When I first made the case to Margaret Thatcher in the 1970 s she argued “they won’t let me do that.” She was right that there was public opposition to privatising a big utility, whipped up by Unions, management, civil servants and academics. They said a privatised BT would close all the street phone boxes still in use, would fail to invest enough, and put the prices up.
In 1982 she started to work on BT and in 1983 she invited me into Downing Street to make the case from the inside and to solve the practical and technical issues. We guaranteed the future of phone boxes , put in a price control requiring price cuts every year and licensed a new competitor who promised a big expansion of business based capacity. This got us through whilst the true answer of competition was gradually introduced.
There were immediate wins.
1. The investment spend of BT was removed from public spending for good, Investment went up a lot with no cost to taxpayers.
2 The state got a large receipt for sale. As BT grew faster so the state got lots more tax revenue from taxing its profits. This helped bring the deficit and taxes down whilst supporting higher spend on health and education
3.BT set about narrowing the gap with the more innovative and advanced US telecoms. BT adopted electronic switching in place of its old fashioned electromechanical system.
4. BT and Cable and Wireless put in large capacity increases to power the big City expansion and service sector expansion. Public budgets would have restricted that.
5 When mobiles, then broadband arrived the private sector threw huge sums at these exciting new products which a nationalised BT would not have been able to do.
6.Competition brought many different phone and data service providers, often added a new cable connection to each home and greatly increased and modernised capacity.
July 29, 2025
BT under state ownership was ) like all public sector departments npow) collosally overstaffed and inefficient It could take 6 months to get a line/phone.
As a result of privitasation , staff numbers were reduced, choice was introduced and efficiency went up
July 29, 2025
BT was indeed one of the most successful privatisations. This was because it was relatively easy to do, the only obstacles being civil Serpents and politicians.
It came at the right time when the world was changing from the cumbersome post office relay to electronic switching.
Water on the other hand was never going to be successful especially after Bliar opened ownership up to the rogues of this world. I wonder who benefited financially from this.
July 29, 2025
BT privatisation was a great success. The changes in communications technology since the 1970’s has been astounding. I don’t know how long BT retained its senior management following privatisation, but clearly they didn’t have the R&D departments sufficiently geared up and producing the new-age wireless equipment at that time. BT’s recovery over the last decade shows a good catchup, now at about a 1/3rd market share. Compare and contrast with Water Industry. Business schools and Phd students should be writing theses on why one was a ‘success’ and one a ‘failure’.
July 29, 2025
Good morning.
One could look across the Atlantic at that time to see what private telecommunications companies were doing and the success they enjoyed. But the USA had the benefits of not being a bombed and financially crippled country. They also enjoyed a lower tax regime and many of our brightest minds went there. After WWII the USA was able to benefit from countries like the UK as the Empire was dismantled and markets previously closed to the USA were opened. All the time the UK went full on Communism. Much like today we see two worlds and realise that, once again, we are on the wrong side of things.
July 29, 2025
Yes it was a great success but because it worked for telecommunications doesn’t mean it would work for water. As I explained before, different factors apply: geography, waste water, more difficult measuring, wastage. Water is technically more difficult and therefore harder for people to understand. Add to this that water is rather more essential to individual life than telecommunications so many regard it as part of the essential services provided by the state to everyone regardless of poverty and riches.
July 29, 2025
I do not accept that water is technically more difficult at all rather technically easier in fact. But it needs a sensible framework and good honest regulators who look after customers – something the government seems unable to organise!
Good to see Trump kindly explaining to Starmer where he is going wrong basically U turns on everything Kier:-
Roughly he said:-
Renewables, Net Zero and rip off energy 4 times US prices is economic insanity and a Con Trick.
Your vast open door immigration will kill Europe.
Drill baby drill.
Stop attacking free speech.
Stop over taxing everyone they will leave and you strangle the economy.
Stop killing farming and small businesses with OTT IHT muggings
Sadiq Khan a nasty little man has wrecked London but You Two Tier, Free Gear, Rarely Here, Tax to Death Kier are doing the same to the UK.
