public services and housing back into public ownership?

[m419]

For a while I often thought that services and utilities such as Gas,Electricity and public transport where actually better privatised, but lately i've thought, what is the point!

Private companies are here to make a profit,they are not charities but as long as they are making profit,they will stick around. And to do that, means they will increase the cost of using such services which covers the cost of supply,administration costs and profit.

Wholesale prices for gas and electricity have been the same since 2006 and are slowly being reduced, so why in 2006,2007 and 2009 have British Gas,EDF,Npower,E-on,Scottish Power and a few others increased prices? So the fat cat bosses can get a larger salary and so that the headquarters can make more profit. Whats even worse, most of these energy companies are french or German based. So why are we putting up with it and why are we making them richer?

Also, these companies are closing certain British call centres and moving them to india just so they pay less wages, meaning that,when these people loose there jobs over in the UK, taxpayers then pick up the pieces and pay for there Jobseekers allowance and housing and council tax benefit, just because the energy companies thought it would be cheaper to ship jobs abroad.

And these energy companies often send sales staff to vulnerable people especially elderly people and manipulate and lie to them about prices and giving them incorrect industry facts just to get them to switch to there service.

And why do we need a supplier,why can't we buy direct from the distributor, because what is happening, is that we are paying two companies just to get electricity and gas, for example, if you live in Preston for example, your electricity distributor is United Utilities, you then choose a supplier such as E-On or Npower. United Utilities provid electricity for the area and maintain the electricity network, companies such as Npower and e-on just provide customer services and billing. Wouldn't it be cheaper if United Utilities provided everything? Companies such as E-on and Npower don't actually do anything but send bills and take phone calls.

I think its time these private companies disappeared and stop robbing the UK.

With regards to public transport, I can say the same. Companies such as Arriva and First offer a very bad service for the prices they charge.

In 1987, the goverment began privatising public transport, in 1994,the privatisation of nearly all Britains public rail and bus services was complete,London was set up very different compared to the rest of the UK. Ever since companies such as Arriva,First,Go-Ahead and Transdev arrived, I've seen nothing but bus fare prices go up with nothing to show for it! In fact the amount bus routes and number of buses running per hour have been reduced too and the actual buses used are old and don't offer people with disabilities much help. Most of the UK's bus services are commercially run meaning they are only operated to generate revenue to make a profit, the money we are paying is not contributing towards maintaining a good service, but maintaining someones profit from OUR bus service.

Even when Arriva, took over the cross-country train service from Virgin, the same day Arriva took over, guess what, the train fares shot up and even better, there were redundancies!

So I think maybe public services are actually better off publicly owned???

[papa smurf]

me too
we as a nation are being fleeced by greedy share holders and bosses who reep huge bonus payments for doing nothing,
and while were at it re nationalise the railways there completely over the top with pricing .

[m419]

Most of the rail companies are no good, I suppose Virgin invests well with our money and its a shame about the East coast mainline because National express was offering cheap tickets lol

I think they should re-nationalise local trains services just like they did with Connex. Remember Arriva Trains northern and Merseyside? I do, I thought they were shocking,the goverment gave there franchise to someone else! And then a few years after the stupid Department for Transport took away the contract from Virgin Trains to run cross country and gave it to Arriva!

Also, I think that if the telecoms industry was under public ownership, we wouldn't have such a bad and outdated internet infrastructure.

What they should have done was NOT privatise BT and Cable and Wireless, issue those American cable companies such as Nynex,Telewest and Bellcable which were around licences to sell Cable Television,NOT telephone. The Cable companies could then work closely with BT and not have a competition issue therefore finance for maintainance and upgrades would not be a problem.

Deutsche Telekom which also owns T-Mobile is still partly publicly owned. That is probably why they have been so successful.

The next thing is council housing!

Councils should not be allowed to sell its empty properties to private firms just as a quick way of generating fast cash. And should not be selling its homes to tennants. Thats why there is a shortage and why the council house waiting list is as long as 10 years.

