Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
You can't bring the body that you work in into disrepute.
You are not an Officer of the Court so you can describe the KBD as you wish, unlike me, who would be up before the SRA or the SDT faster than you could blink if I did so on, say, GB News.
Neither are you a Member of Parliament, so you can describe any of its committees as you wish, in the Mail or anywhere else.
I'm sure, however, if you publicly described an internal disciplinary tribunal at your workplace (unless you own and run it) as being a Kangaroo Court you would face severe consequences.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
The regulators who've operated a revolving door of getting into bed with those they're regulating?
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
When/if Thames Water fails who or what, in your perfect scenario, delivers the relevant utility services. The administrators? The state?
Yes.
The administrators, or a new firm who buys them out, or a bondholder buyout, or as a last resort the Government could nationalise it for the £1 (after ensuring a haircut so no bailout) and then potentially re-privatise it later on.
The point is the principles of administration are well established. If they go out of business, then operations can continue, even if the bondholders and shareholders are wiped out.
There is no reason to bailout the bondholders and shareholders. If you privatise the gains, you privatise the losses. Its their losses, not the taxpayers losses.
What happens if the admins decide they can't run the water supply without trading at a loss, and tell HMG they are sacking everyone as of now, turning the taps off, and selling off the land and water to the highest bidder? Asking for a friend (but wondering if there is anything to stop that).
As I said, I see no reason why the Government can't at that point step in and buy the assets for £1 while that bondholders and shareholders are wiped out.
But considering the issue is not the business fundamentals, but that the company is too indebted, there's no particular reason why that needs to happen. It may happen if nobody wants to touch it, but if the bondholders take an appropriate haircut then the problem largely goes away.
The bondholders taking a haircut and owning the company as a result may be better for the bondholders than being completely wiped out. But either way the taxpayer must not in my eyes bail out either the bondholders or the shareholders. Their investment, their responsibility.
Which is logical, but may end with the government bailing out pension funds.
I suspect that is something they want to avoid if they can. If only because it will show with embarrassing clarity just how appalling our regulation of them has been.
So although I agree with you, I think a rescue of some sort is likely.
Bah, the pension funds are private, if they lose money then the pensioners they're funding should take the haircut as appropriate then instead. Again, they made the investment, they're responsible, why should the taxpayer bail them out?
Although even if the taxpayer does bail out pension funds not all the shareholders and bondholders are pension funds and even those who are, not all are British pension funds anyway.
If hypothetically Canadian pension fund has made a bad investment in a UK private firm and needs a bailout from the taxpayer as a result, shouldn't it be the Canadian taxpayer that bails them out, not the British taxpayer?
The headline tells most of the story which may be relevant to general election betting on Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas, Green, is retiring).
Misreporting by the Telegraph. The Greens were going to hike parking charges massively, the new Labour Council has put it on hold. Brighton's parking problem in summer is largely due to 10,000 car drivers thinking they have a right to one of the 500 spaces on the seafront. As for tourists abandoning Brighton - ha ha. The city is heaving.
I think that's the Telegraph feeding its trolls.
The parking charge changes in Brighton are interesting - the hikes on short term (eg 1hr) parking are far steeper than those on long-term parking (all day).
They are incentivising visitors in motor vehicles to stay for half a day or a full day, and disincentivising large numbers of polluting journeys, which sounds like a very good strategy.
The other side of that coin should be strategic long-term investment in high quality public transport. They need a workplace parking levy and a tram network, like Nottingham.
Unfortunately, I don't think a tram network in Brighton would be viable. However, the buses are excellent - frequency, routes, fares and usage are all very good.
Why have a tram when you have Volk's Electric Railway (est. 1883)?
Bring back the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway! A ground (sea?)-level elevated railway!
Almost certainly not him, unless it was a very well vetted crowd of supporters.
The MoD has today confirmed the reconnaissance aircraft shot down on Saturday as an Il-22M, one of no more than a dozen such aircraft, used as an airbourne command post and relay station. https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1674296106157502464
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
A long planning horizon doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something, of course. But Thames Water are pushing this to exclude building that water transfer system until after it’s built – because the moment we have the transfer system, any rationale for this multi-billion pound asset goes away.
