Posted by Ken Waldron
|
Posted by Ken Waldron
Re: I've touched the nerve for both ... Archived Message
on December 4, 2019, 1:16 am, in reply to "Re: I've touched the nerve for both ..."
Very nice research Ken ...Btw. your source for the list?
-Not really. I've been following this for a long time but the list is merely an easily googled contemporary restatement by the Independent:
Trains on UK railways now almost entirely state-owned – by foreign countries
Extensive state-ownership exists among UK rail operators, it just doesn't involve the British state
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/trains-uk-railways-renationalise-countries-operators-companies-a9058961.html
"e.g. they are in it for profit and re-investment of this profit back into Germany (on their railways). Nice, eh?"
- Of course they are. The German elite appear to care for their country which is why its a relative success. Contrarily, the British elite has a phobia about public ownership and a contempt for its own citizens. This along with the crisis of confidence apparent in its capabilities means it refuses to do the same.
They probably could not find the buyer for Scottish Water...
- Not at all. It was the weekly mentioned Tory dream policy of the Scottish parliament for many years. Part of the marketing was indeed farmed out to Anglia water as a result of UK supported EU tendering rules but its still a publicly-owned company answerable to Scottish ministers.
I note Scottish Power went under the hammer etc.
Yes. Under the UK Thatcher Major junta. Nothing to do with EU rules.
"The basic point I was making is that all the utilities need to be nationalised, no ifs or buts, and our current relationship with the EU does not allow us to do that"
As I have pointed out several times, since the advent of Thatcher the Brits were the biggest agents for privatisation in the EU, promoting and supporting the legislation that made it so. It not a matter of our way versus theirs: the British state under both Labour and Tories used its power in Europe to create the very agenda that the pretendy "Lexiters" decry as the fault of those European baddies and EU neoliberal devils whose foreign notions we should all fly away from into the cuddly British arms of the perfidious bitch who promoted them: Madame Britannia.
-Its all a lovely self flattering xenophobia but the antithesis of the truth: a bad foreigner did it and ran away.
Otherwise on the shibboleth of Nationalisation, as I have pointed out before here, it often acts as a cyclical long term subsidy scam for the elite, taking over businesses that have been screwed to the ground by profit extraction and lack of investment, investing huge amounts of government money for upgrading and modernisation only to be sold at a loss so the rentiers can do the same all over again with the upgraded system before declaring it bankrupt and handing it back.
Think Railtrack.. now how long before Network Rail (Railtrack plus oodles of government cash) gets flogged cheap for a repeat performance?