July 29, 2025
So moving water around with the massive infrastructure needs/costs is the same as a sending a message via a copper/fibre cable through existing ducting?
As for the rest, same old, same old. Nothing new.
July 29, 2025
About half the UK population lives within 5 miles of a river or canal. Maybe doing things locally would be more efficient than pushing so much heavy water uphill.
Messages move uphill much more easily, even into the sky and outer space beyond,
July 29, 2025
Not the same problems obviously different but no more technically difficult.
July 30, 2025
If you compare balance sheets and revenues between the sectors you will find that telecoms is an asset intensive business, with assets that tend to depreciate rather faster and require more regular replacement. They include hardware (e.g. cell towers, exchange equipment etc.) and software and spectrum licences from Ofcom (perhaps its only useful function), not just ducts and cables. The latter have a shorter service life than pipes too. Some of the infrastructure is international with subsea cables spanning the globe and satellites for which they pay a share via leases of capacity.
I suspect that most families spend rather more on telecoms than on water, even if a chunk of that goes on upgrading their mobiles regularly (another fast depreciating asset financed by telecoms businesses usually, as few buy their phones outright and SIM free when new).
July 29, 2025
So Peter Kyle (Science minister) accused Nigel Farage of being on the side of sick paedophiles like Jimmy Savile because he is against the governments evil attack on free speech. Surely all right thinging people are against this bill. So is Kyle lying or just a damn fool?
In his own words he left school “without any usable qualifications”. By the age of 25, he was accepted on his third attempt to become a student at the University of Sussex, where he gained a degree in geography, international development, and environmental studies.
A great choice for “Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology” then Sir Kier. About as good as John (ERM fan) Major who failed nearly all his O levels was for Chancellor!
Reply Please give this commentary style a break. Many of us have learned many things since our formal education ended. Many bright people did not flourish academically. It is absurd to argue that only maths and science graduates from Oxbridge and Imperial are fit to be Ministers.
July 29, 2025
Not many people who did not get (at least decent A levels in maths or sciences) understand even basic concepts like probability, statistics, sampling, entropy, energy, power, grid intermittency, half lives…
They were not interested at school and this interest rarely changes much later in life. Ask them why for example bus passengers get wildly wrong estimates of average bus or train occupancy for example relative to their drivers or the difference and units for energy and power. Perhaps circa 5% of the population or so might give a sensible answers – perhaps slightly higher say 10% for MPs.
Reeves even thought her budget was one for growth and VAT on school fees would raise net funds! And she does have decent A levels!
Reply Ministers without relevant knowledge/ qualifications are meant to take advice from experts,but to exercise judgement and commonsense over decisions. Ministers also discover that experts often disagree, complicating the Ministers task.
July 29, 2025
Indeed the trouble is without any understanding or feel for science themselves they cannot really spot the difference between the good experts like the Barrington declaration ones or Prof. Graham Happer on Net Zero and the bad ones – usually the ones they choose to appoint. People like Neil Ferguson who seems to have got almost everything wrong or those on the MHRA who though multiple Covid experimental mNRA “vaccines” were just great for coercing into young people, pregnant women and those who had already had covid without any ill effect! Indeed politician have a huge talent for selecting exactly the wrong types!
Trump has however seen that Net Zero is a con and that the Covid Vaccines did more harm than good! He needs to set up some red team to debunk the vast lies and fraud. See the public health and truth video Dr John Campbell and the excellent Dr. Aseem Malhotra.
All PM since Thatcher have fallen for Net Zero and circa 95%+ of MPs too – either that or they are lying for personal interests, promotion or other such reasons. Has Sunak said sorry for his “unequivocally safe” Covid vaccine assurance to the house yet? Has he seen the Czech life birth stats? 1/3 down in the vaccinated and persisting too!
July 30, 2025
Charlie Mullins left school aged 15 with no qualifications. He established a highly successful business, and you can be sure he is arithmetically astute now, and has a reasonable degree of scientific understanding even with no degree.