So – fix leaks. Install water meters. Build the National Water Grid. If reservoirs are then still needed, build many small and dispersed ones, as close to the consumer as possible. But a super-reservoir that won’t give anything in our lifetimes other than figures on a balance sheet for a badly run company in loads of debt, won’t even provide the drought resilience we want, and will be used to force delay to all the rest of it… that’s not a good idea.
(3/3)
Spot on
Fix leaks as a priority,
However they also need to fix Ofwat, who somehow have missed that adding 10 million people to the population requires major investment in storage capacity and the infrastructure to support it.
It was/is EU policy under the Water Framework Directive to avoid building new water infrastructure. A fact that is politely ignored whilst some blame Thatcher and capitalism for everything.
There is merit to @Andy_Cooke's plan; I am just very wary that whilst water meters will definitely get put in, the other bit (network of smaller reservoirs to serve communities) wouldn't happen, because EU law on this is still being followed. The consumer would just be shafted and told to use less and less water (which in the UK is absurd).
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
You can't bring the body that you work in into disrepute.
You are not an Officer of the Court so you can describe the KBD as you wish, unlike me, who would be up before the SRA or the SDT faster than you could blink if I did so on, say, GB News.
Neither are you a Member of Parliament, so you can describe any of its committees as you wish, in the Mail or anywhere else.
I'm sure, however, if you publicly described an internal disciplinary tribunal at your workplace (unless you own and run it) as being a Kangaroo Court you would face severe consequences.
MPs do not work for Parliament, they work for their constituents. It is up to their constituents to decide if they're doing a good job or not.
A majority of MPs vetting and kicking out a minority of MPs who criticise them is not the hallmark of a democracy, it is what happens in countries like Russia, Iran or Chinese Hong Kong.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
You can't bring the body that you work in into disrepute.
You are not an Officer of the Court so you can describe the KBD as you wish, unlike me, who would be up before the SRA or the SDT faster than you could blink if I did so on, say, GB News.
Neither are you a Member of Parliament, so you can describe any of its committees as you wish, in the Mail or anywhere else.
I'm sure, however, if you publicly described an internal disciplinary tribunal at your workplace (unless you own and run it) as being a Kangaroo Court you would face severe consequences.
MPs do not work for Parliament, they work for their constituents. It is up to their constituents to decide if they're doing a good job or not.
A majority of MPs vetting and kicking out a minority of MPs who criticise them is not the hallmark of a democracy, it is what happens in countries like Russia, Iran or Chinese Hong Kong.
Agreed. I really can't believe the committee finding MPs 'in contempt' of it. I mean wtf?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
The veteran City chairman Sir Adrian Montague has been lined up to chair the troubled Thames Water, The Times can reveal.
His appointment could be announced within days. He will replace Ian Marchant, who was appointed chairman almost a year ago.
Montague, a solicitor turned banker and a former chairman of the FTSE 100 insurance giant Aviva, has been the government’s go-to person in a crisis before. He served as a bridge between the City and Whitehall in the late 1990s after being appointed chief executive of the Treasury’s Private Finance Initiative Taskforce, which pioneered the use of private capital and companies in the provision of public services.
Good old job for the boys candidate shoehorned in. They don't half reward their chums as they rotate around all these plum posts , making an arse of it before moving on to their next well paid shambles. Merry go round of filling their pockets.
The headline tells most of the story which may be relevant to general election betting on Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas, Green, is retiring).
Misreporting by the Telegraph. The Greens were going to hike parking charges massively, the new Labour Council has put it on hold. Brighton's parking problem in summer is largely due to 10,000 car drivers thinking they have a right to one of the 500 spaces on the seafront. As for tourists abandoning Brighton - ha ha. The city is heaving.
I think that's the Telegraph feeding its trolls.
The parking charge changes in Brighton are interesting - the hikes on short term (eg 1hr) parking are far steeper than those on long-term parking (all day).
