The new Conservative government began slowly, still heavily influenced by civil service thinking. They sold some more BP shares in 1979 as Labour had done in response to the IMF crisis. They went on to sell smaller concerns including Amersham, British Aerospace, Cable and Wireless and Britoil. There was still resistance to undertaking a major privatisation of a big utility.
After the election victory in 1983 I was invited to Downing street to hear the Prime Minister say she was now ready to undertake a larger programme of disposals and wanted me to join her to assist. She approved a Cabinet paper setting out a larger programme, appointed John Moore as the first privatisation Minister in the Treasury and agreed British Telecom should be the first large sale. The aim was to take privatisation from under £1bn of sales a year to several multiples of that. Sales hit £4.3bn in 1984 and £9 bn in 1987. More important than the proceeds was always the possible transformation of these crucial industries, and lifting their growth and investment rates with access to private capital.
The work we did on BT shaped the rest of the programme. Each major industry had its own Bill setting out what was being sold and how, putting in place regulation and sometimes promoting competition. Some were sold whole, some were split up to create more competition. The Treasury was keen to sell BT as a monopoly. From the US experience of breaking their monopoly provider I was sure competition was needed. A compromise was struck with one competitor, Cable and Wireless, allowed for the business market. Competition for the domestic market was only allowed some years later.
The Treasury wanted to maximise valuations in the short term. Those of us who favoured competition expected faster growth and a larger tax base from early introduction of competition. Given the need for large capital spending programmes for the extra capacity and wider range of telephony services competition looked the better path. The UK monopoly kept people waiting to put in a new phone line, only allowed you to rent from a very limited range of phones and struggled with other uses of phone lines. Without major changes nationalised telecoms were going to impede the data revolution hitting business which needed more line capacity for transmission.
Stephen Littlechild had produced a paper on the need for regulation. I agreed with his view that the regulation should be time limited, to be replaced by competition. He proposed a simple monopoly price control for the early years using a price cap of RPI – x. This was adopted for several privatisations. In each case a simple but effective formula was gradually complicated, supplemented or replaced by complex rate of return formulae and detailed Regulator analysis of budgets and capital programmes.These did not improve matters.
The City when I took the early plans for BT to them were disappointing. Many of them harked back to the idea of Busby bonds. Some wanted BT and other large nationalised corporations to raise their own debt capital in markets. This was a bad idea as they would have been made to pay more for it than simply being given cash from cheaper government borrowing, yet there would have been relentless pressure for the state to always bail them out to avoid a nationalised bankruptcy. The Treasury may have accounted for it as non state borrowing, but outsiders were more likely to see it as a liability of the state.
Some in the City claimed the BT issue would be too big for markets, as it was many times the biggest share sale to that date. I initiated work to cut the volume of shares City institutions had to buy, We decided on a three part sale. There would be a sale of some shares to foreign buyers. There would be a popular issue to the public through the post and the conventional offer for sale to City institutions. I knew that would mean City investors could not collectively buy the average weighting of the new share in the index. To make it easier we decided to only sell a bit over half in the first offer for sale. It meant the institutions were short of shares in the biggest ever offer for sale, and helped ensure the shares went to a premium in early dealings. The sale raised a new record £3.9bn with the issue heavily oversubscribed. The City had just become a larger and more successful share market and found new liquidity from the retail share buyers who bought direct.
British Gas followed in a similar way in 1986, followed by British Airways and others in 1987.
The water privatisation in 1989 was disappointing, as the government accepted the argument that water was a natural monopoly. In practice it is a monopoly created by Statute, confirmed by the privatisation legislation. It is quite possible to have competing water suppliers using common carrier pipes as with gas. It is possible to allow challenger suppliers to take on new developments with new pipes or put in new pipes in existing areas. Water competition was introduced for business in Scotland. The privatisation of the water monopolies left a very regulated industry with continuing arguments over the pace of modernising and enlarging pipe networks and the prices to be charged to cover those costs.
March 27, 2025
A good sumary why did she not get fair competition between private and state schools with voucher or tax breaks for parents to top up and far more private schools. Alas now they are being further destroyed with the appallingy unfair VAT tax. The other problem is the regulation of them. The goverment is poor and running things and very poor at regulating them too.
So Rachel Reeves thinks there is no quick solution to get growth. Well there certainly is confidence is half the battle. This you get by promising to ditch net zero. move to easy hire and fire. cut the size of the state, cut red tape, relax planning… but you are doing the reverse other than on planning perhaps thus destroying confidence.
