UK General Election 2015

Tineash wrote:Energy tariffs are a deliberately garbage idea and utilities should be state owned and non-profit. Crying over companies making 'very little profit' is risible.

They don't love you MCN, don't love them.

State owned so that they can be subsidised by the tax payer when they start to run completely inefficiently?

EDF is state owned, just not this state

WOW suddenly EDF has been transformed from an agile & efficient private enterprise to a bloated jobs-for-the-boys 70s government behemoth.

State-owned East Coast Main Line returned £1 Billion to the government over 5 years and enjoyed improved employee & customer satisfaction ratings.

THANK GOD it's now been sold off so it can become even more efficient.

Same goes for a lot of our rail contractors. I can only assume that British people are more incompetent than other Europeans and therefore cannot be trusted to run their own services and utilities, which is why we pay other states to do it for us.

And obviously we had to sell East Coast again. It was getting embarrassing. Same goes for the Royal Mail. It was making us far too much money.

Maybe the answer is that the French are just better than us. Just naturally better at doing things efficiently. It's sad but true that the Briton cannot be trusted to run his own affairs. Looking after us is just the Frenchman's burden.

Tineash wrote:Maybe the answer is that the French are just better than us. Just naturally better at doing things efficiently. It's sad but true that the Briton cannot be trusted to run his own affairs. Looking after us is just the Frenchman's burden.

Have you seen the state of the NHS? It's a bloated bureaucracy that has become heavily weighted towards management and away from patient-facing roles, with services being cut left right and centre and patient care suffering because there simply aren't enough nurses to go around, yet somehow the budget demands keep growing. That's what layers upon layers of middle-management will do.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Tineash wrote:Maybe the answer is that the French are just better than us. Just naturally better at doing things efficiently. It's sad but true that the Briton cannot be trusted to run his own affairs. Looking after us is just the Frenchman's burden.

Have you seen the state of the NHS? It's a bloated bureaucracy that has become heavily weighted towards management and away from patient-facing roles, with services being cut left right and centre and patient care suffering because there simply aren't enough nurses to go around, yet somehow the budget demands keep growing. That's what layers upon layers of middle-management will do.

If there's one thing that large private companies are known for, it's an absence of bureacracy. A remarkably small number of middle managers. A lean management structure. Truly those are the hallmarks of private enterprise.

Tineash wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Tineash wrote:Maybe the answer is that the French are just better than us. Just naturally better at doing things efficiently. It's sad but true that the Briton cannot be trusted to run his own affairs. Looking after us is just the Frenchman's burden.

Have you seen the state of the NHS? It's a bloated bureaucracy that has become heavily weighted towards management and away from patient-facing roles, with services being cut left right and centre and patient care suffering because there simply aren't enough nurses to go around, yet somehow the budget demands keep growing. That's what layers upon layers of middle-management will do.

If there's one thing that large private companies are known for, it's an absence of bureacracy. A remarkably small number of middle managers. A lean management structure. Truly those are the hallmarks of private enterprise.

Those things cost money, and private companies HATE spending money unnecessarily. Any private company worth its salt has as lean a management structure as it can get away with, because managers are damned expensive for little ROI.

Have Cal and MCN swapped usernames?

Moggy wrote:Have Cal and MCN swapped usernames?

I think people have a romanticised view of how things were pre-deregulation.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Have you seen the state of the NHS? It's a bloated bureaucracy ...

Reminder:



The NHS is the best health care service in the world. We spend less on it per capita than most comparable nations.

But yeah we should sell it off because reasons.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Tineash wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Tineash wrote:Maybe the answer is that the French are just better than us. Just naturally better at doing things efficiently. It's sad but true that the Briton cannot be trusted to run his own affairs. Looking after us is just the Frenchman's burden.

Have you seen the state of the NHS? It's a bloated bureaucracy that has become heavily weighted towards management and away from patient-facing roles, with services being cut left right and centre and patient care suffering because there simply aren't enough nurses to go around, yet somehow the budget demands keep growing. That's what layers upon layers of middle-management will do.

If there's one thing that large private companies are known for, it's an absence of bureacracy. A remarkably small number of middle managers. A lean management structure. Truly those are the hallmarks of private enterprise.