They are incentivising visitors in motor vehicles to stay for half a day or a full day, and disincentivising large numbers of polluting journeys, which sounds like a very good strategy.
The other side of that coin should be strategic long-term investment in high quality public transport. They need a workplace parking levy and a tram network, like Nottingham.
Unfortunately, I don't think a tram network in Brighton would be viable. However, the buses are excellent - frequency, routes, fares and usage are all very good.
Why have a tram when you have Volk's Electric Railway (est. 1883)?
Bring back the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway! A ground (sea?)-level elevated railway!
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
That's official Tory party policy, out of the EU, industrial strife and inflation. Shame the music is shite.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
Hopefully back to the SDP's plans of 1982, and before the Falklands War, in terms of economic plans.
And back to 1976 socially, in terms of the highest ever year of recorded British happiness, and much higher overall social cohesion and equality ( except, though and notably, racism ).
The headline tells most of the story which may be relevant to general election betting on Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas, Green, is retiring).
Misreporting by the Telegraph. The Greens were going to hike parking charges massively, the new Labour Council has put it on hold. Brighton's parking problem in summer is largely due to 10,000 car drivers thinking they have a right to one of the 500 spaces on the seafront. As for tourists abandoning Brighton - ha ha. The city is heaving.
I think that's the Telegraph feeding its trolls.
The parking charge changes in Brighton are interesting - the hikes on short term (eg 1hr) parking are far steeper than those on long-term parking (all day).
They are incentivising visitors in motor vehicles to stay for half a day or a full day, and disincentivising large numbers of polluting journeys, which sounds like a very good strategy.
The other side of that coin should be strategic long-term investment in high quality public transport. They need a workplace parking levy and a tram network, like Nottingham.
Unfortunately, I don't think a tram network in Brighton would be viable. However, the buses are excellent - frequency, routes, fares and usage are all very good.
One bus being named after former Dr Who producer JNT
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
There was nothing wrong in principle with privatisation. But to do so with a monopoly, and not mandate and iron fisted regulator with a mandate to ensure continued investment, was obviously idiotic. The water companies didn't command a particularly high price at the time because such regulation was half expected, and the requirement for a lot of money tp be spent not exactly a secret either. Subsequent governments could, and should have acted.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
The Tories have to go, for their incompetence and corruption, but nothing about Labour’s record in charge in Wal
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
But other countries applied long-term solutions.
Look at several of our neighbours.
Which one of neighbours has no significant medium- and long-term problems? They may not be the same problems, but it's hard to argue that any large country does not have significant issues. Or, in fact, that any large country has never had any significant medium- and long-term issues.
But we have worse ones.
Compare an average of all our neighbours on economic, social and investment metrics, to us. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany Belgium and France.
In general, I'd say that Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark are better governed than we are. Belgium is certainly worse governed, and France probably so. I'd have rated Germany's governance better than ours, in the past, but given how dirty the German banking system has proved, and given the way that so many politicians were owned by Putin, or desperate to suck up to Putin, I would not say so now.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
As well as being an inherently misconceived idea the privatised water companies have been appallingly regulated. No wonder they took advantage of it.
Been looking into the still state owned Scottish Water, which seems to be well run, providing water services at a lower cost, while investing more. People of England and Wales read this and weep:
If even the National takes a rather different view (although naturally they reflexively say independence would magically solve it) I'm not sure that's correct.
I would have said - entirely non-expert so I could easily be wrong - the key issue is we have an essentially Victorian water network serving more than twice the population it was designed for (and to much higher standards than the Victorians demanded) while the density of building makes renewal work very difficult.
This is compounded by the eagerness of companies to show profits rather than carry out the work stopping leaks or improving the sewer system, and further compounded by the poor quality of many managers and regulators who are appointed because of who they know not what they know.
I don't think that would be solved by renationalisation. Ultimately, it will be solved by accepting we need to prioritise renewing our utility network and putting actual engineers in charge to make it happen. That would not be cheap (exhibit A - I K Brunel).
