In 1981 The General Post Office was split into two nationalised businesses,the Post Office and British Telecom. They both needed to modernise to adapt to the coming computer, communications and data revolution.
BT was short of capacity. There were long waits to get a phone installed and some had to share so called party lines. That meant if your neighbour was on a call you could not be. UK switching was way behind US, relying on electro mechanical switches when the US had gone electronic. The UK had copper cables, with insufficient reliable capacity for data.
The Post Office counters business was labour Ā intensive and dependent on government business to handle benefits, driving and car licences Ā and passports.
BT was sold to new shareholders in 1984. It changed over to electronic switching, developed mobile telephony, greatly expanded its network and allowed many more devices and services to be run over its wires.
The latest annual Ā figures for BT show profits of Ā£1.2 bn on turnover of Ā£20.8bn. It invested an additional Ā£4.9 bn in the year, extending its broadband coverage. It paid substantial taxes.
The latest annual figures for the Post Office recorded a loss of Ā£414 m, with Ā£133 m of investment paid by taxpayers.
What exactly are the benefits of nationalisation meant to be?
January 3, 2025
Indeed the government are useless at running things but also, as we see with Water, they are useless at regulating things and useless at subcontracting things.
“UK needs to ban full hybrid cars by 2030 or face net zero ācatastropheā, says motoring body
Electric Vehicles UK says hybrids without a plug should be banned or else confidence in electric cars will be damaged”
What confidence in electric cars? Some electric cars depreciate by Ā£50K in one year so just depreciation and finance costs can be about Ā£8 a mile even more if you do a low mileage. Plug in hybrids have small batteries that might do about 30 miles on battery and save you typically about 20p each time you plug it in. This only as electricity is less taxed than petrol is. So is it worth the bother and effort of plugging it in? Note also that the smaller hybrid batteries are charged and discharged more than full EVs so the battery lasts less long (read the warranty) . So even this 20p per plug in saving is likely to be wiped out by battery depreciation per charge.
In short EVs cause more CO2 than keeping you old car longer, depreciate hugely, are slow to charge, have range issues, short lived batteries, are heavier and cause more tyre and road wear and particulates. Hybrids are more complex and have their issues too.
If they have to ban things to make you buy the alternatives this is usually because the alternatives do not compete or make sense.
January 3, 2025
You might have to plug and unplug the hybrid every days for 5 years just to save enough to cover the cost of installing the home charger? By then you will probably need a new Ā£7,000 hybrid battery replacement. Just battery depreciation and finance costs can be well over Ā£5 a day. So the 20p per plug in (and unplug) is not too clever?
January 3, 2025
And this 20p per plug in charge “saving” is only due to high taxes on petrol and almost no tax on electricity so not even a real saving for the country!
January 3, 2025
So why do not EVs not use for example, Ni-Cad or lead acid batteries?
January 3, 2025
Too heavy and large for the energy they hold relative to lithium batteries. Similar short life and charge time issues too.
January 3, 2025
Lithium about 55% lighter than lead acid for the same energy and one of the main issues with Lithium is it is still too heavy and expensive per mile range. This is a comparison between Lithium and Lead Acid.
://www.power-sonic.com/blog/lithium-vs-lead-acid-batteries/
January 3, 2025
I wrote about this only last week.
Those EV owners who don’t have the ability to charge at home or work, around 30-40% by most estimations, are in for a shock.
The price per mile of charging away from home or work is already more expensive than the cost of per mile of running a petrol or diesel car, yet there is only 20% VAT on electric charging. The tax on road fuel is 54-55% of the price per litre so overall, the government’s tax take from running an EV is only 35% of that of IC-engined cars.
If EVs continue to be sold, even at the present low rates, sooner rather than later, Theeves is going to feel the pinch and will be forced to raise the tax rate on charging. Either that or increase the road tax on EVs.
Changing to road pricing could not be done fast enough to overcome this deficit and all the research shows that road pricing will be hugely unpopular electorally.
Would Labour dare to try and introduce this before 2029 ? I don’t think so, and they won’t want to put it in their manifesto either, when the Reform and Conservative coalition will go into the election pushing the adoption of EVs and all other Net Zero proposals firmly into the long grass.
January 3, 2025
Indeed and EVs are more suitable for cities where parking at home is even less likely.