July 29, 2025
How many MP’s have an Engineering degree ?
If I want my pipes fixed I call a plumber, not a Plasterer.
Politicians don’t seem to think like that. A bit like Morden management thinking. You don’t need to know about what you are responsible for or have experienced it. You just have to manage the people who know and make your decisions on what they tell you.
July 29, 2025
Miliband even appoint “experts” with classics degrees and half law degrees to advise him on energy, climate & engineering. But would a sensible engineer take such a job or even be offered it? Unless he just lied at the interview and it was just for personal gain or advancement!
July 30, 2025
Those who do well in politics tend to have the skills to survive in that environment, and not necessarily skills that are needed to run a business or a government department. That is a consequence of the way in which our system of government has evolved, with ever increasing power delegated to quangos and supra national bodies. The political skillset is likely to be further eroded by Lords reform. We need rather different reforms that place real responsibility back on politicians, and systems of selection that help support that. The local or carpet bagged person with a talent for supporting party leadership is not a good basis.
July 29, 2025
+250
July 29, 2025
I can remember when it was illegal even to wire up extensions round your house. You legally had to pay BT a large fee to do this simple task and wait a month or two for them to bother. They also cut your business or home phone lime off if you were even so much as a day late on payment. All equipment faxes, phones, sockets had to be BT authorised!
July 29, 2025
If you needed a new business line your business might have to wait months – holding up the whole business. I know that some ended up in desperation had to resort to paying “inducements” direct to workers to try to speed this process up. This in the days before mobiles were available!
July 29, 2025
I believe the reason for the authorisation was to protect their engineers on line equipment being electrocuted by customers faulty connections or equipment!
July 29, 2025
That was the ruse they used to protect their profitable monopoly.
July 29, 2025
Have we seen any such electrocutions since the rules changed I have not seen any reported? Landlines work at 48volts in general.
July 29, 2025
Yes, but they worried about a 240v mains connection.
July 30, 2025
Even that rarely kills people!
July 29, 2025
The facts of telecoms at the time were if all the copper wire to your home or office was in use, additional street cable had to be installed. Also living with one telephone in the hall was becoming unacceptable and extension phones becoming the fashion. Hence the problem only BT could do this for you. A telephone line is connected to a 50volt Battery in the Exchange. Ringing is 75volt AC and can make you jump if you are playing with the wiring at the time of an incoming call. We are talking about the time in question. Copper wire telephones as such are being phased out, the land line phone now directly connected to broadband service. So yes there was a safety issue for the general public. If you shorted out your telephone wiring you would lock up exchange equipment. Work for exchange staff to fix by disconnecting the line from the exchange equipment.
To Fix this BT introduced the phone socket in 1981. This was before privatisation in 1984 when 52% of BT shares were sold off. Unfortunately not too difficult to privatise but the Government ( us tax payers)lost overall control of the country’s telecoms infrastructure. A very profitable enterprise. The real bad news was it encouraged the sale of Gas, water and Electricity, technologies from the 19th century and very different to telecoms as we have found out to our cost in all ways.
July 29, 2025
Only the first socket in the house had to be installed by BT to replace the wired connection box to the phone line.
This was a special socket which enabled the quick disconnection of the house wiring of other sockets which could be installed by anyone with the know how. It also contained components so that the line could be tested to prove it a BT responsibility of the house owners dodgy wiring or faulty phone(s)
All good Engineering sense. Not political
July 29, 2025
That only came later!
July 29, 2025
Later than when? It takes time to develop engineering solutions to problems
July 30, 2025
British telephone sockets were introduced in their current plug and socket form on 19 November 1981 by British Telecom to allow subscribers to connect their own telephones. The connectors are specified in British Standard BS 6312.
July 29, 2025
BT was one of the privatisation successes. I recall my late father (one of the “Sid’s”) buying into it.
