Energy, Water, Railways... State Owned, Cheaper Bills..?
Discussion
Simple question - Would our bills be cheaper now if the above services were brought back into public ownership?
So much in the equation with the private sector, especially the railways, the different companies licenced to different regions, track maintenance and infrastructure responsibilities has a separate body...(Network Rail)
Then there is share holders, the investment needed to keep these service available.. I'm not so much expressing an opinion, just welcoming those of other PHer's.....
So much in the equation with the private sector, especially the railways, the different companies licenced to different regions, track maintenance and infrastructure responsibilities has a separate body...(Network Rail)
Then there is share holders, the investment needed to keep these service available.. I'm not so much expressing an opinion, just welcoming those of other PHer's.....
Well, because of COVID and the collapse of passenger numbers, the entire rail system has been effectively nationalised already. The government has taken on the cost of running the railway and the train companies are running them as management contracts where they’re paid a set amount to keep the wheels turning.
Would be a good opportunity now to relook at the system we have as it seems to be the worse of both worlds.
Regards to your other stuff, water should be renationalised as there is no competition. The consumer has no choice where he buys his water so what’s the point?
Leccy market seems to work as there is intense competition and the consumer has greater choice, same with telecoms.
Would be a good opportunity now to relook at the system we have as it seems to be the worse of both worlds.
Regards to your other stuff, water should be renationalised as there is no competition. The consumer has no choice where he buys his water so what’s the point?
Leccy market seems to work as there is intense competition and the consumer has greater choice, same with telecoms.
I recall rail travel pre-privatisation. Well, I don't actually recall rail travel because I rarely experienced it in order to recall it. I just recall my parents telling me it was too expensive, much to my disappointment as I loved trains as a child. There was a good period post-privatisation when it was fairly easy to get some really low fares - I was visiting my best mate in London (from Yorkshire) on a regular basis for as little as £18 return. Haven't seen a reasonably priced fare for a long rail journey for a few years now though. The good times appear to have ended in that respect.
Not sure what effect renationalising the energy companies would have on prices. Whatever, they could start by abolishing VAT on household energy bills if they want to do something fair and decent.
Not sure what effect renationalising the energy companies would have on prices. Whatever, they could start by abolishing VAT on household energy bills if they want to do something fair and decent.
I'm all for genuinely free markets in most things but I don't see how having 60 different electricity companies who don't actually produce or distribute electricity helps that. There isn't really any scope for innovation, and what sort of customer service do you actually want from a company that sends you a bill once a month? Probably not the sort where they keep you on hold for 20 minutes telling you how green they are and asking you to look on their website. As for choice, well I'll choose the one that works out cheapest. Fine, have Economy 7, maybe have a low user tariff and a high user tariff. I don't need a choice of 30 different tariffs named after fish. I don't even want that choice.
Can you tell I had a squabble with my electricity company recently?
But they're not the only ones.
Why do I need an app for my water bill?
And am I missing some great railway innovation beyond those toilet doors that looked quite nifty in 1998?
And even broadband - telecoms was a hugely successful privatisation - seems to have competed itself out. It maybe a different story in better connected areas but here it's a choice of endless different companies who provide the same thing at the same price.
If we want a free market in these things you'd have to let it rip, accepting that train companies and railways will sometimes go bust leaving commuter towns isolated, competing power companies will build power stations and run cables all over the place and so forth.
No subsidies or concessions. No bailouts if it goes wrong, and no breaking up big companies if they start looking too much like a monopoly. No regulating how many trains must be run or how many houses must have fast Internet access. The competition will drive the structure of the market.
If you want a reliable service at an affordable price for a wider public good then there's a lot to be said for well run state providers. We never quite got the knack of running them well before, however there's no magic about the private sector either. The reason it is more efficient at say making cars or running restaurants is that the less efficient ones lose ground to the more efficient ones. What we seem to have done is take a dogmatic approach to having competition and consumer choice then regulated them to death to try and ensure they still provide a reliable service. The result seems to be that the public take on the risk and the quasi private sector takes the revenue.
I would like to think there are better ways of getting the benefits of private sector efficiency into public services and of running public services better than we did in the 1970s but I don't think our current system is really there.