January 3, 2025
Yes I also read the lobby grou0 saying Britain would be the laughing stock if we continue to allow hybrid after 2030
The lobby group is of course a vested interest and probably know that not one ounce of CO2 will be saved by converting to EVs.
I would say Britain already is the laughing stock as other countries watch an eco zealot deindustrialise and destroy a once proud country.
Population replacement will mean there will be no money for governments to subsidise rationalised industry as 85% of the new intake will rely on benefits.
Nationalised industries are there to provide monopoly members to the unions which I turn fund the socialist state.
Things are about to change
January 3, 2025
+1
January 3, 2025
Ian, Agreed…
Britain will be held up as an example of NOT how to achieve net-zero.
January 3, 2025
I would hope that given time, net zero will be shown to be a scam.
January 3, 2025
Sensible physicist and the likes have know this for many years. Not only that but the CO2 reduction “solutions” they push do not really reduce CO2 to any real extent. Much talk of clean power but CO2 is not dirty it is the gas of life.
January 3, 2025
It’s an admission from Electric Vehicles UK that no-one who had a free choice would buy an EV based on their performance, price and practicality. They can only be forced on people by removing any competition: how very Marxist of them.
January 3, 2025
Indeed and they do not even save any CO2 they create more than keeping you old car running. Not that a bit more C02 on balance is a bad thing – quite the reverse.
January 3, 2025
You got it in one Donna, kneeler in a commie and should not be allowed in government as he cannot be trusted with state secrets!
January 3, 2025
Indeed the government is useless at running anything – including the country.
Extrapolate JRās comments (not one contentious word) to countries instead of companies and you will see a raft of failed states run by overconfident, out of touch politicians.
Those countries that thrive have found the means to constrain their politicians.
Having ditched our constitution, which did that job for us so well, what is proposed to do the job?
All I can see is an unpleasant scenario where the people assert themselves to control the overweening State.
I propose starving the State of cash is a better and more peaceful route back to normality.
Where is John Gault?
January 3, 2025
Norway boasting :”fully battery-powered cars made up 89% of all new cars sold in 2024,the highest electrification of private transport in the world-The goal is possible to reach”-Oyvind Solberg Thorson,Director of National Road Information Authority(Barents Observer,3/1/25).
Next step to make all regional aviation emissions free!
January 3, 2025
@Mitchel
Norway in comparison to the UK has a very small population(5.5 million – the UK a smidgeon under 70million), the road network is not even similar you get from one end of the country in Norway by boat or plane. According to the Norwegian authorities they have 16,990 miles of roads, the UK by comparison has 245,700.
The real ‘kicker’ in the UK we pay around double the price for our electricity than do the Norwegians. The Norwegian government still exacts oil and gas and uses it to fund a future for their people, as such the Norwegian Sovereign fund is the Worlds largest, dwarfing the likes of China, and the middle eastern oil funds – oil and gas profits are being reinvested not as the UK does poured down the drain of ego – there is no future planned. The Norwegian Government makes more reinvestable money from the UK taxpayer and UK resources(gas & oil) than the UK government does – isnāt that a bit weird.
I have lived and worked in the top end of Norway, you cant just pop into you car and drive to the south. So the range required from an EV doesnāt need to be more than for local runs
January 4, 2025
I’m not recommending it,just reporting it!
January 3, 2025
A very good advertisement for privitasation – BT was also substantially overmanned which was soon dealt with – as were the similar releases nto the private sector of Amersham, BP, BA , BAA and many others
January 3, 2025
You omitted to mention that in 2013 the profitable part of the postal services, Royal Mail, was privatised and thus made separate from the Post Office. The loss-making Post Office outcome that you deplore was a deliberate construct of a government policy decision.
Reply Counters were profitable and failed to modernise
January 3, 2025
The terminology is opaque, maybe deliberately so, rather like my three decade long passive investment in a unit trust which has since changed its name and its objectives and which was initially in a PEP but is now in an ISA and has been under several different managements, and it is difficult to keep track of the changes.
However I would point out that the telecoms business was on the up across the world and for many applications while over the counter paper based services were on the decline and so it is not a fair comparison. If the more profitable parts of a state owned business are privatised while the increasingly unprofitable parts are left in state ownership and needing subsidy to continue then private investors are winners while taxpayers are losers. And taxpayers will be double losers when they have to pay compensation to sub-postmasters who were caught up with the rushed attempt at modernisation through the Horizon system.