BT has a market cap of about £21 billion. The company retained it’s pre-privatisation pension fund (the BT Pension Scheme) which was valued at £40 billion in 2024, down from £41.6 billion in 2023. BT might best be described as a hedge fund that runs a telecoms business on the side.
As with other of Thatcher’s privatisations, the proceeds were immediately spent on government general expenditure and tax cuts. Instead if being retained in a British Sovereign Wealth fund, as many wanted
July 29, 2025
In spite of the sell-offs, the Conservative government of the day still couldn’t balance the books and had to borrow more. There was only one year of Thatcher that saw a surplus, apart from that it was borrow, borrow, borrow.
July 29, 2025
Thatcher did indeed fail to cut the government down sufficiently, buried us further into the EU & closed loads of good grammar schools but her largest error was appointing John Major as Chancellor and then letting him join the ERM with a view to joining the EURO. Still by far the best PM we have had in my lifetime so appalling were and are all the others. Especially Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Sunak and now the appalling Two Tier Kier. Doubtless Kier will ignore all of Trump’s wise advice yesterday.
July 29, 2025
Prior to privatisation, a large number of telephone boxes were heavily vandalised and left out of order for months. This put many folk at risk, as police, fire and ambulance services could not be summoned via those boxes. The relatively few homeowners who had phones had to rent heavy clunky apparatus from the General Post Office, with a long wait before service delivery.
July 29, 2025
I guess no one could have foreseen how telecoms would develop but as it did, we, even now, are only just recovering from the utter failure of government over many years through an insightful regulator with teeth, to force BT to stop abusing its monopoly position, weaponising its pension deficit.
Our lowly ranking in the country by country league table says it all.
July 29, 2025
Regulators usually build their empire and ignore customers more likely to conspire with the regulated company to rip off tax payers and bill payers in practice!
July 29, 2025
Sir John, the debate re Privatisation versus Public sector/state control is well argued and always results in private market based organisation being better than state committee’s decision making.
The real issue we must get into and find a solution to, is state regulator overreach with inhibiting rules that destroy enterprise and business.
When the utilities were privatised the state agents refused to give up their perceived right to control those utilities.
The unions and the established utility management committees came up with the regulator industry to enable them to maintain their grip on matters they believed were theirs by right.
The result of this semi detached business arrangement is evident for all to see. Massive debts have been built up with an almost certain bailout by taxpayers baked into the regulation protocols.
This travels under the slogan privatisation profit, but state fund the debt.
We have to find a route out of this ever expanding state control and thus state liability.
We have to find a way back to the ultimate power of markets to control who wins and who goes to the wall.
July 29, 2025
Sir John we all appreciate your view is that Privatisation will fix all Government problems. Most people will agree that competition motivates improvement. Your example of the bakery. Unfortunately this is not applied to Government or the Civil Service. Once elected, governments do what they like and the voter/taxpayer no longer in control for another five years.
You admit that the public would not like the sell off of Post Office Telecoms as it was then. Their instinct was correct at as now in foreign financial control. The point is that Politicians of all parties should follow and carry out the wishes of the voter/tax payer and not what they think is good or not good for the country.
Privatisation was more to do with reducing Union Power which was beginning to influence how the Country was run. For better or worse this is the job of Parliament.
But if the problem with Telecoms was investment why not borrow the required amount ? Clearly telecoms was going places and the Government (tax payer could make a profit) Hull Telecoms seem to run OK and was connected to the UK network.
The real issue is UK Government never invests in technology unless in war time and then we need American money.
My real objection to your view on nationalised Telecoms is it was somehow backward in technology this is far from the truth. Investment to deploy it to the general public yes and perhaps a touch of conservatism by Government yes.
There were electronic exchanges in Service before privatisation over 70 years ago in fact. Reed relay exchanges driven by electronics. I was working on a fully digital exchange (no moving parts) some 60 years ago.
Your points 2-6 are questionable as due solely to privatisation rather than natural development with the advance in technology and public demand.