Those things cost money, and private companies HATE spending money unnecessarily. Any private company worth its salt has as lean a management structure as it can get away with, because managers are damned expensive for little ROI.

That's a lovely theory that bears no resemblance to reality. You have literally magicked away any private sector inefficiency.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Moggy wrote:Have Cal and MCN swapped usernames?

I think people have a romanticised view of how things were pre-deregulation.

State run utilities in Britain being gooseberry fool in the 70s/80s doesn't mean they should be gooseberry fool if they were state run again. The whole political landscape was different back then.

I am not arguing in favour of renationalising utilities btw, I just don't think that "state run = poor" is necessarily true. You mention the NHS being bloated but it's actually very well run, it's just not in the interest of most of the media or political parties to admit that.

Anyone who thinks the private sector is significantly more efficient than the public sector obviously has never worked in both like I have. One of the must stark things I can say is that private companies will often throw money around like it grows on trees, refurnishing conference rooms with the latest tech when the current equipment is just fine and paying out for staff "team building" trips and Christmas parties, buying tickets to sports events and loading endless benefits onto their bosses. Contrast that to the public sector where the paint has to be peeling off the walls before you can persuade anyone to give it new coat.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Tineash wrote:Maybe the answer is that the French are just better than us. Just naturally better at doing things efficiently. It's sad but true that the Briton cannot be trusted to run his own affairs. Looking after us is just the Frenchman's burden.

Have you seen the state of the NHS? It's a bloated bureaucracy that has become heavily weighted towards management and away from patient-facing roles, with services being cut left right and centre and patient care suffering because there simply aren't enough nurses to go around, yet somehow the budget demands keep growing. That's what layers upon layers of middle-management will do.

You do realise the NHS is the most efficient service of its kind on the planet, right?

It tops international tables time and time again and yet that still is not enough for private sector zealots. For them no public service will ever be more efficient that a private service no matter what and no matter what evidence arises; if their opinions and reality differ then reality must be wrong. The only counter argument is to argue that there is some kind of conspiracy.

Karl wrote:But yeah we should sell it off because reasons.

At no point did I say we should sell it off. However, I have worked for the NHS and my mum works as a nurse, and we have both seen services cut and pay rises of a measly 1%, which when inflation is taken into account is leaving staff worse off each year!

I will concede that CCGs are a better idea than PCTs, though, as at least now medical practitioners are allowed to be involved in the decision-making processes.

Don't be obtuse, you brought up the NHS while espousing the virtues of private corporations. Either you think the NHS would run better privatised or you don't.

Karl wrote:Don't be obtuse, you brought up the NHS while espousing the virtues of private corporations. Either you think the NHS would run better privatised or you don't.

I think the NHS has been better run while still being public, at least from a patient-facing perspective. And the NHS still has competition from private healthcare providers.

Pre-privatisation, customers only ever had one Electricity company they could use, and one gas company. There was no competition, and therefore no incentive to keep costs down. As we all know, monopolisation is never good for the customer, and that's what would happen if the entire energy market was brought under a single publically-owned provider.

Potentially, however, there could be a publically-operated provider that runs alongside the private sector, much how the NHS works and how East Coast rail worked. People still have the choice then, and choice is good for everyone.

Labour to review private rail firms

ED MILIBAND will fast-track rail renationalisation if Labour wins power, launching a review of the franchising system in his first 100 days.

Miliband plans to let the public sector bid against private train firms to provide services in a change that Labour says will deliver a better deal for passengers and taxpayers.

A Labour government could even suspend the existing franchising process while a review takes place — a move that will anger train firms eyeing lucrative deals. “We will look very closely at suspending the franchising process while this urgent review is conducted,” a party source said.

Labour points to the success of the east coast main line to justify its plan

Oh yeah, and the way the government has handled the Smart Metering rollout doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. The fact that there isn't an accepted Smart Meter standard is a joke. It means each supplier has their own Smart Meter, and none of them are compatible with each other, so if you switch suppliers, you lose your Smart Meter functionality. This is the kind of basic stuff that OFGEM should have had a handle on from day 1.