Finally I would point out that the EU’s First Postal Directive 97/67/EC laid down:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/1997/67
“common rules for the development of the internal market of Community postal services and the improvement of quality of service”
and ask whether the quality of service in the UK has improved since it came into force in September 1999?
January 3, 2025
They did modernise – unfortunately with duff technology, and we know what happened then.
January 3, 2025
I think protection from the free market is the common factor in businesses not achieving that balance of profitability and service that we’d like to see and experience. Whether Soviet style industry or capitalist monopolies the user usually ends up with a bad deal.
I am convinced that privatisation is usually better, but with some industries we end up with poorly regulated monopoly-type providers, with shareholders and customers alternatively not happy. As to the answer, I don’t know…if they do it better elsewhere, we ought to learn from that.
January 3, 2025
Private industry sinks or swims in direct relationship to the quality of its management. Nationalised industries see themselves as providing a service, all too often in a dying shrinking market. They are on constant life support, often in need of radical surgery from negative work practices and government regulation. On a permanent drip feed of public finance that gives them little incentive to become profitable. Politicians lack the conviction, talent or management skills to make life saving decisions or to switch off life support.
Take HS2, driven by EU thinking, lacking a profitable business plan, therefore untouchable by private investment. Seen as a cash cow by private industry who will disappeare on completion, leaving an incompetent government to feed the elephant in the room. It may for a while be shinnier than all the older elephants, but watch it tarnish. That epitomises nationalised industry.
Reverting to the Post Office, Amazon epitomises how it can be done, such tgat we need an Orinoco.
January 3, 2025
Good morning.
To be fair Sir John these are two different business’s, so the comparison between privatised and nationalised is a little unfair. It is a bit like comparing a nationalied horse drawn carriage company to one that is privatised but uses modern means of carriage. Also. BT was handed, initially, a monopoly where the USA companies such as AT&T could not directly compete. This was t help BT initially against the big USA giants.
Privatisation works when there is real competition. We all know this. From smartphones to cars, aeroplanes and all the rest, private endevour is by far the best.
If you really want to a direct comparison between two items that are the same, but one is done by the State and the other by the Private Sector, then I suggest you use the case of the UK airships the R100 and the R101. I have mentioned them before on here so will not repeat, but it is a very good example which I am sure you will agree with.
Reply. No! Post Office is a personal financial services company which could have launched new services using its famous brand as BT did getting into broadband and mobile. The main BT inherited product, the fixed home phone is also horse and carriage.
January 3, 2025
Reply to JR reply
Is the Post Office actually a financial services business?
It is certainly going that way but wasn’t until it started providing cash handling which isn’t actually financial services but a cash transport system which probably loses money.
The problem for the Post Office is that it doesn’t actually know what it is and should probably never have been separated from Royal Mail.
Also everyone wants a local Post Office but few use it. The future doesn’t look good unless it gets a real reason for being there.
Reply Its main business was personal finance in delivering benefits and pensions
January 3, 2025
reply to reply….you are talking about the days of OAPs queing with a pension book, or younger people with benefit books both paid in cash weekly.
Times changed some years ago, they are paid monthly if chosen into bank or building society accounts, even books of postage (rip-off) stamps are sold in more convenient stores.
January 3, 2025
Yes if you look at the Swiss, Postfinance is the 5th largest financial institution in CH and grew out of Swiss Post. All government owned but it turns in a couple hundred m CHF a year profit and shows what the GPO could have done in private hands with the right management. Their ATMs are of course outside Post Offices all over CH.
You need management where making money is in the blood, rather than some Starmeresque/Vennells arse-covering, bureaucratic, political schmoozing mentality.
January 3, 2025
The Post Office in the small west country town near where I now live has no ATM. There are currently 3 ATMs in the town but one will go in the spring when the last retail bank closes. The PO WILL issue cash, but you invariably have to join a queue of customers in order to get it and they are reluctant to hand over cash, occasionally asking what it’s for, particularly if you ask for change!
The staff are very pleasant, but the atmosphere is one of a business operating in the 1970s, not the 2020s.
January 3, 2025
For a true comparison between nationalised and privatised with services delivered over the same pipe you just need to look at BBC and ITV or indeed Sky.
January 3, 2025
The UK government could have said “We have this extensive retail network, the largest in the country, convenient and popular, so how can we make best use of it now that technology is moving on and it is becoming feasible for the government to do most of the existing business more efficiently?”. Instead the governments in London – Tory and Labour – and in Brussels chose the simpler solution of shutting them down. Was that correct?
