The areas of the private sector that achieve the highest levels  of efficiency are usually very driven by competition. The leaders of the businesses know if they cease the search to do better with less and give up the drive to innovate and change, their competitors will take their customers.
Advocates of nationalisation say that should  be more efficient and low cost because it removes the need for competing management teams, multiple head offices and advertising. Looking at past experience  shows this is just not true. Large nationalised monopolies offset the economies  of scale with the inefficiencies of monopoly provision.
When the U.K.electricity industry was privatised the nationalised management fought against creating competing generators, claiming it would be dearer and less productive. The  government split up the industry and created competition. In the first decade moving to a competitive system labour  productivity doubled and electricity  prices came down. The industry that had believed in fuel inefficient  coal power stations went for the dash for gas. The new power stations were 60-70% more fuel efficient, greener and cleaner.
Public sector trading bodies that charge the customers should be subject to competition.
December 16, 2024
Our massive uncompetitive, unproductive State Sector has weighed Britain down to the point where we beat even the EU in productionless paid activity. The State knows it will never win so has to abolish competition. And it gerrymanders everything, for instance:
âIn January 2015, Cleverly was selected to be the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Braintree, His selection came after the initial selection process was quietly suspended by Conservative Campaign Headquarters, after the local party chose someone not on the approved candidates list and was told to “think again”.
That is the root of our problem. We no longer choose who sits in Parliament. We donât want anyone on any partyâs Candidates list!
December 16, 2024
Nonsense. You people have learned nothing in 200 years. The Victorians realised that competition was wasteful. We don’t need multiple competing railways lines, or multiple competing water pipes or multiple competing electric pylons, and we don’t need multiple competing private health care suppliers. We need one supplier, properly regulated by the state
December 16, 2024
You mean like in the Soviet Union Lemmng?
You may have a point. The Soviets could certainly build walls very cheaply and the ‘Lada’ was a best seller – everybody had one.
December 16, 2024
Leaking
In theory yes, but in practice it simply has never happened here, too much political interference from people who have never run anything themselves.
December 16, 2024
Well almost nothing is ever run efficiently by the state, subcontracted efficiently or regulated properly by them. Have you not noticed this, are you very young perhaps?
If you have one monopoly supplier you have no choice & so when it fails, or hugely over charges for dire service, makes you wait over year for a heart op or cancer treatment you just get no choice. Put up with it and shut up and perhaps just die while waiting the 6 hours late ambulance or 6 hours waiting in A&E.
December 16, 2024
We’ve got one regulated health care supplier and its patient outcomes are among the worst in the developed world. You have a very tenuous grasp of history – the Victorians didn’t “realise that competition was wasteful”, quite the opposite. The entire rail network and London tube network in Victorian times was built by competing private companies which weren’t brought under single state ownership until after WW-II. In the Victorian era there were also multiple competing private water companies. They were not nationalised till 1903. You’ve really embarrassed yourself by your excursion into history I’m afraid.
December 16, 2024
It appears you have learned nothing and live in a fantasy world. No public sector service is efficient. Try phoning one of them. From your local council to HMRC – they donât even answer their phones.
December 16, 2024
We most definitely DO need private sector options and competition in Healthcare …. and also in Education.
The State Sectors have failed and no amount of State Regulation will improve them.
December 16, 2024
I think the railways, water pipes (and sewage), electricity generation were all once created, supplied and maintained by PRIVATE individuals and companies, and most in the Victorian era. Even the British Empire was created, not by the State but, by private individuals (eg Cecil Rhodes) or companies (eg British East India Company). Only since when the State got involved did things go wrong.
December 16, 2024
Lemming :
Communism, really.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work, which is why the Chinese have implemented their âone country two systemsâ idea. Communism at the top in total control and corporate fascism underneath to allow industry and the economy to prosper.
December 16, 2024
You have learned nothing at all! The British Victorians were the personification of Capitalism I.e unfettered competition.
Thatâs why they achieved maybe than any other Generation – although The Greatest Generation is so called with all due respect for their massive achievement in saving the Capitalist world from the little Corporal, who, like you, despised âthe English Systemâ (capitalism and democracy).
December 16, 2024
@ Lynn Atkinson – had the voters of Braintree objected, they could have voted for another candidate of course – like the voters of Leyton who rejected Patrick Gordon-Walker in a 1965 by-election after the previous MP was made a peer to make way for him.