Can you tell I had a squabble with my electricity company recently?
But they're not the only ones.
Why do I need an app for my water bill?
And am I missing some great railway innovation beyond those toilet doors that looked quite nifty in 1998?
And even broadband - telecoms was a hugely successful privatisation - seems to have competed itself out. It maybe a different story in better connected areas but here it's a choice of endless different companies who provide the same thing at the same price.
If we want a free market in these things you'd have to let it rip, accepting that train companies and railways will sometimes go bust leaving commuter towns isolated, competing power companies will build power stations and run cables all over the place and so forth.
No subsidies or concessions. No bailouts if it goes wrong, and no breaking up big companies if they start looking too much like a monopoly. No regulating how many trains must be run or how many houses must have fast Internet access. The competition will drive the structure of the market.
If you want a reliable service at an affordable price for a wider public good then there's a lot to be said for well run state providers. We never quite got the knack of running them well before, however there's no magic about the private sector either. The reason it is more efficient at say making cars or running restaurants is that the less efficient ones lose ground to the more efficient ones. What we seem to have done is take a dogmatic approach to having competition and consumer choice then regulated them to death to try and ensure they still provide a reliable service. The result seems to be that the public take on the risk and the quasi private sector takes the revenue.
I would like to think there are better ways of getting the benefits of private sector efficiency into public services and of running public services better than we did in the 1970s but I don't think our current system is really there.
The only way it would end up cheaper is if the prices were further subsidised meaning tax payers would make up the gap. You can argue taking profit out would be passed back to customers but given union power we have train drivers on 70k a year platform staff on 50, they would and could demand more. As it stands best thing covid has done has shown we don't need trains as much as we thought we do need bloody good internet though....maybe john McDonald was right
Gecko1978 said:
The only way it would end up cheaper is if the prices were further subsidised meaning tax payers would make up the gap. You can argue taking profit out would be passed back to customers but given union power we have train drivers on 70k a year platform staff on 50, they would and could demand more. As it stands best thing covid has done has shown we don't need trains as much as we thought we do need bloody good internet though....maybe john McDonald was right
That’s complete b
ks on platform staff by the way and only a few train drivers earn that as a basic (mainly the high speed and Eurostar boys).Funnily enough it was privatisation that drove train drivers pay to what it is rather than ‘union power’. Training a driver is expensive and can take a long time so what happened is train companies would poach drivers from other companies by offering higher pay and in order to keep staff, other companies were forced to increase their pay rates to stop them leaving. It was train companies looking to be cost efficient by not investing in training and short term savings that led us to where we are today.
Drivers were on s
t money while under BR and at the height of ‘union power’. Wages were comparable to bus drivers and overtime had to hammered to earn anything approaching decent money.Having worked for the CEGB before it was privatised I can tell you that public ownership wasn't quite what people today seem to think it was.
We were hideously inefficient and spent money like water, but as a lot was hidden under the umbrella of Government spending, the bills were reasonable.
No gov would ever risk a fall out with a national negotiating body that could have lead to an immediate country wide shutdown so we never went on strike (I got balloted once and the issue soon went away), were payed well and got fantastic final salary pensions. This was I believe one of the main reasons for privatisation. The NUM though they had that power but it proved otherwise, we knew we had that power.
We would design and build a station, then get bored and completely redesign the next one so any savings from duplication was always lost (just look at the AGR fleet !) and I loose count of the research stations and regional offices we had, (barnwood, CERL, Bedmister down, Laud house, Bricket wood, Drakelow Plant training centre (and ones for every region), Withenshaw, Central Electricity Research Labs, Central workshops (had a huge lathe there ), Cheddar gorge HV research lab, Berkley caves and others too numerous to recall, then the regional head offices.
Staff numbers were drastically cut after privatisation. At Ironbridge during a night shift we had a full shift of 3 C&I, 3 Electrical, 3 mech fitters, 2 unit operators, 2 unit APA's, 1 assistant shift charge engineer, 1 shift charge engineer, 3 security guards. I got a lot of sleep on a night shift even though as an apprentice, I got given all the work while the fitters went to bed with strict instructions not to wake them 'unless it was really important'.