January 3, 2025
Didn’t they only want to shut those they had to subsidise?
January 3, 2025
Yet private parcel returns services have opened up for everyone’s online purchases.
Mailboxes opened up, why couldn’t Post Offices have seen that opportunity?
As well as postal services, the Post Office provides many other services such as:
Travel insurance.
Foreign currency.
Banking services.
Bill payments.
Vehicle tax.
Driving licences.
Passports.
January 3, 2025
Which was my initial point. This service was already being done in the city. But you chose to use BT which was initially protected from competition by the Conservative Government at the time. The latter’s market was protected whilst the former was up against established companies.
January 3, 2025
I agree that replacement of the government public operation with unionist activism by commercial public operation has been a success in some cases but not all. For example privatisation of water has been a failure – no competitive pressure, a lack of effective investment and asset/value stripping.
So what really are the benefits of privatisation without effective competition particularly when foreign ownership and private equity gets involved?
Or is it just the case that privatisation, like democracy, is not ideal but is probably the least worse approach – as long as there is a stick as well as a carrot.
Reply You need competition to get good results.A regulated monopoly can save taxpayers the costs of the investments.
January 3, 2025
To reply – A shame the government and quango’s are so appalling at regulating anything. Insurance, banks, investment companies, pension funds, Ofcom, water, energy… they usually get captured by those they regulate and act not in the interest of the consumers but their own interests!
January 3, 2025
The Post Office has an element of privatisation within its nationalised branding and organisation through sub-postmasters, post offices in shops you already own are a business opportunity – although after Horizon I’d guess most people would be put off.
https://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/en/careers/running-your-own-branch/run-a-post-office/
January 3, 2025
The Post Office should have led change on internet communications 35 years ago.
Yet today, they still use processes involving people physically putting enveloped papers into collection boxes. Many consumers stand in queues at branches just to buy sticky patch stamps to fix on their message, or to query what the weight and price of it should be. The system is a creaky as delivering coal from London to Hull by horse and cart, one bag at a time.
The same happens with parcels. 3D printing has been available for development since the 1980s: enabling delivery of many objects direct to the user today.
The āPost Officeā involves taking the items through many awkward stages, in boxes of insulated packing, mixed up with others on the way. They are eventually driven and then walked to individual homes. Many such items are left insecure by drivers who drop them on a doorstep, tap on the front door with a soft sponge, and run off to their van onward to the next address.
Itās no wonder the Post Office scandal occurred and remains with such a shamble prevailing.
Reply Most of what you describe is privatised Royal Mail
January 3, 2025
https://www.royalmail.com/receiving/the-future-of-letter-deliveries
“Changing customer needs”
“Letter volumes have declined from a peak of 20 billion a year in 2004/5 to seven billion in 2022/3. In five years time, letter volumes will drop to four billion while parcels continue to grow.”
Seven billion is still about a hundred letters per person per year, on average about two a week, and for some of them it is still important, even essential, to get a hardcopy letter.
“Rising costs”
“As letter volumes decline, the number of UK addresses has grown by four million since 2004/5 so the cost of delivering each letter is increasing. Royal Mail lost Ā£419 million last year.”
On a simple calculation that would work out as a loss of 6 pence per letter.
January 3, 2025
I’ve been monitoring our post recently.
Almost nothing we receive via the post is worth having.
90% of it is junk mail and the rest could just as easily have been sent by email.
We even get four letters a month from one of our banks to tell us that our latest online statement for our four accounts are ready for us to view !
The only thing of value we get via the post are several magazines each month that are on subscription, and these could just as easily be delivered by couriers. In fact, if they were clever, publishers could very easily get together and send all our magazines out on one single monthly delivery.
If the Royal Mail stopped delivering to us it would make no difference.
It is a fact that in a few years time, all the arguments about needing bank branches to remain open and postal services will end when the few remaining people who refuse to use online services have died off.
January 3, 2025
Royal Mail, isn’t the Post Office Network of 11,500 branches. It’s a different company.
https://www.postoffice.co.uk/
January 3, 2025
Even the Christmas mail boost is dying on its feet. Judging by family, friends, business, the incidents of that card arriving loses significantly each year. Part sheer cost of the card plus what seems unrealistic mail charge.
January 4, 2025
Christmas card prices vary roughly from 20p to Ā£8 each, plus post.