December 16, 2024
Lets have free and fair competition between different sources of energy too. Gas,Oil, Coal, wind, solar, hydro, nuclear rather than the current rigged some taxes and other hugely subsidised system. Free and fair competition between over taxed cars and trucks and hugely subsidised trains and buses. Also look at fair competition in housing, state and private education, bankingâŠ
December 16, 2024
Yes when gas and electricity were privatised prices dropped and services improved. Now we have a soviet style energy market with the government dictating the type of generation which has lead us to the highest prices in the developed world and an unstable grid hear the latest wheeze by the Chuckle Brothers is to get rid of street lighting. Saving carbon emissions trumps road safety, personal safety and common sense.
Something really must be done about these cowboys before there’s a revolution.
It looks like we have to rely on the farmers to do the heavy lifting.
December 16, 2024
Yet the energy needed to provide a level of lighting has never been lower with modern technology.
In 1800, a candle providing one hour’s light cost six hours’ work. In the 1880s, the same light from a kerosene lamp took 15 minutes’ work to pay for. In 1950, it was eight seconds. Today, it’s half a second.
Matt Ridley.
Not at all the same for heating or hot water alas.
December 16, 2024
Iâve never quite understood that position. If Generator A builds a new efficient generator that can supply electricity cheaper than competitors, surely everyone will want to buy their electricity from them – but they wonât have the capacity to supply it. And why should they sell it cheaper than Generator B? Surely they would up their prices to make more profit. Wouldnât all generators up their prices to the highest generator to maximise profit and return on investment? There seems to be very little difference between the prices on offer.
Reply You can have a competitive system based on accepting the next lowest price when you need more power. Generators then have a trade off between running more often at lower prices or less often at higher prices.
December 16, 2024
Conservative MP Joy Morrissey has demanded answers from Labour’s Ed Miliband over allegations he failed to declare donations linked to a recent climate envoy appointment.
Speaking to GB News, Morrissey called for clarity on the declaration of a ÂŁ4million donation to Labour from Quadrature Capital.
Etc ed
December 16, 2024
So are this and the last government, plus all their âexpertsâ [like the Classics Graduate new CEO of the Climate Change Committee, Chris Stark the last one (sort of a law degree), Mayâs advisor Lord Debden (Gummer a History Graduate) and ex Chair of the Climate Change Committee and Michael Goveâs school drop out advisor âexpertâ Greta Thunberg types] all totally deluded and genuinely think net zero is a sensible policy?
Or are other âfollow the moneyâ forces perhaps at work?
Have the recent governments ever thought of perhaps consulting a decent engineer and a physicist or two to help plan the UK energy systems in a sane way? Or at least some to advise them how to avoid getting everything so totally wrong on CO2, Climate and Energy Provision as they currently are doing.
Why for example do they keep talking of âclean energyâ when their is nothing remotely dirty about CO2 it is plant, tree & crop food it is a vital gas for nearly all life on earth.
Miliband and this appalling government are destroying the economy, exporting jobs, freezing pensioners, and harming our defences.
December 16, 2024
You are absolutely correct in your comment. In terms of nationalised industries we are talking Energy, Water, Railways, and I think our postal service. The challenge is how do we make each service competitive when there is no real competition.
Energy suffers too much taxation and insane heretical interference from government whose management skills are zero. First we suffer the heresy of not being able to enjoy the natural assets we have. The first commandment of climate change nett zero is to import world priced energy. This enables government to spuriously claim to free ourselves of the sin of using our own, and its mythical consequences. Having the most expensive energy in the World ensures that we destroy all heavy energy user industries, making us strategically highly vulnerable. They bring to the table, intermittent, tax subsidised electricity from windmills and solar farms, not having the brains to realise that our population largely goes abroad for its sunshine. They deny our own industry of excellence the incentive to provide clean reliable SMRs. When the expensive insanity of Rasputin joins Guy Fawkes in our history of treachery we may be able to evolve a viable energy policy. The we can decide how we get it to all end users competitively.
Water is in need of a national grid to get it from where it falls to where it is needed. Currently international investors enjoy the benefits which first should have been spent on infrastructure. The business rules and plan needs to change.