The fact than you never mention is that BT was forced to let other companies use it’s network to get privatisation of the ground. The new companies were not putting down their own networks
July 29, 2025
Technology was certainly one factor, but employee attitudes and corporate culture was a still greater one. It sounds as if you are not old enough to remember the acute difficulty of getting anything done efficiently and speedily by the nationalised telephone service. Any employee made it very clear they were doing you a favour when they at last bothered to turn up to sort out even a minor domestic problem.
I can remember very well my then stockbroking firm moving its back office from the City to Chingford to save costs, which necessitated a major transfer of telephone systems over a weekend (including the installation of the third and fourth fax machines in the UK), and the lengthy negotiations with several levels of Post Office Telephones’ staff, that had to take place to make that possible. It took the transfer of quite a few cases of whisky before any certainty could be reached that the job would be completed in the time available, and this was for what by any standards was a major customer.
Commercial urgency was totally absent, and like all Nationalised institutions (it would be wrong to call them businesses), the ethos was clearly that the employees were more important than the customers.
July 29, 2025
Not sure if you are talking to sir john or john McD.
I am old enough to remember. I confess my experience was in London.
Telecoms in London was more customer focus than perhaps in the country as Chingford would have been in regard to telecoms plant and facilities available to support business. Did it have an automatic exchange ? Was your switchboard manual or automatic ? How much planning went into the move.
Did you have a project manager. Was the Post Office (BT) in London working in conjunction with BT in Chingford ? The time available is not the time it would take to transfer equipment from A to B.
Supplying crates of wisky to people working might not have been a good idea. Did you speak to the Telephone Manger for the Chingford Telephone area about the poor service ?
July 29, 2025
BT privatisation was a great success. System X electronic exchanges were introduced faster than would ever have happened in public ownership. Consequent labour savings were absorbed by a dynamic economy. Nobody, these days, would accept the wait for a new phone connection that was the norm from nationalised BT.
OFCOM was a facilitator.
How do you think OFCOM compares today, John?
July 29, 2025
just fined BT £18million
July 29, 2025
Sir John
Not suggesting you are wrong, but it isn’t real consumer led privatization, the choice is in the vast majority of cases BT or BT, Sky, EE, Vodafone, 3, Plusnet, and so on but they are still all BT still having the price of service dictated by BT, it has to rise every April by the amount set by BT. For most of us still a rotten overpriced service. Phone and basic, very basic, broadband here in Wokingham, BT charge £70 per month, they removed the landline and now want £54 per month. Yet the primary top of the range service has less through-put than even 5 years ago.
I could use a mobile phone, but this part of Wokingham has no signal. Just think the , Government has moved us to VOIP, still BT, but when things go down and the do the mobile signal requires a trip away from home.
I admit in some areas people enjoy good service, even in those areas BT capitulates and matches their prices, the rest of us just get to subsidies poor service
I can moan but I can only switch from one BT channel to another that isn’t what most of us comprehend to be a competitive consumer led market place.
The idea was/is right but as always when government is involved the implementation is rubbish. Wrong head, wrong thinking, privatization should not just mean Government off loading their problem children, it should be creating a consumer led market place. Never lose site of the indisputable fact it is the consumer that pays all the bills
Reply I have a service in Wokingham using newly installed cable that is nothing to do with BT. If you search for offers you will find plenty of choice over price/ service levels/ speed and capacity.
July 29, 2025
The worst thing Government/State organisation can do is getting involved in running things. Our legislators should be there to create frameworks to release potential. What tends to happen is they have to be the ‘boss’ the one in charge, is it ego the ‘look-at-me’ mentality that drives them to this conclusion? The end result is the inhibiting and suppressing advancement and achievement.
Also part of the flaw is to dictate a Metro West London one size fits all, everyone should do what and act in the image of their master, the Socialist Uniparty. We are all different have different outlooks and released from stupidity we can all contribute equally and fully in our own way.
Privatisation in all its forms has been stymied by those not wanting to let go, enjoying the comfort of monopoly.