After privatisation, 4 total on site at night (I had left by then).
We even designed 'identical' nuclear power stations with turbines from different UK manufactures just to keep people in jobs (and thus to keep the voters in those regions happy)
It was glorious
and as a lot of the money was spent in the UK, it wasn't the end of the world either but it would be quite a wrench to bring the good old days back.
We were hideously inefficient and spent money like water, but as a lot was hidden under the umbrella of Government spending, the bills were reasonable.
No gov would ever risk a fall out with a national negotiating body that could have lead to an immediate country wide shutdown so we never went on strike (I got balloted once and the issue soon went away), were payed well and got fantastic final salary pensions. This was I believe one of the main reasons for privatisation. The NUM though they had that power but it proved otherwise, we knew we had that power.
We would design and build a station, then get bored and completely redesign the next one so any savings from duplication was always lost (just look at the AGR fleet !) and I loose count of the research stations and regional offices we had, (barnwood, CERL, Bedmister down, Laud house, Bricket wood, Drakelow Plant training centre (and ones for every region), Withenshaw, Central Electricity Research Labs, Central workshops (had a huge lathe there
), Cheddar gorge HV research lab, Berkley caves and others too numerous to recall, then the regional head offices.Staff numbers were drastically cut after privatisation. At Ironbridge during a night shift we had a full shift of 3 C&I, 3 Electrical, 3 mech fitters, 2 unit operators, 2 unit APA's, 1 assistant shift charge engineer, 1 shift charge engineer, 3 security guards. I got a lot of sleep on a night shift even though as an apprentice, I got given all the work while the fitters went to bed with strict instructions not to wake them 'unless it was really important'.
After privatisation, 4 total on site at night (I had left by then).
We even designed 'identical' nuclear power stations with turbines from different UK manufactures just to keep people in jobs (and thus to keep the voters in those regions happy)
It was glorious
and as a lot of the money was spent in the UK, it wasn't the end of the world either but it would be quite a wrench to bring the good old days back.
Edited by Gary C on Tuesday 6th April 23:50
valiant said:
That’s complete bks on platform staff by the way and only a few train drivers earn that as a basic (mainly the high speed and Eurostar boys).
Funnily enough it was privatisation that drove train drivers pay to what it is rather than ‘union power’. Training a driver is expensive and can take a long time so what happened is train companies would poach drivers from other companies by offering higher pay and in order to keep staff, other companies were forced to increase their pay rates to stop them leaving. It was train companies looking to be cost efficient by not investing in training and short term savings that led us to where we are today.
Drivers were on st money while under BR and at the height of ‘union power’. Wages were comparable to bus drivers and overtime had to hammered to earn anything approaching decent money.
True...my Dad was on the footplate at Eastleigh and Basingstoke from 1953 to 1997...or M7 Tanks to Class 60's if you like.ks on platform staff by the way and only a few train drivers earn that as a basic (mainly the high speed and Eurostar boys).Funnily enough it was privatisation that drove train drivers pay to what it is rather than ‘union power’. Training a driver is expensive and can take a long time so what happened is train companies would poach drivers from other companies by offering higher pay and in order to keep staff, other companies were forced to increase their pay rates to stop them leaving. It was train companies looking to be cost efficient by not investing in training and short term savings that led us to where we are today.
Drivers were on s
t money while under BR and at the height of ‘union power’. Wages were comparable to bus drivers and overtime had to hammered to earn anything approaching decent money.Growing up I remember him doing all sorts of overtime to keep us in a half decent lifestyle, even ballast jobs at night which he admitted he hated doing as they were boring and could be dangerous.
His basic was something daft like £13k in the early 80's IIRC but it more than doubled with the overtime that BR relied upon and the myriad of enhancements such as mileage money which is another story...
He was also fortunate enough to be a "mixed traction" driver so had a variety of passenger and freight work rostered over a fairly wide area to maintain interest in the job...not all drivers were so fortunate.