Railways exist because nobody asks the question as to whether there are better ways for people to get from A to B. Walking was replaced by the horse. The horse and canal by roads, and rail. Rail should give way to private air travel. You can already fly Birmingham to Alicante far cheaper than Manchester to London by rail. Ergo invest in airports.
Sell the mail to an Amazon or like if you want a competetive service.
Now having pointed out how miserable nationalisation is, and we agree, can we have your solution and business plan for all the above.
December 16, 2024
Here’s one solution – mutualisation.
Take the water industry. Nationalisation doesn’t work because nationalised industries are inefficient, and starved of investment because the government has other priorities on where it wants to spend money. Privatisation doesn’t work because the water company is just there to maximise bills to the customer, subject to constraints by the regulator, as the customers have nowhere else to go. As Lemming correctly points out above, you can’t have competing water networks.
With mutualisation you become a part owner of your water company, and you with all your fellow customers decide how much you pay for the service and how much you want to invest in new infrastructure. Bills aren’t maximised and if the company fails to invest, you only have yourself to blame.
December 16, 2024
My solution for the various monopolies would be to turn them Mutual Provident Societies (ie Co-operatives) owned by the employees. That way they have a stake in making the business work.
December 16, 2024
Good Morning,
True competition works, no doubt. But check the record. How many electricity/gas retailers when broke in 2021/2. Leaving a small cartel charging too high ‘standing charges’. Why is Thames water on the cusp of bankruptcy? Why have most of the independent rail operators gone bust?
The model used in each case for privatisation needs to be better thought out. Privatisation, as applied by past Tory governments is an example of political dogma being inappropriately applied; one size rarely fits all.
December 16, 2024
PW : “But check the record. How many electricity/gas retailers when broke in 2021/2. Leaving a small cartel charging too high âstanding charges”
The failure of energy retailers was because the regulator, Ofgem, failed to regulate them properly.
The âstanding chargesâ are high because it is used to pay for Net Zero.
December 16, 2024
Good morning.
The State is one big monopoly. It creates the all the laws offers the electorate poor service. For example. For the last 14 years the government has been unable to control MASS immigration despite repeated promises to do so. And at no point after an election am I able to switch supplier.
How can this be fair ?
December 16, 2024
@ Mark B – A switch of supplier is achieved by emigrating.
December 16, 2024
No ! I am staying here. If someone mis-sells a product I have recourse to consumer law to remidy my complait. Where is there similar to those promises made to ‘buy’ my vote ?
Fraud is theft. It is gaining goods, services or monies by lying.
December 16, 2024
IIRC the CEGB calculated it’s costs using replacement values for it assets, increasing them hugely after the 1970s inflation. It also made no allowance for alternative means of generation, such as gas fired stations. Competition destroyed such thinking and revealed why innovation in better alternatives is essential to an economy if it is to thrive. We are not and will not get this from Starmer’s government. It’s every policy move adds costs and destroys the capital needed to finance innovation and growth. Complete and utter disaster looms so long as this government remains in power.
December 16, 2024
Yes, competition is good. Which is why the Blue-Green/Red-Green/Yellow-Green Westminster Uni-Party has failed so spectacularly. Voluntarily shackled to the EU and huddling around their self-declared “centre ground” they have effectively denied the electorate the possibility of alternative policies and governmental competition.
We supposedly have an adversarial political system. It is why we have HM Government and HM Official Opposition. For the last 20 years, there has effectively been NO OPPOSITION to the WEF and Blair’s NuLabour.
Whitehall and Westminster are where our problems originate.
December 16, 2024
Correct !
BREXIT was a shout for freedom from the EU yoke which forces centralism in politics. Centralism ‘works’ (loosely) on the continent because they have totally different electoral system and forces parties to cooperate and create coalitions. Of course, as we have seen, they do not create stable governments. In the UK we had stable governments beause of the adviserial system. But this has broken down because manifesto’s, thanks to the EU where the real power is, mean nothing.
December 16, 2024
Donna :
Correct.