One of the major problems with Scottish Water is their reluctance to extend their network to facilitate new developments, whether residential or commercial. It is proving a serious block to new investment and the obtaining of planning permission.
Which was the classic issue of other nationalised businesses. They saw new customers as a pain & a problem.
Still a lot better than the shitshow in England though.
How does that compare for the issue DavidL identified, as a matter of interest?
they don't have three figure billions of debts, no idea how much infrastructure they have done but you can be sure they are pumping shit into rivers and sea , data will be well hidden in some SNP bunker somewhere.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
I wonder if what is spooking the government is the thought of having to rescue the USS? It's already in big trouble and losses on Thames Water might even tip it over.
That's another example of regulatory failure, right there. They should have been forcing it to have a more diverse portfolio and a better contributions system long before they did (and that goes back into at least the Blair years, so it's not a partisan thing).
Although they could actually use it as a lever to either lifeboat it or merge it with TPS.
USS is actually far less bankrupt than normal at present (at least, that's what our VC says and he's pretty blunt and straight talking, or seems to be). Due to the recent changes in interest rates, investment returns etc, I think (if I had any idea how pensions work, I'd be making good money as a pensions investor, I guess).
What is (was?) 20% of Thames Water. in 2021 when the investment was upped. USS had £82.2bn of total investments, 45% in UK, apparently.
Annuity rates have shot up this year, and that may well make more schemes solvent.
There are two sides to interest rate rises.
What your debate shows is we need better ways to model pension funds rather than have valuations lurch from triumph to disaster and back again at small interest rate changes. We can look back to the 1990s with companies taking pension holidays because DB funds were overvalued to the same funds being closed because they cannot cover future (guesstimated) liabilities. Not to mention annuities or tax raids.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
That too.
Though someone, I think @ydoethur , recently mentioned one university which actually positively said "**** this research funding compettition stuff for a game of soldiers" and concentrates on teaching. I forget which - somewhere in the Midlands. Wolverhampton?
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I know Mr Corbyn wanted Scotland's water to be renationalised, in a major speech as leader up here in Scotland. But water has always been nationalised, unless of course you mean the amalgamation of the various local authority schemes into Scottish Water. The expression "council juice" means tap water ...
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
A long planning horizon doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something, of course. But Thames Water are pushing this to exclude building that water transfer system until after it’s built – because the moment we have the transfer system, any rationale for this multi-billion pound asset goes away.
So – fix leaks. Install water meters. Build the National Water Grid. If reservoirs are then still needed, build many small and dispersed ones, as close to the consumer as possible. But a super-reservoir that won’t give anything in our lifetimes other than figures on a balance sheet for a badly run company in loads of debt, won’t even provide the drought resilience we want, and will be used to force delay to all the rest of it… that’s not a good idea.
(3/3)
Spot on
Fix leaks as a priority,
However they also need to fix Ofwat, who somehow have missed that adding 10 million people to the population requires major investment in storage capacity and the infrastructure to support it.
It was/is EU policy under the Water Framework Directive to avoid building new water infrastructure. A fact that is politely ignored whilst some blame Thatcher and capitalism for everything.
There is merit to @Andy_Cooke's plan; I am just very wary that whilst water meters will definitely get put in, the other bit (network of smaller reservoirs to serve communities) wouldn't happen, because EU law on this is still being followed. The consumer would just be shafted and told to use less and less water (which in the UK is absurd).
Thank you - but Havant Thicket Reservoir is well down the path and the contract for it has already been let, I understand. It's on the smaller side, and should be open this decade.
On Susan Trump running for the Tories in London - as others are suggesting she is basically all the party have left. Nutjobs spewing lunacy in the mistaken belief that everyone who is right-thinking agrees with them.
I had expected Sunak to clean the house a little - a firm directional change, tack to the centre to win back those critical votes whilst throwing enough populist bones to the red wall Brexiteers to keep them Tory.
Instead he's managing to pander to all the extremes enough to drive away more voters whilst simultaneously not pandering to the extremes enough to keep them on board. We're going to see a choice of conservative parties on the ballot (unless they manage to pull SDPKIPREFCLAIM together as the "Britannia Party" or some other proto-fascist outfit and actually campaign on the policies that right-thinking people want.