Most are 4 pages, blank on page 2 & with junk on page 4.
Most messages are not private; postcards would do, saving card size, weight and envelopes.
Some cards benefit charities, yet some operators donate only a tiny amount, using the charity link solely to boost their own sales income.
Printing Christmas cards is like printing newspapers: Quaint, slow, often late, overpriced, outdated and declining fast.
Christmas messages can be displayed on screen free for all to see, as a family at home or via phones.
January 3, 2025
The Post Office seem to be doing an awful job telling potential clients for its 11,500 branch network what it does, does it even advertise now?
https://www.postoffice.co.uk/
January 4, 2025
The way of dealing with a shambles is to sort it out.
Calling it āRoyal Mailā doesnāt ennoble a shambles into a quality postal service.
Privatising it just shared the loss differently.
A proper postal service would be simply efficient and good value. The current mess is not.
Reply Postal services are now mainly parcels/packets , supplied by competing companies and largely profitable.
January 3, 2025
The “benefits” of nationalisation are (1) removal of choice from the consumer/user, (2) compulsion to use the politicians’ choice, (3) higher prices and operating costs. These “benefits” are, of course, only in the mind of the politicians who impose them on the rest of us to serve their doctrinaire purpose.
January 3, 2025
BT has a market cap of ~ Ā£14.6bn and is considered a minnow among global telecoms companies. Currently it’s being circled by a number of predatory players, who have taken substantial stakes.
BT has huge pension liabilities going back to pre-privatisation. The size of the pension fund (BTPS) was Ā£35.7bn in 2024 – down from Ā£57bn in 2020 and additionally, has underfunded liabilities of Ā£2.7bn, which are projected to be covered by 2030.
BT could best be described as a hedge fund that runs a telecoms business on the side. During the next market downturn BT will almost certainly be bought out by a foreign predator – as will Royal Mail, which is currently under offer.
January 3, 2025
Interesting article in the WSJ, Mr Cold.
“Green Electricity Costs a Bundle
The data make clear: The notion that solar and wind power save money is an environmentalist lie.
As nations use more and more supposedly cheap solar and wind power, a strange thing happens: Our power bills get more expensive. This exposes the environmentalist lie that renewables have already outmatched fossil fuels and that the āgreen transitionā is irreversible even under a second Trump administration.
The claim that green energy is cheaper relies on bogus math that measures the cost of electricity only when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.”
And that’s in the USA, where energy prices are a quarter of those in the UK.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/green-electricity-costs-a-bundle-wind-solar-data-analysis-power-prices-259344f4
January 3, 2025
It’s not quite a fair comparison since telecom/internet was a business of the future whilst Post Office services were becoming a business of the past (as is the passenger transporting railway).
The Post Office hasn’t just been hamstrung by poor management, the business model needs complete revision and updating but that has never been properly carried out.
Surely, with the retail banks deserting town centres, there is a huge opportunity for the Post Office to offer a limited retail banking service on behalf of the former High St banks? I happened to be in Axminster recently and they have a Banking Hub, which means that local retailers can bank their cash takings without making a lengthy trip to another town.
Why hasn’t every town got a Banking Hub, and why isn’t it in the Post Office?
As with every other business-of-the-past (ie the railway) it will only become and remain profitable if the management seize the opportunities which are undoubtedly there. And that means the private sector because a nationalised industry NEVER innovates.
January 3, 2025
One reason is that the Post Office, where it can, has relocated from itās own premises to āshareā a counter in a willing shop.
They therefore are the sub-tenant and canāt offer anything.
Banking hubs are the replacement for a number of premises occupied by each individual bank/building society. It means long queues, basically a single bank to serve each town with no actual business being responsible for that enterprise.
The strategy is to force electronic banking on everyone with the hope of making cash redundant.
My small shop tenants are putting in safes. Their customers use cash. They canāt queue up for hours.
Can you see what is going to happen when you actually force people to be their own ābankā?
The politicians and the financial sector canāt.šš¤£
January 3, 2025
Enough private sector firms make profits from insurance (travel, home, pet, life, car)?
Private saving companies make money from finance, savings and investment accounts?
Post Office banking essentials is often there when no other banks are.
January 3, 2025
As I reported a few months ago, the organisation which examines the case for a Hub decided against in Wokingham. Breathtakingly idiotic.
January 3, 2025
So why not privatise the Post Office?