December 16, 2024
I don’t think either works myself after experiencing both. I do think private enterprise should be introduced but with government having control overall (if we had any decent government that is) to stop what has happened in the water industry, for instance. Private companies in rail and water especially need watching and someone needs to have control over what they give themselves for salaries and pay shareholders. Thames Water are saying they will run out of money by March but have just given themselves large salary increases and bonuses and shareholders have had their snouts in the trough as well. This has to stop. If you do not do the job efficiently they have to be sacked or given no pay increases until they meet the standards required. Why is it no one is sacked these days? When I was in charge of people in the Civil Service they had three warnings to do better and then if they did not, they were recommended for sacking. Too many lawyers in charge now.
December 16, 2024
“shareholders have had their snouts in the trough as well”. You shouldn’t fall into Labour’s trap by demonising shareholders – for infrastructure companies like that they are mostly pension funds, including I imagine your pension fund and those of millions of low-paid workers with workplace pension schemes. If “the shareholders” don’t get paid then it is you who suffers by having a lower pension.
December 16, 2024
Telling Civil Servants that they are under-performing/incompetent and threatening to sack them isn’t good for their mental health. Their Line Managers have to be kind and encouraging – and spend a great deal of time negotiating and agreeing their development and performance plans.
December 16, 2024
The reason the CEGB didnât construct gas fired power stations was that the government of the day wouldnât allow it. Nothing to do with lack or competition. It was all to do with the coal industry. The planning of the electricity system in the UK was excellent. It was, and is, politicians who think they know better.
December 16, 2024
Coal and energy (and the railways) were nationalised industries, monopolies.
December 16, 2024
PS and the coal mine workers union was extremely powerful.
December 16, 2024
“Public sector trading bodies that charge the customers should be subject to competition” – agreed, hence for example why do we not have two passport issuing offices, able to set their own timetables, prices and procedures, and leave it to consumers to chose which to use?
But then the NHS charges customers, just indirectly through taxation. Is there not scope for competition and user choice there too?
December 16, 2024
Good luck with that concept of Public Sector competition Sir John. I asked my turkey flock, who was looking forward to an early Christmas?…. there were no takers.
December 16, 2024
Consumers need choice to choose better.
Organisations without the spur of needing to compete are prone to become sloppy.
December 16, 2024
The dogma associated with nationalised industries is far from an accurate picture, and yet it has crept into the socialist psyche as a fact, in a similar way that masks allegedly stop infection from covid which has been indoctrinated into so many.
Yes, people are prone to accept brainwashing techniques where misinformation is repeated until it becomes a fact, especially when they want to agree with that idea.
For whatever reason, nationalised industries just do not have the gumption to make things work better, more efficiently, because they know even when they fail they will be bailed out by taxpayers. Private industries do not have that luxury so must work harder to get things not just right but competitive.
Says it all.
December 16, 2024
transportenvironment.org 09/12/2024 âMind the gap! Europeâs rail operators: A comparative rankingâ
Please check the report (44 pages) that can be downloaded from there. It checks 27 operators over eight key criteria including ticket prices, punctualities and amenities.
Overall ranking: Avanti 19th, GWR 22th, Eurostar 27th.
December 16, 2024
With-in that you have entities (services/products) that are driven by, as in survive by, being Customer/Consumer driven that also generate profits and wealth. Profits and Wealth are not the work of the Devil, they are the âseed cornâ for tomorrow.
Where Governments and State run operations fail is there is in them a god given belief, a religious fervour, that only they can do things. They do things on being âNot for Profitâ, code for compulsory taxpayer funded, the future is someone elseâs problem (the Taxpayers). The only ones that feel good from their outcomes is them their-selves, high paid high reward jobs where customer/consumer deliver is but a side show.
To much vanity, self-gratification has crept into Parliament since Blair, so much so that it has become self-corrupting. Now it has become punishment of the people and the country
December 16, 2024
As was highlighted by @javelin yesterday the deluded religion that is the Socialist World Government of the WEF that is going about resetting the World in their image. There is no such thing a serving a people or a country – just self-serving hypocrites of the highest order. The UK has gone back to the days of the Norman Conquest, the them and us. Slaves were renamed surfs to make the conquerors feel good about themselves.
The deluded fools that have destroyed our Democracy, all for personal entertainment and their personal new religion:
â Kier Starmer
â Rishi Sunak
â Liz Truss
â Boris Johnson
â Theresa May
â George Osborne
â David Cameron
â Gordon-Brown
â Tony Blair
December 16, 2024
Socialists are not interested in competition or efficiency; they are interested in control of everything we do.