March 27, 2025
None of which will be done
Net Zero is still the talisman for all government actionsehicj by nature are regressive.
There will be no growth under this government except in immigration and hotel bills
Most of what Thatcher privatised are controlled by foreign government especially electricity production. This is what you get when you continue to increase the national debt.
March 27, 2025
Kemi and the Tories are still pro-net zero. Mel Stride, Shadow Chancellor, says Net Zero is in their DNA since Thatcher perhaps he right IQ is largely (75%+ it seems) inherited. Plus almost zero MPs have much science after age 16 or 18 at best!
March 27, 2025
Promising entirely the wrong policies Rachael does not inspire business confidence.
True the 14 years of climate alarmist, net zero, tax borrow and piss down the drain Consocialism under Cameron, May, Boris and the foolish Sunak was almost as appalling as this Labour party.
So is Sunak ever going to correct the record when he told the house:- “Unequivocally the Covid vaccines are safe” now that the huge net harms that were done is very clear indeed from the statistics? They certainly should never have been pushed/coerced at younger people and those who had had Covid already but money talks are who cares about the many dead or injured in the process. Did the government and their expertas have a conflict of interests or were they just incompetent?
March 27, 2025
Good morning.
And what about reservoirs, pumping stations and sewage treatment ? Do I get a choice of whose water it is or where my waste goes ?
Pipes are one thing, the rest is not and requires major capital expenditure and maintenance. Water, for so many reasons, is a poor example of a privatised monopoly. That is why I believe it would be better for State ownership of the property, including pipes, and to have private companies bid to run the service.
Reply Yes you would get a choice of supplier just as you have a choice of electricity supplier but only one grid and cable into your house.
March 27, 2025
Reply to reply. A shallow response The issue is costs. Looking at the whole system where are the main costs of supply? They are almost all for production and or storage, distribution and maintenance. All in one place – the owner of the reservoirs and pumping stations and pipes. The ‘supplier’ or retailers simply have offices and sales staff who will pay the wholesaler the same per unit. The retailer cost is marginal. So, its really a faux privatisation.
Reply You can have competing private providers of reservoir or well water
March 27, 2025
R to R
Yes, you can build a power station and generate energy to match demand. You cannot do that with water unless you have a really good rain dance or pump water from the ground, which is expensive.
Reply Power stations are dearer than pumping well water or building a reservoir. its the same approach to competition.
March 27, 2025
You need bright, honest, regulators well motivated with a sensible legal framework for the interest of the public, The regulators have failed again and again and again. Water, the many NHS regulators, energy, the vaccine regulators (funded by Big Pharma) the financial regulators RBS, Natwest, Equitable Life, fire safely regulators… the list is endless. Incompetence or Capture or empire building. A sledge hammer to miss the nut in the main!
March 27, 2025
@Lifelogic – what some call regulators for the most part look like vestige interest plants, are they there to protect customers or businesses. If it is customers we have a Parliament that if it was honest, not full of ‘free-loaders’ would see that as their job.
Then at the other end of the scale the are Government/Parliament plants that have no experience and cant get normal paying jobs.
Which ever way you look at the end result they don’t do what they are paid for and just waste money. Where Taxpayer money is used there should always democratic oversight and responsibility, in a way there is it is the Chancellor that is 100% responsible for sending Taxpayer money in their direction. So management neglect comes to mind
March 27, 2025
Indeed
March 27, 2025
I can’t see how that could work. Multiple reservoirs and treatment works owned and built by different companies all feeding into one pipe network? How could it be controlled if I want water from reservoir / treatment plant / company A and not from reservoir / treatment plant / company B?
And who could be blamed if the water was not potable for any reason. The idea of multiple water suppliers in any one area seems impractical if not impossible.
Reply It would work just like gas competition down a single pipe, bringing different gas from various fields.
March 27, 2025
Sir John, if I turn on a tap in my house the water coming out is the same water as my neighbours up and down the road get in their houses, all fed by the same main pipe. There is no way that I can get water from a different source with a different specification to that supplied to my neighbours unless we can use different pipes all the way back to the different sources. Otherwise consumers who are unhappy with the quality of the local mains water will have to buy the water they prefer in bottles or larger containers. The same will be true of gas, while we are still allowed to have gas it will come down those yellow plastic tubes that Cadent are even now installing around Maidenhead including down our road, and it will be the same gas as our neighbours get. I wondered about electricity and that is different to the extent that you may be able to get a three phase supply installed,
with significant disruption and expense:
https://topcharger.co.uk/can-i-get-three-phase-power-at-home/
I suppose we will all need that when our EV’s have batteries that can be charged up in 10 minutes:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/17/china-revolutionary-electric-car-battery-charge-10-minutes/
Reply We have competition to supply electricity over the single cable to the house, and to provide gas down the single pipe. Water could be the same
March 27, 2025
Turning the ship around is always slow and a tricky manoeuvre. Nevertheless I bought my allocation of shares and told Sid.
