The great privatisation swindle has meant that we are indirectly paying twice for some services. Successive governments has trousered trillions from the legalised thievery that was made popular by 'that woman'. Where has my money gone, and can I have it back please?
The issue of privatisation is a contentious issue for many. I constantly ask myself why I want the state to control a variety of services when I actually want to abolish the state. For me the answer is two-fold. Firstly, the society that I want to see is not about to arrive any time soon, although you never known. With this in mind, I need to think within the current system that we have, and try and make the best of a bad job.
Secondly, within the current system, I do not believe that essential services such as gas, electricity, and water, should be open to the market, or subject to any profit whatsoever. There is something profoundly immoral about withholding resources that are literally a matter of life and death, if you cannot afford to pay for them.
The mass privatisation of organisations in the UK has been rampant over the last thirty five years. A brief internet search and a look at Wikipedia (the bastion of all knowledge) shows that since 1977 there have been over one hundred government run organisations of various sizes that have been privatised.
The vast majority of these have been under Conservative rule, but Labour Privatised industries before Thatcher, not just after as some would have you believe.
The mantra trotted out by the political elite, that the private sector will run services better, cheaper, and more efficiently are a lie. They may have initially looked that way due to successive governments cynically and maliciously running down industries in order to convince the Daily Mail readers that we need to ditch them. However, once these business were ‘turned round’ they became money making machines for the ruling elite. BT being a good example, the profits they made in e the early 90’s were obscene.
What sticks in my throat more is the rail and water companies. Both have a license to print money. We cannot live without either of them. Over the last twenty years, the shareholders have grown fatter and fatter from their dividend cheques. The political elite crow about how successful and profitable these companies now are. What they don’t tell you is that for one hundred years we built up a national infrastructure of railway lines, and water pipes that cover hundreds of thousands, if not millions of miles. These infrastructures need updating and repairing, hence why they did not make a profit for the government. The greedy capitalists have chosen not to reinvest profits in repairs and upgrades; they have chosen to cream them off. So what happens when massive reinvestment is needed but they have spent all the money? Yes you guessed it; they get a bail-out at our expense.
Our water network leaks trillions of litres of water every day; yet we have some of the wettest weather in the world but regularly have hosepipe bans. We have one of the worst rail networks on earth, with thirty year old trains, and the highest ticket prices in Europe. The examples of rail and water prove that the market cannot be trust to provide an effective and affordable service. They will always choose profit above people.
A further point of interest also springs to mind. Consider that in 1977 you were a tax payer earning an average wage. A portion of the tax you paid would have gone to fund or subsidise nationalised industries and services that we all used, hence why the tax rate is so high. The cost of nationalised industries must have cost the equivalent of hundreds of billions in today’s money. Yet thirty years later you still pay roughly the same percentage of tax that you paid then, but the services that led to your high tax rate are no longer paid for by the government. So the question is where the fuck has all the money gone?
Not only did Thatcher bring in billions from selling nationalised industries, she saved trillions in funding the services once they had been sold, yet she still took the money from us that would have funded them. The bastard also trousered billions from North Sea oil, where has that gone? Her government in the 80’s took a lot of money, where has it all gone? This practice has continued to this day, so where is the vast surplus, and why has the tax rate for working people not been reduced?
In effect you now pay twice for some things. Take water as an example. You pay a water company for your water each month, yet you still pay the government a percentage of your wage to provide a water service, a service that they jettisoned over twenty years ago.
I am sure that I am not the only person who would not mind a rebate.
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