Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2024 1:59 pm
Nationalised industries were crap, private monopolies are crap. Time for a new business model?
How about publicly owned private companies? I should be possible to deliver sensible management, insulated from dead hand of the Treasury, making modest profits that come back to the public purse.
I always thought that the original BP arrangement was reasonable - government retained, iirc, a 30% share, so had a big say in things but could be hands off and bank all those share dividends. (They sold the 30% in pretty short order* which seemed rather short term thinking to me).
Just to go back to water briefly. Pre-sell off they were non-profit (any profit went in to government coffers) so they were effectively encouraged to spend annually but couldn't build up the big £££s for major infrastructure projects (and, as mentioned above, couldn't borrow).
Similarly, people forget - or don't know - that the likes of Royal Mail contributed large amounts to the government over quite a long period.
It's just that governments think short term and are crap at managing stuff + they saw the immediate income from the sell offs but actually botched most of the privatisations and lost the direct income. Same with the North Sea. They made a lot but could have made much more over time with a better model.
* and the Kuwaitis promptly bought a controlling share% of BP (and had to be told to divest).