It was an exciting time. We could all see that Britain was going in the right direction and picking up speed.
I was at the Meat Trades Fare in Frankfort, a man from Australia on our stand, thinking of investing in a huge boning-out machine asked if Mrs T would ‘win again’. The Boss and other demurred but I said clearly that she would because she had to and he looked me straight in the eye and bought the machine.
Sid’s all over the world were becoming confident in the U.K. and it’s ability to deliver over time.
You thought you were selling gas, but in fact you also sold a boning-out machine and much else.
March 27, 2025
Turning the ship around can be slow, but one can inspire confidence if someone is at least trying to turn it.
Not under that last 14 years of the Fake Tories or under Starmer or Reeves. 180 degrees out and anti-growth on almost every issue. The sole exeption is relaxing planning and they have not done that yet or ever made clear what they intend.
March 27, 2025
Rachel Reeves bangs on about 14 years of Tory failure, just as Labour banged on about 13 years of Tory misrule six decades ago, but we are still suffering from the long term effects of misrule by the last Labour government.
March 27, 2025
35 years surely?
March 27, 2025
Lynn Atkinson:
‘Tell Sid’ was the idea of a female copywriter assigned to the British Gas advertising campaign. The concept was that Sid was never to be found, but the nation would become obsessed in wondering who and where he was, generating much free publicity and awareness, with extensive added word-of-mouth communication among all those wondering what the fuss was about. In effect, Sid became everyone else who needed to be told about buying the shares. It worked.
March 27, 2025
Look where we are now with water, railways and electricity suppliers, for example.
I doubt many would have wished for this if they could have forseen the future.
‘Tell Sid’ indeed.
March 27, 2025
The tragedy of Thatcher’s privatisation campaign was that the proceeds were not ring-fenced into a British sovereign wealth fund, into which a portion of N Sea oil proceeds could have been added. As is well known, Thatcher’s Chancellors used the money for general government expenditure in the year that they were received – tax cuts for the rich and breadline benefits for the 3 million unemployed that were the direct result of her policies.
Thatcher decided that even the highly profitable state industries should be sold off to “Sid” – who as a taxpayer already owned them anyway! Many have argued that the privatisation prices were too cheap, as Thatcher was desperate that selling them off would be a “success”
Nearly all the acknowledged problems with the state industries could have been solved by better management, investment in new technology and involvement of the unions, as in the German model
March 27, 2025
Absolutely. I’ve always believed that the problems we had in the 1960s and 1970s with the nationalised industries and others (like the car industry) were caused by the the arrogant and patronising attitude of management – who still thought they lived in Victorian times and could treat their workforce appallingly. I worked on a huge, famous construction site in London in the 1970s that was plagued with strike action. I’ve always believed that if you give the people who work in a business a share of the profits, you give them an incentive to work hard and contribute to success. And if you treat them as partners in the enterprise and not something to be exploited, and listen to their suggestions on how to work more efficiently etc., you create a business they take pride in and you don’t get a high turnover of staff.
March 27, 2025
The current state of the German railways, worse even than in UK, suggests you are wrong.
March 28, 2025
@Roy Grainger
The Germans built an entire industrial economy around vehicle manufacture, while ours was completely destroyed. Their IG Metall union co-operated with management, while here “Red Robbo” and his union destroyed Rover
March 27, 2025
Sakara,
Your post above is probably the one from you with which I agree most.
Regarding the last paragraph, the British post-war industrial malaise seemed intractable.Better management, better technology would have helped. I am not sure about industrial relations though.
On the other hand, if we had not lost badly managed car firms we would at least have provided employment for large numbers. The devil makes work for idle hands.
France, Italy and Germany have large numbers of cars on the road that are still produced in the home nations.
We definitely missed a trick with barriers to entry – either official or unofficial.