July 29, 2025
@Reply – yes I am aware that others locally can get alternative supplies. I have search and keep searching. My end of Wokingham is stuck without choice as is the majority of the UK. Slow lane, or slow lane, at a silly price from a monopoly supplier. You will find if you are in an area that BT has to compete for customers it also competes with better pricing for a better service. Does that mean as always some one is forced into subsidising someone else?
Nearly 50 years on from things being changed for the taxpayer, but for the majority of consumers it has stayed the same. There should and their should have been an emphasis on creating a consumer driven market place. That would have meant UK Companies could compete on the World Stage instead of being those that bring up the rear before they fade away.
July 29, 2025
I take it your new cable was optical fibre installed by City Fibre ?
BT is also installing fibre to the home.
No other phone company will install another copper wire cable or coax cable to your house.
So the only new “cable” will be fibre.
But City Fibre does not provide the service although its their network.
This is just the same as Gas and Electricity. You can choose who to bill you based on there service offering and cost.
A bit artificial really. The problem comes when you have a service issue. You don’t speak to City fibre.
This is the big problem with interconnected multivendor networks if you have an end to end problem.
It’s not on my bit Guv.
PS. I have a copper cable, a coax cable and a fibre optic cable into the house.
having two water pipes, two gas pipes and two electricity cables might be a different thing altogether if that would be necessary to move to an alternative provider. Sorry billing company
July 29, 2025
And now we have GB news – great!
July 29, 2025
Telecoms is a completely different issue from Water.
Where would the country be without privatisation ? Even a Maxist Labour government would have been forced to privatise it – eventually.
As for the water industry. The present system does not work. We have been robbed blind by the companies taking huge sums out in dividends and failing to invest adequately. Then the owners sold off the businesses leaving the foolish new owners with massive and unserviceable debts. They are essentially bankrupt and should be put into liquidation, allowing new owners to buy them free of the debt burden, or at least with a manageable amount of investment.
Reply A company that is paying its bills and can still borrow money is not bankrupt. Dividends can only be paid out of profits, not by reducing capital.
July 29, 2025
To reply: Indeed on dividends – but can pay huge directors fees, high interest and fees often to partly related companies with related ownerships! Plus profits can often be realised by selling assets and perhaps leasing back.
July 29, 2025
Whilst privatisation of telecommunications was a success BT still held away over successive governments dragging its feet to full fibre the whole country to even just the local exchanges ! Compare its track record with Japan or South Korea etc. The former planned in the 1980s to do this by 2020. We are still 25 years behind them but at least better than the previous public owned entity.
July 29, 2025
212 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 28th July from France……and they all get sim-cards and the internet for free (to tell all their friends about the freebies in the UK)
July 29, 2025
What you did back then was a good move for sure. Thank you (seriously).
But capitalism is only interested in ripe fruit. Telecoms is ripe fruit. Water isn’t. Water just invites lazy, greedy capitalists (as opposed to hard-working ones who are busy in telecoms and elsewhere) who live off monopolies – no better than corrupt socialists. (Except the capitalists in water who believe in public service and not ripping people off).
Water is a problem. But same for all countries. Rather we should just do the best we can but not over-focus on.
July 30, 2025
In the Netherlands they have an interesting structure. The Rijkswaterstaat was established as long ago as 1798 to manage major water infrastructure (it also built the autoroutes in more recent times), and has been regarded with even more importance since the floods of 1953. Drinking water supply is handled by 10 regional companies (consolidated from 200+ after WW II), who contract out most of their operations to private companies ensuring competition. 352 municipalities are responsible for sewerage and drains, and 27 water boards handle water treatment. There is no regulator, but water companies have a self-organised competitive benchmarking system for KPIs that is open to public view. Water supply comes from rivers in the West, and surface water and aquifers in the East with treated water being recycled.
July 30, 2025
Worth a mention about drinking water quality, much better than here.
But water is everywhere. No need to pump up hill , pressure good. No tanks in the roof. NL a bit unique in regard to water supplies though compared to the rest of Europe.