That’s because it’s mandate is to provide a 100% delivery service to all addresses in the country. A private company might pick and choose, only delivering to areas where the service is profitable. That might mean that a large number of households wouldn’t receive their tax demand. The government is horrified by this thought. Imagine if tax demands for money that doesn’t exist, or for money that’s already been taxed weren’t delivered?
Reply The delivery requirement applies to a privatised company, not the PO
January 3, 2025
Reply to reply
Judging from many of the responses, it would seem that one of the nationalised Post Office’s failures is informing the General Public what it actually DOES do ….. and what it doesn’t.
If you don’t communicate what your business does, how can you possibly promote it!
January 3, 2025
I know what the Post Office does, our local Post Office is fantastic, the family run a small store alongside open all hours, 7 days per week. The family are so helpful it makes you want to use them more so we book our travel insurance with them.
January 3, 2025
āWhat exactly are the benefits of nationalisation meant to be?ā – caressing the ego of the narcissist pushing socialism on a nation. No more, no less.
We have a corrupted Parliament, full of socialist and social democrats that do not understand the fundamentals of business let alone government. A good government is one that creates an environment and a framework for everyone to reach their full potential. Having a centralised command structure imposing their personal idealogical views of a metro socialist London on a whole country was always doomed to fail.
January 3, 2025
The benefit of nationalisation is that it stops all those rapacious capitalists making money from the labour the workers.
Reply Gives the money instead to fat cat nationalised bosses, paid huge bonuses for bad outcomes
January 3, 2025
J+M – So, instead, what does nationalisation do? Create unprofitable jobs at taxpayers’ subsidised expense?
Railway network – subsidies.
Nationalised train companies – subsidies.
NHS – massive money pit.
January 3, 2025
“at taxpayersā subsidised expense” which destroys far more real jobs through this taxation.
January 3, 2025
reply to reply….sounds just like Quangos.
January 3, 2025
How interesting!
Rapacious capitalists or fat cat nationalised bosses! š¤£š¤£
Quite a stark choice?…
January 3, 2025
Because MP’s are elected doesn’t mean that they have to run ministries – maybe they should be appointing experienced technocrats instead to do this work – experienced european technocrats if necessary without party political strings just like the EU Commission? Lay out government policy and let them get on with it?
January 3, 2025
From 2015 to 2020 shares in BT crashed, like so many other shares – is this when confidence in the UK collapsed fully?
Share prices, generally, have still not recovered and are unlikely to do so while labour remain in power. But are BT doing enough for their shareholders. Profits are one thing but why are their shares so low if BT are being so productive?
For a company to thrive requires an expanding economy, something we haven’t had in reality since before Blair’s reign.
One can only imagine the state of BT now if it had not been privatised.
Would the Post Office have done better in a thriving economy? Probably unlikely as more would have been expected of it and management of a nationalised industry is never effective.
The malaise of the PO is just typical of what is happening in the UK now, thanks to economic policies designed to drain the UK of any potential. While there are taxpayers the PO will remain an expensive thorn, but companies like BT will be hurt badly as the economy shrinks.
January 3, 2025
The problem with creeping nationalisation and an ever expanding CS/institutions is that you eventually end up with a Far Left authoritarian Soviet style government and an inefficient economy where the government pretend to pay you and the citizens pretend to work.
Even the Communist Chinese government have realised this and under their control have implemented their āone country two systems ideaā. Communism at the top in total control and corporate fascism underneath to allow industry and the economy to prosper.
January 3, 2025
Here’s a fix for this Public Private sector debate.
Why not Publicly own everything? That way there is never a Private company or business paying excess salary bonus or share dividends as so many left wing supporters like to claim.
Let the Public sector have the lot, maybe call the new paradigm Communism and see how long the Public sector survive having to fund the ongoing loss making sectors they then control.
The first indicator of a future crisis would be a severe devaluation of the Ā£sterling. The markets would rightly conclude, there is n value in a currency they can not invest in. The increase in interest rates might stimulate some foreign bond investors but the rate to attract customers would simply increase year on year as the economy grew weaker and weaker.
On the plus side the migration crisis would be solved as more people would be exiting the UK than wanting to come and share in the decline, maybe that is what Labour have planned?
Their best plan to resolve uncontrolled immigration is to Bankrupt the Nation…..”Labour the Party wrecking for you.”
January 3, 2025
In both systems we, the taxpayer, loose.
Nationalised industries are run for the benefit of the Unions who control them.
