less legislated contact that when they were whole...

The market has repeadtly been shown to have failed the consumer and as the big players are now electricity de france eon (germany electricty and gas) and spanish gas... along side BGT then there really isn't any choice....

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, you know, I spent the early 90's working for the R&D bit of Cable and Wireless and the idea I got there was that any organisation in BT's position just had to stand there with a bucket and catch the money pouring in as the telecoms/IT convergence stuff made it a red hot investment prospect.

My guess is that privatising it had to happen, because it was just too massive an opportunity for City investors to make loads of money to be allowed to pass by and the government was suitably responsive to the needs of the City if not to the needs of the British people as a whole. If BT hadn't been privatised my guess is that the same thing would have happened with BT as is happening with the BBC in the internet age, much to Mr Murdoch's distress, it would have been awash with money and doing lots of really cool stuff with it.

As for innovation, are you familiar with the sort of clever stuff BT's Martlesham lab does and has been doing for a lot longer than it's been privatised?

 

[kyser_soze]

As I said, I think trains are something that requires public ownership - altho I would have no objections to private operators sharing infrastructure etc, or developing their own lines/routes etc - altho a well run service would mean that PS alternatives would be irrelevant anyway!

 

[kyser_soze]

As for innovation, are you familiar with the sort of clever stuff BT's Martlesham lab does and has been doing for a lot longer than it's been privatised?

Been round it and met the guy who headed the fibre optic development team mate - I'm well aware of the Martlesham record on innovation in technology, the issue was always translating that from the lab to a commercial product which inevitably became beset by internal civil service political wrangling - altho having read a couple of books on british tech innovation and our seeming inability to actually turn it into good products and services this wasn't limited to the PS.

statisitaclly no they aren't better indeed the index of service level has fallen year on year

Which index is this garf? Are you telling me that when BG was a public utility someone collected stats on service delivery?

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Which index is this garf? Are you telling me that when BG was a public utility someone collected stats on service delivery?

are you suggesting that the civil service would in some manner of speaking do something which approximates real work rather than gatehring usless meaningless figures...

I think i'm having MI5 tear, rip and cleanse this to sort this kind of treasionous comment from your very mind sir...

Yeah stats go back from about 1991 until the big gap in them due to bgts change of system (thought techncially they are aviable on legacy should the really need to get hold of them... ) after around 1993 when TGB (tariff gas billing) systems were introduced (one of the largest computor databases of people consumption and credit records which spwaned things such as exoerian, QAS address systems and all manner of different credit and profileing software mosiaic etc... ) there were huge records kept, very, very detailed records... people who worry about big brother might first want to look at BGT and GUS and their databases and of course now Tesco who bought GUS and buy data from BGT...)

so yeah service levels records were kept but it wasn't based as a service industry... so the serivce given was appualling.. this would have to have changed regardless of the sell off as the need for power increased and also the contries consumptin went from being 1 in every 12 to 1 in every 3 in terms of central heating and gas boilers etc... competition did nothign to improve this indeed by hiving it off in to a seperate silo it actualyl harmed this not improved it...

whent he gas market was borken up each department had to buy services from the other the legistation (the gas act 1995 and 1996 replaced by the utilities act 2000) prevent gas companies from having their own meter readers engineers pipeline distribution networks vans central heating engineers anything ... so each of these comapnies had to become seperate hence the creation of centria as the parent company who owned these seperate divisions but could not allow each arm to communciate with the other excpet by a system of electonic communication to prevent there being seen as any bias...

This was all of course hopelssly ineffcnet and costly pushign up serivce costs pushing up over all costs pushing up prices... plus then they realised that they had to sell theseservices tot he competition too... so then instead of it being merely one group of people to sort out it became 107 originally (this quickley became the big 6 to the big 4 currently is... ) no more people doing the jobs many more people requesting jobs no trianing courses etc...

result worse service... this has over time improved but only marginally... ask anyone whose attempted to call out transco national grid to (they merged....) get a new pipline in ... take a minimum of 6 weeks and usually indeed alsmot standardly 16 weeks... that's service improvement is it?

how about reading a meter? nope no change there they still don't turn up, they still never put a card through the door still do coffe shop reads...

ok so bolier servicing must be better right ... nope... again ask anyone waiting for their 24/7 cover to fix their boiler for xmas... if they are having good service...

trust there's not one thing which has improved for the UK since gas privatiseation... not least that the electricity privatiseation followed the same model but instead of it being one monopoly to do it to there was 14....

it's utterly fucked.... as an industry....

 

[soulman]

Ok I'm going to throw a wildcard in at this point. Despite the mismanagement at various stages of their development could and should the public utilities be run as worker controlled cooperatives?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ok I'm going to throw a wildcard in at this point. Despite the mismanagement at various stages of their development could and should the public utilities be run as worker controlled cooperatives?

Don't see how they could make a worse mess of it than Richard Fcking Branson.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Ok I'm going to throw a wildcard in at this point. Despite the mismanagement at various stages of their development could and should the public utilities be run as worker controlled cooperatives?

in terms of stalinist russia or waitrose?

neither one would be any myuch cop eitherway. whilst we can a profit margin attached to things which we have enshried with in the humans rihgts act... (the right to sheleter heat and light...) then there will always be a mehtod of exploitation.

I mean you look at standing charge which is like line rental for bt these were charges made by the state to ensure that no tax payer subsidised the provison for others of this service... thus affording a break clause in the costings and yet, have these been aboloished now that they are not maditory or charged as a levy? have they fuck they are still charged even when companies sayt hey don't then do that two tier billing system which acutally increases the level of standign charge you pay exponentially, [per quarter.

Does watchdog or any of the policy makers change this ? does it fuck, it hasn' got the power to curtail this nice little earner for the companies ...

so no no form of profit based company will ever work not workers co-op not eco generation nothing...

The best we can hope for is that we all end upwith wind turnbines on our homes and buildings and that micro generaiton as is needed becomes a reality...

sooner or later though they'll find away of taxing that too, they always do....

 

[soulman]

Don't see how they could make a worse mess of it than Richard Fcking Branson.

Having worked in a few of them I've always found the workers, given the opportunity, are more than capable of running things and often have a far more detailed understanding of what's needed than 'managers'.

Garf I'll come back to your points. There are examples of functioning workers cooperatives, well partly functioning given the conditions now, but they do exist.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Having worked in a few of them I've always found the workers, given the opportunity, are more than capable of running things and often have a far more detailed understanding of what's needed than 'managers'. <snip>

Yep, the issue, far more than organisation is where you get the investment. Particularly for stuff that involves heavy duty capital investment in infrastructure. I see no reason in principle why workers' co-ops shouldn't run any given system as effectively as any other structure.

The tricky bit is investment and what comes with it.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

Garf I'll come back to your points. There are examples of functioning workers cooperatives, well partly functioning given the conditions now, but they do exist.

cool cool.

I personally think we can never run public serivces for profit and should be spending say the money for afghanistian and iraq on these kind of domestic things etc...

 

[nwnm]

I personally think we can never run public serivces for profit and should be spending say the money for afghanistian and iraq on these kind of domestic things etc...[/QUOTE]

Absolutely. I've worked in hospitals where wards have their own budgets which always run out, and you end up bartering with the ward next door over the most ridiculous things - "I'll swap you to bags of sugar for 5 green incontinence pads...." The market has no place in public services.