The "respectable" hard right used to be a minority faction both in votes and in politics. Despite Brexit making it briefly feel bigger than it is, the "sink the migrants / support our veterans" mob are still only a small vote. Yet currently has 3 parties vying for its vote plus the lunatic wing of the Tories resolutely dragging them in the same direction, that pro-gollywog vote being precious. Madness piled on madness.
Isn't it just a case of Boris/Brexit hollowing out the sane Tories which makes it very difficult to recover to a more central position and broad church.
QTWAIN.
Boris at the last election had a broad church central position which attracted one of the highest shares of the vote in England recorded in the past half century. Higher even than Tony Blair achieved.
No "centrists" got kicked out, the only people who lost the whip were a few diehard zealots who voted against the whip on a confidence motion on Europe which is not a "centrist" position whatsoever.
I disagree, although not with the specific logic of your two points.
Your 2nd point is valid, but it is this group (and associates) that made up the centrists in the Tory party and most have gone. The reality is (and this is a generalisation) the left of the Tory party were pro remain and the right pro leave. As a consequence the right now has more sway.
I would disagree that Boris won on broad church central position. In my opinion, and one held by many is that Boris won for two reasons - Get Brexit done and Corbyn. That is not a broad church centrist position, although an excellent campaigning position at the time.
I find it difficult to argue that a lot of Tories from the left have not been driven out and that the two main causes are Boris and Brexit. They have and these are the two main reasons.
Sorry but that's a rewriting of history by those who loved to consider being pro-Europe to be the "centrist" position.
In what possible way was Dominic Grieve a part of the Tory "left"?
He didn't even vote for same sex marriage. Boris Johnson supported same sex marriage, along with David Cameron, but Dominic Grieve did not and yet Grieve is this great centrist? Why?
The idea he was this great liberal/left Tory is only because people who embrace pro-EU love to claim that.
Bart, You seem to have missed 5 critical words in my post which are: 'and this is a generalisation'
Are you really suggesting that in general the following statement is not true:
The left of the Tory party was more pro Remain and the right more pro Leave
There is no criticism in that statement. Just a statement of the bleeding obvious.
I don't think we need to resort to lists or exceptions to conclude that do we?
No, I don't accept that generalisation.
Theresa "Go Home" May was pro-Remain, and I would never once consider her to be on the left of the Party.
I believe from memory a majority of Tory MPs in 2016 were pro-Remain, but they overwhelmingly accepted the democratic will of the country and moved on. The die hard zealots who voted against leaving the EU on a confidence motion in 2019 and lost the whip as a result were not particularly left wing, and not representative of Remain backing MPs.
OK I accept that. I mean I accept we aren't going to agree on whether Boris and Brexit has alienated the more left wing element of the Tory party or not and that we are disagreeing on that opinion and not the logical conclusion of those opinions. I accept your conclusions based upon your opinion, although I think your opinion is wrong.
And of course that is the nature of politics. I tend to strongly agree with 75% of your opinions and disagree strongly with 25% of your opinions. I do find it interesting that I never have a 'meh' view on anything you say. It is either a very strong thumbs up or I think it is rubbish . I notice @Richard_Tyndall liked one of your posts to me. I have a very similar reaction to Richard, actually even more so. In his case it is more like 99% strongly agree, but on Brexit nope.
Finally on a specific - Theresa May. I agree not on the left, but again I was talking generalisations not specifics. I would also however not consider May to be on the right of the party either, but more middle of the road Tory. She is/was however authoritarian as a Home Secretary and very stubborn so I can understand from your (and my) far more libertarian view point unacceptable, but for a traditional Tory like @HYUFD probably an acceptable middle of the road Tory.
Yes, the one thing I like about this site is that although many of us have strong opinions, they are rarely party-partisan and are more our actual opinions. So we can agree on some things, but disagree on others.