March 27, 2025
I remember very well the nationalised industries – both the entrenched attitude of the Union Members and their lackluste Management. I find it hard to beleive that “Healer, Heal thyself” would (or could) have worked…
March 27, 2025
The mistake Thatcher made was that she thought the public would become a share owning democracy and add to their holdings, building a portfolio and wealth for the future. What she didn’t realise was that ‘Sid’ had no intention of doing this and as soon as a profit, say enough for a week in Benidorm arrived many sold out and blew the money in the time honoured way many wage earners did on a Friday night at the pub before going home to give the missus her little bit of living cost money. The result is what we have now, many industries now owned by foreigners who rip us off. Not for nothing were we termed ‘treasure island.
Reply Mrs Thatcher and I were not that stupid. We put in Golden shares to prevent foreign takeover and fully understood some buyers would take early profits. Many did hold on.
March 28, 2025
Didn’t stop it though did it? They bought up bit by bit and why do you think so many are in foreign ownership?
March 27, 2025
Oh yes – the Germans are exactly what we should keep our eyes on – let’s see them doing the rest of the net zero heroics. Yesterday the demolished a 6 year old coal power station.
I’m sure you were applauding Mr Cold.
Mrs Thatcher paid off huge amounts of debt, including our WWII debt. Only an idiot ‘ringfences money in a savings account’ when it’s the debt that’s killing you.
Rachel will discover that paying a Billion in interest when there is little or no income can be a killer blow.
March 27, 2025
Sir John you are talking about the early history of privatisation. Perhaps you can tell how privatisation is benefiting the tax payer today and the strategic security of the country today after the family silver has been sold off to foreign interests.
Putting aside all the financial and political opinions, the utilities are physically networks and you can’t run an efficient network unless it has only one overall controller(mechanism)responsible to the customer and the country for every aspect of it.
You always bring up BT ( or the Post Office as it once was). This is a bit like saying how CO2 has risen since the start of the industrial revolution and not mention the population increase.
Telecoms has benefited from technology development. Oil, gas, water, electricity and the railways are the same since the 19th Century.
We look to privatisation to keep Politicians away from getting involved in running things they don’t really understand and think share holders will do a better job but here profit for them is key rather than service to the customer and the country.
Clearly we have not found the way to run utilities as we flip/flop from privatisation to nationalisation.
If only the tax payer could own the utilities without the Government being involved.
The Airlines are not one network as such as they run on Air, not pipes, cables etc. to get from A to B.
I am currently experiencing the benefits of a privatised telecoms when I switch broadband providers and my BT email service stopped working.
My Broadband provider said they could not speak to BT to jointly solve the problem. I spoke with BT who said it was a Broadband problem and the Broadband provider said it was a BT problem.
Now we have the typical privatised situation here, City Fibre installs the fibre but does not provide the service. You get a choice of providers to provide a service. But not BT their are laying fibre else where and not to my house. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I had an old BT phone and I could not contact a friend in Glasgow. I just phoned the Post office to fix the problem. They did not say your friend is connected to Highland telecoms you will have to contact them.
March 27, 2025
Privatisation works when there is real competition and consumer choice. Putting a State monopoly in the hands of a private monopoly (even one owned by another Sovereign State) is poor thinking and more akin to people wedded to an ideology than common sense and reason.
Reply Yes of course. I always advised competition.
March 27, 2025
Change your provider from BT. You can keep your existing email addresses.
March 27, 2025
Trump has imposed a 25% tariff on imported cars. This is going to have a bad effect on British luxury car exports from Rolls Royce and Bentley, about half of which are left-hand drive models built to American regulations. As are many models built here by Jaguar Land Rover
American car imports are frequently of very poor build quality, regularly breaking down and have a severely reduced second-hand value. Trump objects to the imposition of a 20% VAT rate on American car imports, which he rightly views as a tariff. Most everything that we import from America has a 20% VAT rate imposed.
The last thing the British economy needs is to get involved in a trade war with Trump.
March 27, 2025
We have American car imports? I can’t think of many. I see the occasional F150 truck – not much else leaps to mind. I am not thinking of Fords made in Belgium as being ‘American’.
March 27, 2025
VAT would only be a tariff if it wasn’t also imposed on UK-produced cars for UK buyers. But it is so there is a level playing field for UK and USA carmakers in the UK market.
March 27, 2025
What, like Tesla’s ?
March 27, 2025
Here is an article about the possible effects on the EU:
https://euobserver.com/eu-and-the-world/ar70dd1315
“Trump trade war could trigger financial collapse, economists tell EU”
On the other hand. it might only cost the EU 0.014% of its GDP, or possibly 1% of its GDP, losing:
“… one-third of current EU goods exports to America, or about one percent of EU GDP … ”
Similar to my back of an envelope estimate for the order of magnitude of the UK’s loss.