Privatised entities ship the profits out of the country.
Politicians produce laws without knowing, or caring, for the end result.
Take posting antique knives or guns – perfectly legal, but both main carriers have minimum quantities, and many, if not most, auctioneers and Registered Firearms Dealers don’t have an annual turnover of 1,000 restricted parcels a year.
Does our tax system encourage us to invest in our own businesses ? rather than asking for foreign investment ?
Since the second Boer War we have been run to the detriment of the indigenous proles, good for cannon fodder and as Company Slaves.
Successive governments have broken our country.
If we are to get out of this death spiral of arguing private versus public we need the alternative of philanthropic businessmen being honoured for sensibly balancing Social needs against profit.
January 3, 2025
Sir John, You are pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with stones up a steep hill. Most of us agree with your sensible comments, but the past Conservative and present Labour governments just ignore you.
Should you not set up a training company for prospective conservative MPs so they arrive in parliament with a basic understanding of the economy and real conservative values?
We are just as frustrated as you, but keep fighting the battle!
January 3, 2025
Yes, to training prospective MPs
January 3, 2025
+1
January 3, 2025
What! and have a body of sensible intelligent persons wanting to promote values and the ‘right thing’?
Whatever next! Conservatives back in power? It has been a long time.
January 3, 2025
BT/Openreach is badly run, operational disorganised and inefficient. Itās impossible to contact Openreach so confusion and delay is inevitable. Their business model is incapable of delivering their marketing aspirations. Change is urgently needed. The Post Office is a vital lifeline in our town as they provide essential banking services. This could be expanded into a proper banking hub. Surely thereās a business opportunity here?
January 3, 2025
I agree – BT in general and Openreach in particular treats the customer as if they were a nationalised non-business with a monopoly – which of course they have!
January 3, 2025
With a nationalised industry, we have rights to know information. It is subject to freedom of information requests. With a private business, everything becomes a commercial secret, and the public has no right to know anything.
That is a very serious difference.
Reply Not true. Nationalised industries have commercial secrets and are good at non answers
January 3, 2025
Rights to know information?
Paula Vennells at the Post Office said she ‘did not know here organisation prosecuted people’ https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/post-office-live-paula-vennells-did-not-know-her-organisation-prosecuted-people/5119795.article
Sir Wyn Williams wants a final question. He asks of the briefing note to the select committee: ‘You were being advised to be very precise, circumspect and guarded about what you said. You would agree?’
Vennells: ‘Yes.’
January 3, 2025
I have been recently informed by the Openreach engineers who have to undo mistakes their colleagues have made at the exchange in order to unblock my landline phone’s facilities, that BT will shortly be abolishing landlines and forcing us all to use mobile phones exclusively. This is bad news: the audio standard of UK mobiles is very poor, partly because of inadequate reception, yet a nation whose hearing has been permanently destroyed (by several generations of noisy pop, rock and heavy metal played at disco levels) seems not to notice or care enough to complain about the poor audibility of mobile phone conversation, or demand to hear nuances of meaning in a phone conversation.
January 3, 2025
Mancunius :
Are you sure because landlines, which includes I presume fibre optic cable as well as the old copper/aluminium lines, is still to be used for internet connection.
Are you confusing with digital VoIP instead of analogue āphones? Which does mean there is no longer any telephone connection if your houses loses power as power is no longer supplied from the exchangeā¦making a mobile āphone a necessityā¦.always keep it fully chargedā¦.
January 4, 2025
and of course the old copper service was mostly a sunk cost, becoming a cash cow. Installing mobile networks was expensive, who pays the bills?
January 3, 2025
BT shows that if you put a monopoly into the private sector and it is run even reasonably well it will make a profit. It is not a particular endorsement of privatisation per se.
Reply It is not a monopoly. We opened it up to full competition!
January 3, 2025
What was the Post Office turnover?
January 3, 2025
BT is not a success story.
It stripped costs mainly by replacing Brits with cheap Indian nationals both imported here with big tax breaks, and remaining in India. The whole story has been one of mass immigration supported by the ruling classes, inc in politics and the unions. BT has delivered crap systems in massive programmes for the public sector, eg the NHS, but been protected by spending vast amounts on lawyers and retired politicians and civil servants with inside knowledge.
BT got all the big calls wrong, continuing to install copper to properties long after it became clear fibre optic was the way to go… and so much more.
BT is pretty much the worse of the UK.