I’m always amused at the way the right eulogize over Thatcher. She screwed up the trains, water, social housing and so much more. I will give her that she negotiated a super deal with the EU, but that’s now gone forever due the her party’s Brexiter fanatics.
This will be worth a watching…
Yes, it’s a shame that I owe her so much. 
However despite huge public interest and Clive Lewis MP pushing the debate on bringing the water companies back under the publics control, Starmer has yet again pushed back and instead the environment minister has just said we will increase the regulators powers, so the lunch club continues. What a feckin shambles.
Privatisation of energy now means we pay more than anyone else whilst the profits go to a Chinese billionaire and Qatar billionaires. The government once again just sit back and let it happen. Pathetic weak and not fit for governing.
Arse, arse, arse… Farther Jack
Tell me more David?
I know that you feel strongly about this John - and let’s face it I’m hardly a Thatcher fan - but thread titles are conspicuous, I’m sure you will get just as many people engaged without the swear words.
Fair enough Billy.
It’s easy to re-nationalise the railways but disentangling the utility companies will take years and will cost billions.
Possibly more people. I feel strongly about this too, but I considered muting the thread because the s*** word was leaping off the page at me.
I was using it as a noun Jennifer, not a swear word. 
but Billy was right, there were less contentious alternatives I could, and should have used.
Yes, but that’s not a reason to not do it. The profits from energy going abroad to China and Qatar was 8.7 billion, so several billion reasons to do it. It’s having a huge effect on people’s lives, inflation etc.
France isn’t as stupid as the UK and keeps it energy production internal allowing the country to benefit.
Nouns aren’t swearwords? 
So if I called you a s***, it isn’t swearing? 
Don’t forget La France getting her share via EdF.
Remember kids, outsourcing utilities and key industries to foreign states that might not be your allies is a bad idea.
I am sure I have done before, John, she enabled me to buy my first property at the age of around 40, never could afford it before, which led me to buying a property here at an affordable price. Without her I would not have been living here in France for the last 26 years for which, in spite of everything else, I am eternally grateful.
Also, before that, she improved my working life immeasurably by freeing me from the dictatorship of the unions.
I know it seems a bit like if you were hanging upside down above a bonfire and Adolf Hitler came along, told everyone off, cut you down and set you free with a wodge of spending, would you not at the very least later record the incident with gratitude?
I’d love to find a sensible analysis as to how much the unions actually contributed to the economic woes of the UK in the '70s as opposed, say, to the mind bendingly incompetent middle and upper management of the time - certainly at BL they were as much to blame as the unions.
The irony is that Scargill was right but had he been a visionary rather than merely a communist with an axe to grind he might have seen that decline in the mining industry was inevitable and securing his members jobs in the industries that would follow (at the time North Sea Oil and gas).
instead he just lost a protracted argument with Thatcher and hastened the end of UK mining.
Indeed, but I was not talking about the unions’ contribution to the woes of the UK, simply selfishly the woes they caused me personally time and again. As a wandering lorry driver I was expected to join every union with a closed shop at every delivery point that had one despite having nothing at all to do with my job or the transport industry. I did cave in and join the TGWU, and even became a rep under pressure from more sensible friends, because it sold itself as the only union for drivers. True the T in the title stood for Transport and you would think that we had a certain seniority in that regard but, not a bit of it. The G stood for General and there were far more of them than us and worked together in one place whereas we wandered the planet alone and were easily picked off by those who had a grievance little to do with us.
The miners’ strike, though not the same union, was a game changer. We suffered violence and abuse at places which weren’t on strike from hundreds of Scargill’s flying pickets of stormtroopers. But it gave Maggie the excuse and our lives were much easier afterwards.
I get that - it was simply the mention of Thatcher vs the unions which reminded me of the more general question.
Arguably a strong union movement is needed to protect worker’s rights - though we also need a flexible workforce. I would suggest that the unions in the 1970’s had got into a position of trying to protect their members in the jobs they had, resisting changes in working practices if it meant anyone losing a job because of increased efficiency - indeed it almost looked like they were resistant to their members even having to learn new skills. I think this was an absolute failure of trade unionism which should have been recognising that a buoyant economy would mean more jobs all around and encouraging members to gain new skills and move to new jobs - and requiring employers to offer training and facilitate development of skills as well as defending workers’ rights across the board, not just their own members right to become a millstone around their employer’s neck.
I also think this was the great failure of the Major-Blair-Brown years where they just encouraged everyone into higher education to improve the unemployment figures rather than put the effort into building a resilient workforce and economy fit for the 21st century. this would have been doable at the time with North Sea Oil revenue but essentially impossible now without expenditure of huge resources to revitalise areas like the north East.
As you well know the country is struggling, do you honestly think that renationalisation should be a priority right now?
My water company (Anglian Water) is owned by investment companies and pension funds based in four different countries, how do you propose getting it back in public hands?
Legislate to remove it’s licence, then form a new public utility company.
Not that they would do that. They would just use public money to do a share buy back.
If you think the UK people can afford to pay these unreasonable costs for much longer? Where did the 37 billion come from for a near useless trace and track system come from just like that.
World’s wealthiest cash in on UK energy sector | LRD https://share.google/IAD19zvLGkXoVYGRQ
And yet the privatisation seemed to happen overnight. I remember my stepfather lending me money so I could buy maximum blocks of utility shares on his behalf, which he promptly sold at a profit. And I didn’t get a cut!