March 27, 2025
While according to the EU loyalists at Best For Britain US tariffs would have a negligible effect on UK GDP, while deep alignment with EU laws on both goods and services would only be worth 0.4% of GDP to the UK in the short term. That being a disappointing result they multiply it up fivefold to get a more respectable long term loss.
https://www.bestforbritain.org/growth_report
However that would still be only one fourteenth of the cumulative growth we have missed since 2008.
March 27, 2025
“There would be a sale of some shares to foreign buyers.” Why when you have also said that there were enough UK buyers ? Why were you trying to rig the market to prioritise foreign owners of UK assets ? The long-term result of that is Thames Water and some of the electricity companies where dividends have been siphoned off for foreign owners at the expense of capital investment in the UK.
Reply Try reading what I wrote. The minority shares for overseas buyers was to create scarcity for the main UK sale.
March 27, 2025
Hi sir John
It will be more important for councils and governments large businesses such as the post office and the police to buy British made cars this would help support the car industry and maybe create more jobs and teaching young people skills in engineering
Instead of supporting EU businesses
The labour government are against British business and it’s people
March 27, 2025
The privatisations were made with the state holding a ‘golden share’ , Major and Brown removed these golden shares , and soon as they did the privatised companies became part of a City game of pass the parcel , flogging the companies off to US and then European interests, no doubt picking up fat fees everytime they did. As much as I support the privatisation I don’t believe having our utilities end up in foreign ownership has been in the interests of our country .
March 27, 2025
A lot of interwoven detail today. Privatisation could have worked, but a lot of it was relating to the market place of the day and even then using historical reflections as a forward thinking platform.
BT didn’t work as hoped instead of being a major player, with competition, it became a minnow amongst large State owned players. Splitting out Cable & Wireless reduced its market position and as today has shown undermines UK Security.
It was right to privatise and with the benefit of hindsight they way it was implemented was all about vested interest, raising money to prop up a failing economy, not creating stand alone, even market leading operations, that no longer needed the Taxpayer to bail them out.
The Water Industry failure were again in hindsight due to lack of due diligence on the part of Government, the big give away to outfits that no intention of investing and providing customer service first. It was about asset stripping, selling assets bought and paid for by the taxpayer, then hocking the company with massive debts and debt interest. The new shareholders received their money back in an instance. Of course investors/share holders should see a ‘good’ return, but look at any real world company this return comes from great customer service not asset stripping.
March 27, 2025
Its nigh on impossible to respond to the thought today without seeming to denigrate the meaning behind the directions taken – but clearly ‘due diligence’ was missing, the suspicion being lack of good business common sense from all concerned. Even today is a trait we see in Government, Parliament – they are playing at it because teacher says so but they don’t understand what the game is.
To much ideology that becomes political terrorism through lack of thought and experiance
March 27, 2025
BT was previously part of the Post Office. Before the telecommunications part was privatised, subscribers had to rent their telephones, as heavy clunky devices, almost all in black. Public telephone boxes were widely vandalised, leaving many areas with no means of phone contact, even for emergency services.
Enormous volumes of about 6 thick directories were updated regularly and delivered to all subscribers, listing other telephone contacts and numbers. They were all on low grade newsprint paper and described as costing only 8 pre-decimal pence each to produce.
March 27, 2025
Interesting background to what happened in the Thatcher years that boomed Britain
Having left Britain at the height of the industrial suicides, I came back in the early 80’s. Work was still not plentiful, but there was an air of optimism, and things were visibly different, better. I sought work abroad again and came back in 1984 to a country that was blooming. It was such a great place to be.
We have to remember how bad things can get under socialism, and how good things can get with an honest government working for the benefit of the whole country.
When this current regime finally collapses under the weight of it’s harmful acts, sins against the people and dire socialism, we will need a new route map. Privatisation won’t be enough on it’s own. Our host in earlier entries has indicated many things that need fixing, but we would need much more than that to clean up the debt and social mess we will eventually inherit.
WE should start thinking about it now.
March 27, 2025
Water privatisation packaged up municipal suppliers of water into artificially large companies for flogging off. Water used to be added to the rates; it now comes as a large bill from an often foreign for profit owner.
Gas used to be produced from the distillation of coal on a local basis; after the discovery of North Sea gas, there was a need to distribute it to the country as a whole so a huge public investment went into creating an entirely new infrastructure, a National Gas Grid; the burners on all domestic appliances also had to be modified .