Its a bit like a Venn Diagram. There is a lot of overlap between say yourself, @Richard_Tyndall as you named and myself. I find myself agreeing a lot with Richard (and vice-versa I think too) on many subjects, even if we passionately and vehemently disagree on the subject of planning. Ditto you and I, even if we disagree on Europe.
Interestingly I was pro-Remain until 2016. I've said this before, but it was in part discussions with Richard (along with @Casino_Royale and Boris and Gove) who helped convince me to switch from Remain to Leave.
Well I have really gone off @Richard_Tyndall now if he helped convert you.
I appreciate your (and Richard's) views on Europe are more niche and thought out.
I note @Sandpit liked your reply. He is another who I often agree with, yet I think our politics do not align.
As as I have mentioned it twice, this is another reason I like the like button. It is not only so I can show my appreciation for a post that I have nothing to add to, but I like to see who has liked my and others posts and I am often pleasantly surprised by who it is.
And our disagreement on Europe pales into insignificance compared to our disagreement on PR vs FPTP (no I'm not going there).
This forum is a generally polite place, where people can agree to disagree on a wide range of subjects, and where I think many of us have changed their minds on various things over the years, as a result of the discussions here. Few posters are hyper-partisan, constantly drumming a party line, although the disagreements do get a little more heated at times of high political drama or events.
I try to like posts that make me think, even if I don’t agree with everything, and try to avoid liking posts that are negative or personal.
I think I agree with @BartholomewRoberts on most things, except gender stuff in schools and Emma Raducanu. That last one cost me £100, but I now feel vindicated in my 2021 view that she was more of a one-hit wonder than Rick Astley.
I agree with all of that. I like to have a pleasant discussion and some fun. Sadly I do get dragged into some rows (just the other day in fact). I try to bury the hatchet afterwards if I do. I do get frustrated however with people who are just negative or just simply unpleasant and seem to be looking for a row.
I used to have some humdingers with @HYUFD . That hasn't happened for a very long time. I think both of us have changed the way we react to one another and it is noticeable we are more likely to like each others post as much as disagree and when we do disagree it is civilised.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
That too.
Though someone, I think @ydoethur , recently mentioned one university which actually positively said "**** this research funding compettition stuff for a game of soldiers" and concentrates on teaching. I forget which - somewhere in the Midlands. Wolverhampton?
One positive aspect of tuition fees going through the roof is that any university can afford world class research in any field it likes, even if not all of them (or even many of them) at the same time. Wolverhampton, for instance, is (or used to be) highly regarded for its first world war history iirc.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
TBF to the Republic, it isn't so long since water was free iirc.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Curious how that is possible considering Scottish water was never privatised, so never nationalised, in the first place?
As I note below, techjnically water supply began as local government usually - for instance Loch Katrine was a Glasgow Corporation scheme. So it did get nationalised eventually!
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Curious how that is possible considering Scottish water was never privatised, so never nationalised, in the first place?
As I note below, techjnically water supply began as local government usually - for instance Loch Katrine was a Glasgow Corporation scheme. So it did get nationalised eventually!
Technically true I suppose, but stretches the meaning of the phrase beyond how we're using it to refer to a reorganisation from one branch of government to another branch of government as "nationalisation".
I see from the last thread that Sadiq Khan is being accused of doing nothing as well as of introducing an unprecedented assault on the rights of drivers of really dirty old cars. It really can't be both. Within the narrow confines of the Mayor of London job, and the deliberately mean financial constraints imposed by central government, Khan is doing a good job. He's certainly out-performing his utterly useless and corrupt predecessor. He's not thrown money away on a pointless garden bridge to nowhere, he's not thrown money at a too expensive to run retro bus design, and unlike Johnson who cancelled a crucial Thames river crossing in the east he is building one. Oh, and he's overseen the biggest expansion in council housing since the 1970s as well as bravely taking on vested interests to improve London's fatally bad air quality. And is pushing forward with the Bakerloo Line extension. And deals with threats to his life from various extremists that mean he needs 24hr police protection while being the leading Muslim politician in Europe. He gets my vote.
