General Election 2024

[perrykneeham]

I expect they'll all go straight to the Lords.

[perrykneeham]

I see that Starmer's frit. You might imagine that he would relish an opportunity to demonstrate the wonder of his "forensic intellect" and the polished performance of a seasoned barrister. Of course, he has neither, but two debates are better than none. Rishi, a very clever man indeed, wanted six.

[mids]

Rishi should ask him what a woman is at the start of every debate.

[mids]

Plummeting. Plummeting.

"Labour’s lead has fallen by three points in the first YouGov poll since Rishi Sunak called the 2024 general election.

The survey, conducted on Thursday and Friday, shows the Conservatives up by one point to 22 per cent, while Labour is down two to 44 per cent."

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/25/live-election-2024-keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-labour-tory/

[wetkingcanute]

I've always been on the left of the Conservative party - and yes I know that sounds wishy washy. But I'm a capitalist that hates anything even slightly Fascist.
In the eighties I got to see what local Labour Party politics in Fulham was like - and that was not for me. (to say the least)

Both parties have made really stupid mistakes and bad judgements over the years.

Labour's Sale and Lease back of the NHS

And the current killer that has come home to roost is this:

The current system of private monopolies dates back to 1989 when Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher sold off the publicly-owned water and sewage industry in England and Wales for £7.6bn.

So: A Curse On Both Your Houses!

[perrykneeham]

There are at least two sides to every story, of course. The Blessed Magster was correct, both morally and economically, to get most of the utilities out of public ownership (as indeed, she was to sell off council housing stock). All of these were depreciating assets which would have required astronomical, wartime effort to refurbish and modernise. This would need to be achieved by a bloated, hideously wasteful public sector which had already demonstrated its indolence and which was becoming an overwhelming burden in itself.

What's failed is that successive Governments and government hasn't enforced the contractual obligations of the sell-offs. I suspect that there was, and remained, a good deal of wishful thinking on both sides.

The sad thing is that we'll all have to pay, come what may.

[perrykneeham]

May 25, 2024 9:42:34 GMT wetkingcanute said:

In the eighties I got to see what local Labour Party politics in Fulham was like - and that was not for me. (to say the least)

How so? I was unaware that you had dabbled in local politics. It seems more likely that you dabbled with a local politician.

[wetkingcanute]

The local Labour party met in a small hall near the end of my road.
I couldn't resist joining and pretending to be involved.
My god the meetings were brutal. They hated each other far more than the Tories. It was just like The Life Of Brian. SPLITER!
One old bloke, who had been in the party since it started was hounded out.
I left after about three months.

[flatandy]

May 25, 2024 10:12:00 GMT perrykneeham said:

There are at least two sides to every story, of course. The Blessed Magster was correct, both morally and economically, to get most of the utilities out of public ownership (as indeed, she was to sell off council housing stock). All of these were depreciating assets which would have required astronomical, wartime effort to refurbish and modernise. This would need to be achieved by a bloated, hideously wasteful public sector which had already demonstrated its indolence and which was becoming an overwhelming burden in itself.

What's failed is that successive Governments and government hasn't enforced the contractual obligations of the sell-offs. I suspect that there was, and remained, a good deal of wishful thinking on both sides.

The sad thing is that we'll all have to pay, come what may.

The fact that neither Labour nor (mostly) Tory have been able to enforce the requirement to get the private sector to invest tells me that selling monopoly utilities was never going to work. The private owners have the government and public over a barrel - either they're taking massive subsidies from the taxpayer or charging more, but the last resort punishment of taking them back public is not a threat anyone's going to carry out so they have carte blanche like the big banks did up to and after 2008.

There's no good reason for water to be private, in particular, and power distribution too is a very hard case to make.

Telecom privatisation is fine. So are airports and arlines. Gas is a borderline case. As for rail, if you think it's an essential public service it should be public, but if you think it's just one of many possible modes and could be replaced by buses, say, then you can leave it private but have to also genuinely leave it private and let it rot and fail if there's no investment.

Selling council houses was fine. What wasn't fine was not replacing them with the same amount of social housing.

[flatandy]

Currently 150 seats don't have Tory candidates. They are flailing badly right now. Rish! messed up by jumping the election on them.

[flatandy]

Meanwhile, I haven't listened to her words, but the headline on this tweet is positively "War is Peace" and "Freedom is Slavery"

[perrykneeham]

I see Starmer's playing the yoot card, so favoured by petty dictators.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-69059992

Yep, you're too emotionally immature to buy fags and alcohol, go bet or watch porn, let alone shag someone older than you, but you can vote. Of course, because voting Labour doesn't require adult competence.