BT planned to switch away from copper-based telecoms to fibre but the Thatcher government wanted US telecom businesses to introduce competition based on copper so the switch to fibre has been massively delayed and our original technological lead in fibre manufacture and associated switchgear was lost for ever.
Electricity did not become universally available until the huge investment in the National Grid which reduced energy loss by transmitting electricity at 400kV or 275kV. It was the decision of government to force the CEGB to use British coal to support an uncompetitive industry not that of the managers who were engineers.
The first tranche of privatisations was appropriate; however British Aerospace should never have been privatised as one entity; it was a conglomerate lacking synergies.
March 27, 2025
So “It meant the institutions were short of shares in the biggest ever offer for sale, and helped ensure the shares went to a premium in early dealings”, an astute bit of market manipulation!
March 27, 2025
Sir John
Which ever way it is looked at Government with support of Parliament should not get remotely near day to day running of any business, or delivery of a service entity. They have shown time and time again they don’t have the experience or the wearwithall to even start.
Today’s question, ‘privatization of taxpayer created and funded entities’. Yes, a good idea, a great idea. The missing point then is the correct implementation. To much has been done by Governments in a panic for money to prop up an ailing economy without any regard to the businesses themselves. Was the objective to relieve the Taxpayer, or prop up Government?
If the answer is that these privatized entities were created to relive the obligation of the Taxpayer to keep funding them – then it is a failure. The Taxpayer is still the funder, rail, water etc. The taxpayer handout to these privatized enterprises still continues today. That’s not privatization
Without all the personal vested interest vanity, these enterprises should have been given the best send off possible so they could compete with the Worlds best, supply the customer a better service and never need taxpayer support. That’s another fail, they were crippled from the get go. Either stripped, dissected or simply no consideration of proper due-diligence of the purchaser.
Conclusion, what is spun as privatization was nothing more than the Government of the day trying to grab some ‘today money’ without looking long term.
Reply Not so. Telecoms for example was capital starved when a nationalised monopoly but has enjoyed huge capital expansion now it is a competitive private industrial sector. you were not allowed to own a phone when nationalised.
March 27, 2025
I remember very well the awfulness of the nationalised telephone service and the severe difficulty of getting anything done. When moving a stockbroking general office from the City to Chingford, the cases of whisky that had to be offered were legion, and it still lagged behind time. The work incidentally included the third fax machine in the country.
Something that has failed in several cases, in particular both for Rail and for Water, is the maintenance of infrastructure, and while you can argue whether or not the re-nationalisation of Railtrack was the correct solution for rail, there is no doubt about the lack of proper maintenance that sparked it. The same has been true of leaks in the water pipes, and the telephone network, voice and broadband is only just beginning to catch up with other countries.
The reason is lack of investment, and it could be that the Regulators have much to answer for here.
March 27, 2025
I noticed that Rachel from accounts tried to deliver an upbeat Spring statement yesterday. In fact there’s a rumour that she’s asked Treasury officials to take a more optimistic and funky approach to economics. So if you want something completely funked up then Rachel’s your girl.
March 27, 2025
357 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …nothing to fear ….only 357 yesterday ….no association with Amsterdam
March 27, 2025
Indeed. We are in grave peril. On the cusp of something off the scale happening. Something unseen hitherto in western civilisation.
The British, Mrs T, Shakespeare.. Churchill… all of it will be a footnote – if the victors bother keeping footnotes that is.
I visit this blog like I do fantasy football blogs. No relevance to reality. Just nice to reminisce about what Britain used to be like and might have been like.
What if what if what if…. ?
March 27, 2025
Snag is that much of UK infrastructure ended up under the command of foreign governments.
We see the outcome today. A country in its economic death throes.
Its people in grave physical peril at home.
Major onwards has been a tale of chronic incompetence, mismanagement betrayal and treachery.
I exhort any young or talented person who can to emigrate and defund the British state and all who sail in her.
In any case. Why should they hang around to be taxed to penury to pay for gold plated pensions and 1.5 million homes for new arrivals.. and more.
March 27, 2025
Competition doesn’t work it’s a myth – cartels rule
Prices are very often fixed on the golf courses – usually on Wednesday afternoon
If you query anything about this you are referred to the relevant quango already set up and headed by the favoured government appointee.
Last what happened with privitisation in this country is a sad reflection on the competence of the people in power at the time – the comparison with how Norway managed its oil wealth and what we did with ours makes my eyes water