Absolutely. He's not very flashy, but I don't care about that. Incidentlaly, I have a 2015 Fiesta and it's ULEZ-compliant - how ancient does a car have to be to be a problem? I wo der if voters realise they eill mostly be unaffect.
Does whether it's petrol or diesel matter?
Also: the majority of older cars are driven by people who cannot afford newer ones. It's alright people who are reasonably well-off saying their vehicles meet it; it will badly affect many others who are less well-off.
I don't believe my VW Passat (2012) meets the requirement.
Having said all that; it's probably a good idea. But you cannot ignore its negative consequences when talking about the positives.
It’s something that can be useful in dense central London, with a lot of traffic and good public transport - but totally inappropriate in a more rural area with low-density housing and non-existant or unreliable public transport, that describes a lof of the area between the M25 and N/S circular roads.
In particular, including Heathrow just inside the new zone, comes across as being set up to catch out large numbers of occasional visitors.
Nonexistent public transport in outer London? WTAF are you talking about?
I assume you sir have never visited outer London.
Pre-2016 diesel, and pre-2006 petrol cars are the approximate boundaries of non-compliance I believe.
As a different view, there is no London Borough where less than 80% of cars are ULEZ compliant.
Susan Hall is chasing a small and declining minority amongst one of the smallest vehicle owning fractions of population in the country, and trying to scaremonger the rest.
That is why the Tories will be eviscerated.
If the non-compliant vehicles are such a small number, and likely to fall out of ownership naturally with time, why is putting in place the vast surveillance infrastructure to police the Ulez expansion needed at all?
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
The seeds of those problems were apparent even at the time.
Much discussion at the time of privatisation about the crumbling nature of a lot of the victorian sewer infrastructure, for example.
And certainly the idea that councils would lose most of the proceeds of housing sales was widely condemned at the time.
Indeed.
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
Curious how that is possible considering Scottish water was never privatised, so never nationalised, in the first place?
As I note below, techjnically water supply began as local government usually - for instance Loch Katrine was a Glasgow Corporation scheme. So it did get nationalised eventually!
Technically true I suppose, but stretches the meaning of the phrase beyond how we're using it to refer to a reorganisation from one branch of government to another branch of government as "nationalisation".
Quite, but it's not entirely trivial. My small town had its own water supply as a burgh in its own right, locally organised and funded by the rates.
Another privatisation disaster. What a moronic model.
Take it into temporary public ownership. Leave the debt behind so that it is then profitable without the interest payments. Stop dividend payments. Appoint a strong REMCO and sort out top management remuneration. Ensure that there is only sufficient profit and cash flow to finance investment in improved infrastructure which may enable a reduction in prices. "No dividends ever" reduces the value of the company and potentially enables an eventual cheap conversion to permanent public ownership.
That would be my plan.
How many SKS fans does it take to argue for renationalizing a water company.
None.
SKS says now is not the time or we can't afford it and they sit silent, no longer argue for what they believe in, and swim in shit put up with burst pipes and massive internal dividends and applaud SKS
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
In UK traditional universities, you earn your salary by teaching, but get promotion almost exclusively based on the quality of research. This always seemed to me "suboptimal". Lecturers who are excellent HE teachers but who struggle to keep up with the intensity of research during the PhD/Post-Doc years (when the teaching and admin load was much lower) should get the same careeer opportunities as good researchers who begrudgingly teach 2 courses and 1 tutorial groups each year do.
It is true that some researchers are very bad teachers, but I also know many researchers who are very good teachers as well. Those who are excellent at research but know that they are bad at teaching do at least have the opt out of getting grant money to "by themselves out of teaching" for much of the time.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Im currently trying to sort out a query with HMRC Self Assessment. They have closed up shop until the 4 September. I know who to blame but they are not interested,
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
The privatisation setup was similar to the old [edit: pre-1947] companies - hardly any competition at all in the trains unless for certain journeys eg Edinburgh-London where you could go on two different routes. Even today there is only limited choice, though obviously LNER is a much better bet than TransPennine for say Edinburgh to Durham.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Actually though he is right about if there are unlimited numbers there should be an unlimited fee.