[perrykneeham]

May 25, 2024 13:26:58 GMT flatandy said:

May 25, 2024 10:12:00 GMT perrykneeham said:

There are at least two sides to every story, of course. The Blessed Magster was correct, both morally and economically, to get most of the utilities out of public ownership (as indeed, she was to sell off council housing stock). All of these were depreciating assets which would have required astronomical, wartime effort to refurbish and modernise. This would need to be achieved by a bloated, hideously wasteful public sector which had already demonstrated its indolence and which was becoming an overwhelming burden in itself.

What's failed is that successive Governments and government hasn't enforced the contractual obligations of the sell-offs. I suspect that there was, and remained, a good deal of wishful thinking on both sides.

The sad thing is that we'll all have to pay, come what may.

The fact that neither Labour nor (mostly) Tory have been able to enforce the requirement to get the private sector to invest tells me that selling monopoly utilities was never going to work. The private owners have the government and public over a barrel - either they're taking massive subsidies from the taxpayer or charging more, but the last resort punishment of taking them back public is not a threat anyone's going to carry out so they have carte blanche like the big banks did up to and after 2008.

There's no good reason for water to be private, in particular, and power distribution too is a very hard case to make.

Telecom privatisation is fine. So are airports and arlines. Gas is a borderline case. As for rail, if you think it's an essential public service it should be public, but if you think it's just one of many possible modes and could be replaced by buses, say, then you can leave it private but have to also genuinely leave it private and let it rot and fail if there's no investment.

Selling council houses was fine. What wasn't fine was not replacing them with the same amount of social housing.

Well, not all privatisations are bad, not even all water privatisations have been bad.

It was up to the market to offer social housing and for the state to provide the subsidy to renters. If there are too many renters, maybe we should look at who we're housing and how we're housing them.

[flatandy]

There's no such thing as "too many renters". Renting should be a reasonable option for everyone. What there isn't enough of is housing stock that's affordable and the market is unwilling to provide that when it can build much higher margin expensive housing on the same land. It's a failure of not enough and not strong enough regulation, once again.

[perrykneeham]

Ah, you're in rainbow unicorn territory, I see. There are too many renters if the market cannot provide for them. The market can, of course, be encouraged to participate throughout government subsidy. If government policy is out of step with its ability to influence the market, then there are too many renters.

[voice]

Private companies that need subsidies to survive are clearly not fit for purpose, after all a lot of that subsidy will go towards shareholders and dividends rather than doing whats needed. This is why a lot of privertisations failed to deliver what was promised, efficiency lower costs to consumers and broad investment and instead cost the taxpayer much more in the long run and delivered raw sewage to rivers, higher bills and failing infrastructure. How many bail outs have there been now, too many to count. My feeling is over all privertisations was a net loss.

[voice]

Oh and this myth the Tories always use, even today with the NHS, that all publicly run organisations are inefficient, badly run, bloated and so on, so need to be sold off to Tory donars to ensure the gravey train goes on forever is still mostly bollox as we know they deliberately as part of their policy ran them down ran them badly and made them as inefficient as possible simply to give the impression they were sh*t.

[mids]

Although we're all agreed that all publicly run organisations are inefficient, badly run, bloated and so on.

[perrykneeham]

May 25, 2024 16:28:33 GMT voice said:

Private companies that need subsidies to survive are clearly not fit for purpose, after all a lot of that subsidy will go towards shareholders and dividends rather than doing whats needed. This is why a lot of privertisations failed to deliver what was promised, efficiency lower costs to consumers and broad investment and instead cost the taxpayer much more in the long run and delivered raw sewage to rivers, higher bills and failing infrastructure. How many bail outs have there been now, too many to count. My feeling is over all privertisations was a net loss.

Who mentioned private companies? You're all over the place here, squire.

[perrykneeham]

May 25, 2024 16:49:51 GMT voice said:

Oh and this myth the Tories always use, even today with the NHS, that all publicly run organisations are inefficient, badly run, bloated and so on, so need to be sold off to Tory donars to ensure the gravey train goes on forever is still mostly bollox as we know they deliberately as part of their policy ran them down ran them badly and made them as inefficient as possible simply to give the impression they were sh*t.

But the NHS is inefficient, badly run, bloated and so on. It is a shithouse.