Re: June 8th General Election
 

The worrying thing of course is that this is what the Tory partY manifesto will be in 2022 :O

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Yep, dead piled up in the streets and rubbish un-buried, or maybe it was the other way round. :D

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Yes they do, but in my experience they were rubbish and there's nothing in Labour's history to suggest they'd do it any differently this time around hence my opinion.

---------- Post added at 09:27 ---------- Previous post was at 09:10 ----------

No, I didn't think you'd suddenly gone insane. ;)

Aside from Nuclear Power stations, which we apparently no longer have the expertise to build it seems, I don't see how the ultimate ownership of the railways or postal service, say, is a particular threat. It's not like the foreign owners can suddenly decide to shut them down and prevent them working so what's the big threat to the UK?

Re: June 8th General Election
 

If any shananigans like that were to take place we'd deploy troops to force the companies to stay operating in the national interest.

Anyway it's not like nationalised industries don't suffer damaging strikes, remember BL were on strike more than they were making cars in the bad old seventies and British Steel was loosing £3m of tax payers money a DAY.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

The French and German rail networks are pretty good. Why can't Britain do it? I think half of the reason is the government wants to abdicate responsibility for it so no one gets blamed when something like Southern Rail happens. Major investment still has to be done by the government anyway, it's not like telecoms where privatisation led to proper competition and infrastructure development as a result.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Because nobody really wants their taxes to rise in order to pay for the decades of under-investment which happened when they were publicly owned? In theory yes it ought to be the best way but as I said before, history in the UK indicates it wasn't. Yes that could probably be changed with an entirely different govt. approach but all the evidence is that Corbyn's rooted in 1970's ideology and not going to emulate all that's best about state ownership of infrastructure in Europe. He'd only ensure we returned to the bad old days when the unions controlled this critical infrastructure and frequently closed it down, which is in large part what led to privatisation in the first place.

---------- Post added at 11:57 ---------- Previous post was at 11:48 ----------

Well ultimately that'd be the response yes. I do have concerns about possible foreign interference with the likes of nuclear power stations but cyber attacks don't require ownership even if the technology being supplied could presumably have 'backdoors' which could be exploited by a disgruntled foreign power.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

All essential utility services are software controlled these days. It just doesn't sit right with me that some parts of these services in the UK have foreign ownership.


Not only that, but I don't think essential services; electricity, water, transport etc. should be run for profit.


Granted, in the past, publicly owned services appear to have been run badly. But it can't be above the wit of man to run publicly owned essential services as efficiently as the privately run businesses.


Apparently, public ownership of essential public services (and only those) is a popular policy, even with 'anti-Marxist people like me :D

Re: June 8th General Election
 

You have to remember that industrial networks and control systems are rarely connected to the internet and never directly for obvious reasons and use different protocols to normal net traffic: Commonly Modbus, Fieldbus and Profibus. There are also stand-alone "policemen" on critical control systems that are not networked.

Whilst we do program in "backdoors" they're mainly for rescuing customers who have put in some weird setup and locked themselves out. They usually relay on actual physical access to the instrument.

The most famous malicious program is Stuxnet but that exploited Windows vulnerability and Siemens Programmable Logic Controlers.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

It clearly isn't beyond the wit of man but maybe it's beyond the wit of our politicians and their dogma.

It's much easier to be positive about things when you're not being subjected to them and/or haven't experienced them. Nationalise rail and it wouldn't be too long before people started complaining about that for one reason or another. That's always the way.

Yes it ought to be possible to run things far better taking the best of what public ownership could offer with the best of what private sector involvement brings. It just never seems to happen that way sadly.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

:D Southern Rail ;)

Re: June 8th General Election
 

That's one franchise. ;)

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Well I must say it's good to hear that Corbyn's no longer a complete pacifist. :rolleyes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-39892281

Even in the unlikely event that it's true it's perfectly obvious that by the time he'd made up his mind to launch a military action it'd in all probability be too late.

Meanwhile in other news from Labour HQ, John McDonnell's no longer a Marxist and Momentum isn't a bunch of loony lefties.. :rofl:

Re: June 8th General Election
 

For those who never experienced the 70's you might want to read this I experienced all this and it wasn't funny. Corbyn's policies would have us right back there.

The headline says it all:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/at...9&d=1494576933

Labour with its head buried firmly in the sand

Attachment 26949

Re: June 8th General Election
 

The problem with rail in this country was a direct result of the second world war. Rather than performing regular maintanence the rail companies were reduced to running on a shoestring just to keep services running as best they could and repairing the callosal damage inflicted.

After the war the government had to spend money on getting German infrastructure up and running as an occuping force so no money was available to compensate the rail companies.

Nationalisation of the rail came into effect rather than the rail companies going into recievership and we having no rail services.

Comparing rail in this country, lacking in investment is like chalk and cheese if you compare it with Europe.

Re: June 8th General Election
 

Yes it is and that's why we are where we are. To develop what we've got to the standard of the best in Europe having taken the network back into public ownership would cost many billions and necessitate the tax rises nobody will vote for. Catch 22.

---------- Post added at 11:44 ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 ----------

So Farron's big idea is to legalise cannabis. He reckons it'll solves all sorts of problems, generate loads of revenue and put the drug dealers out of business.

Hmmm. If I were a drug dealer I think I'd just produce a stronger version and undercut the price of the official stuff. It'd take time but and yes there'd be a proportion of people who'd prefer to rely on the officially supplied gear but there'd be a great many who'd simply want to try something cheaper and stronger. This is exactly what's happening with Spice now isn't it? It's also the reason out sea and airports are flooded with cheap and all too often dodgy cigarettes which people choose to buy knowing all the risks of, for example, product contamination and lack of quality control, because they're cheaper.

Yep HMG could reduce the prices it charges for the official cannabis but where does that leave the predicted revenue stream?

Also if they legalise small scale home cultivation how are they intending to protect neighbours from the pungent aroma these plants generate or are non drug users just going to have to live with that?