Come privatisation in 1994/95 he was offered a stark choice of EWS (Not sure if Freightliner was on the cards?) or South West Trains...being in his early 60's by then the freight work offered involved lots of night work and lodging turns away from home, so he went for SWT and spent his last two years mostly confined to pedalling EMU's between Waterloo and Weymouth before taking voluntary redundancy as any interest in the job was wearing thin by then...his basic salary had more than doubled for a basic 38 hour week but he still believed it should have been kept nationalised.
The redundancy was amusing too in a way...my Dad was 1 of 75 old hands let go with very generous packages by SWT...over 400 drivers applied for it btw.
Shortly afterwards SWT found themselves short of 100 drivers and in a spot of bother with the media, seems the "consultants" they employed were not that switched on?
I worked for a water authority which was privatised into a water company, accross a 20 span.
Before. Bills cheaper. Maintenance work - not even the bare minimum, assets were run into the ground. Polution of watercourses ignored. Staff hours, 35 nice easy ones.
After. Legislation to make sure work got done. 5 fold increase in capital programmes. Staff hours, far more, and much more done in those hours. Constant drive for efficiency. People complain about profits made by privatised utilities, but those profits are there to fund the system improvements, they don't slosh around unspent in some massive unspent bank account as people seem to assume.
Now we're out of the EU, maybe we could stop bothering to comply with all the quality directives, maybe we could renationalise, drop the bills, let the system go to pot once again.
So yes, bills would go down. But I would not choose it.
Before. Bills cheaper. Maintenance work - not even the bare minimum, assets were run into the ground. Polution of watercourses ignored. Staff hours, 35 nice easy ones.
After. Legislation to make sure work got done. 5 fold increase in capital programmes. Staff hours, far more, and much more done in those hours. Constant drive for efficiency. People complain about profits made by privatised utilities, but those profits are there to fund the system improvements, they don't slosh around unspent in some massive unspent bank account as people seem to assume.
Now we're out of the EU, maybe we could stop bothering to comply with all the quality directives, maybe we could renationalise, drop the bills, let the system go to pot once again.
So yes, bills would go down. But I would not choose it.
State owned utilities suffer from chronic and often stifling beaurocracy, privately run utilities slightly less so but tend to be run by rentseekers inclined to exploit the quasi-monopoly governed by weak and corrupt govm. oversight. Neither will give value for money that a proper private enterprises can, as we're talking trains compare the travel costs of using say easyjet or national express.
Iamnotkloot said:
I’m behind the idea in principle but then I think about how the Unions would run it, the pensions cost etc and I’m put right off again
Many services are contracted out from the state for that very reason. My wife works for one such provider. the work is exclusively for government agencies but the pay is less than in the civil service and they don't get the civil service pensions.If the public sector is doing this to save money why would moving now private sector organisations back into the public sector save money?
Rail is a bit of a different case, it was already semi in the public sector and it still has strong unions and a public sector mentality. I am sure that can move back in and we would barely notice the difference.
otherman said:
I worked for a water authority which was privatised into a water company, accross a 20 span.
Before. Bills cheaper. Maintenance work - not even the bare minimum, assets were run into the ground. Polution of watercourses ignored. Staff hours, 35 nice easy ones.
After. Legislation to make sure work got done. 5 fold increase in capital programmes. Staff hours, far more, and much more done in those hours. Constant drive for efficiency. People complain about profits made by privatised utilities, but those profits are there to fund the system improvements, they don't slosh around unspent in some massive unspent bank account as people seem to assume.
Now we're out of the EU, maybe we could stop bothering to comply with all the quality directives, maybe we could renationalise, drop the bills, let the system go to pot once again.
So yes, bills would go down. But I would not choose it.
Well said.Before. Bills cheaper. Maintenance work - not even the bare minimum, assets were run into the ground. Polution of watercourses ignored. Staff hours, 35 nice easy ones.
After. Legislation to make sure work got done. 5 fold increase in capital programmes. Staff hours, far more, and much more done in those hours. Constant drive for efficiency. People complain about profits made by privatised utilities, but those profits are there to fund the system improvements, they don't slosh around unspent in some massive unspent bank account as people seem to assume.
Now we're out of the EU, maybe we could stop bothering to comply with all the quality directives, maybe we could renationalise, drop the bills, let the system go to pot once again.
So yes, bills would go down. But I would not choose it.
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