Personally i have always thought it wrong to have essential public services gas,electric water in private hands,where private companies profit at our expense from our basic needs,interestingly the french and germans do to, as theirs is still publicly owned and we as a nation cannot buy into theirs even if we wanted. What has happened is our essential services were privatised and have now largely been bought by the state owned french and german power giants,or in the case of scottish power the spanish,with some of the ripped off profits going to those countries.

Whilst we pay some of the highest prices in europe,and the government has little or no control, as seemingly the regulator does not and will not act on our behalf to get prices down.

When the conservatives sold these companies off i refused to buy the shares out of principle,but others sadly did to make a very small quick buck,but along with the rest of us are now paying back that quick buck in higher prices,my only consolation is that a lot of todays pensioners who now moan about high fuel prices, are some of the people responsible for that situation in my eyes, "act in haste repent at leisure" seems to be the maxim here.

[jamiefrost]

Just a quick note on gas prices, the euro rate has drop around 20% since 2006. So this will have an impact on the current gas prices.

Private companies aren't ideal but the same applies to public owned giants that become hugely inefficient and are more concerend about keeping people in jobs than suppling their customers.

JJ

[m419]

RWE and E-On are private firms based in Germany

EDF is state owned in France.

If everyone refused to pay for there electricity,i'm sure they'll leave! LOL

RWE the current owners of Npower did once own Thames Water,made a mess of that and offloaded that.

Where is Centrica based???

[fireman328]

My water supplier has been taken over by a French company and all profits go to back to France.

[Mick Fisher]

IMO privatisation and persistent weak regulation has only led to degraded services at inflated prices.

The current SCAM regarding energy prices is a disgrace.

Essential services and utilities which are mostly monopolistic, like where can I get water if I don't want Anglia Water, should never be allowed to fall into the hands of private enterprise who are only interested in squeezing out the maximum amount of profit with little or no deference to the paying customer whatsoever.

That damn woman sold us all down the river and then we voted in another load of Tories, who masqueraded as Socialists, that carried on where she left off.

The whole privatisation fiasco which included almost complete deregulation of financial services has directly led us into the current mess we find ourselves in.

Private Industry and self regulation/weak regulation is a obvious recipe for disaster as recent events have demonstrated but we find ourselves STILL being led down, essentially, the same road.

Private Industry has HM Gov. in it's ass pocket. Until we find a strong leader with a will to do anything about it we are doomed to more of the same old, same old.

The worse mistake was allowing Council tenants to buy their homes, round our way the waiting list for a Council house is 15 years if your lucky. Most Council houses have been bought by private landlords and are rented out via letting agencies at stupid money each month.

Never liked our essential utilities being in private hands but i recognise that given the mess the country was in after 1979 it was one of the few ways to make money to turn the country round. What i would have liked to see was when times got better the government buying back a majority stake in them and eventually returning them to public ownership. Would still like to see that but not if they are going to turn them back into the inefficient monoliths they once were.

Well privatization was always a bad idea but I can't see how can it be reversed?

[rogerdraig]

problem is money regulation that would bring down their share prices would be the only way to eventualy get them back now

The only utility I felt that should not have been privatised was water.The rest we are all free to change to alternatives but water is a necessity that we cannot find an alternative to.

[Taf]

Privatisation had to happen as HMG could not make the whole country pay to replace, for example, London's aged sewerage system... that would have been political suicide.

The trouble is the extra profits the privatised utilities made were not ploughed-back into repairs as hoped, but straight into the pockets of bosses and shareholders.

Originally Posted by Taf

Privatisation had to happen as HMG could not make the whole country pay to replace, for example, London's aged sewerage system... that would have been political suicide.

The trouble is the extra profits the privatised utilities made were not ploughed-back into repairs as hoped, but straight into the pockets of bosses and shareholders.

Well anybody of sense would have known that was going to happen..Apparently Maggie Thatcher didn't though.Or rather she didn't care because she would always be able to afford to pay her way.