He's just wrong to say there should be a cap on fees because 92 unis are automatically inferior. If they are, which they are not in all cases in all faculties, the market would cap their fees anyway.
Either we have a market in higher education, or we don't. What we have right now is the worst of all worlds - a market interference based not on a realistic assessment of quality but on snobbery.
is fairly narrow, leaving lots of grounds for appeal from both sides. The majority basically say that the government is in the clear except that Rwanda is not shown to be a safe third country. All the other grounds fail. So the govt could go ahead if it gets all its ducks in a row.
The SC view will be interesting, and could go anywhere from doing a Lady Hale and blowing the government out of the water to saying the policy is fine, and Rwanda is a great place to be sent.
If I had to guess the SC will support the CA majority and add to it some of the other grounds the CA have rejected. Here's hoping.
BTW it must be close to a record for the number (and quality) of barristers you and I were simultaneously funding for a single case. Good thing we taxpayers have deep pockets.
Nadine in more trouble, she could get suspended for 10 days or more so a by election may still occur, probably in late November early December. I did not expect this and have been puzzled why the Lib Dems are still sending workers to the seat, instead of diverting them to Selby and Somerton. Just shows another day, another dollar!!!
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
The privatisation setup was similar to the old companies - hardly any competition at all in the trains unless for certain journeys eg Edinburgh-London where you could go on two different routes. Even today there is only limited choice, though obviously LNER is a much better bet than TransPennine for say Edinburgh to Durham.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
There's limited choice between train firms (though there is sometimes choice), but there's a great deal of choice versus eg cars and privatisation has worked to see train firms attract passengers out of cars. You give credit to BR, but really the numbers speak to themselves regarding BR versus private passenger numbers.
My last trip up to Edinburgh I took the train rather than drive. I considered either, but was able to get a very cheap train ticket [from Virgin IIRC which probably dates when I travelled] which cost less than I would have spent on fuel so that made the decision easier for me.
The idea there's only competition between train and train is entirely fallacious, the competition is between trains, cars and other transportation.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
Hopefully back to the SDP's plans of 1982, and before the Falklands War, in terms of economic plans.
And back to 1976 socially, in terms of the highest ever year of recorded British happiness, and much higher overall social cohesion and equality ( except, though and notably, racism ).
And much more regular strikes, inefficent nationalised industries, high inflation and the brightest and best emigrating over very high tax
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
The privatisation setup was similar to the old [edit: pre-1947] companies - hardly any competition at all in the trains unless for certain journeys eg Edinburgh-London where you could go on two different routes. Even today there is only limited choice, though obviously LNER is a much better bet than TransPennine for say Edinburgh to Durham.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
Yes and no. BR was very efficient (yes, really), but it was managing a reducing network. 'Rationalisation' was the buzzword through the 1970s and 1980s, with everything possible being done to reduce running costs, even if it hurt current and future traffic. Examples are dualling of four-track lines, and singling of double-track ones. BR in the 1980s had some excellent managers, partially because the government let them get on with it as long as it was pretty much cost-neutral or the cost-benefits were clear (e.g. electrification schemes).
Privatisation changed the mindset of the management, from one of managed decline to one of expansion. At least for passengers; freight has suffered due to the decline in trainload coal and the DfT's dead hand.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
Hopefully back to the SDP's plans of 1982, and before the Falklands War, in terms of economic plans.
And back to 1976 socially, in terms of the highest ever year of recorded British happiness, and much higher overall social cohesion and equality ( except, though and notably, racism ).
And much more regular strikes, inefficent nationalised industries, high inflation and the brightest and best emigrating over very high tax
Oh, that sounds just like today. Only the nationalised industries are privatised but even more crap anyway.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
Indeed. A right to say it and a right to expect the consequences.
Free speech is only free speech if you don't face "consequences" from those in authority you are criticising, so long as you're not breaking any laws in doing so.
If I say that the PM is a dictator, then he puts me in prison as a consequence for saying that, then that shows I am correct and is not free speech.
Consequences from the electorate, or others, is entirely reasonable. Consequences from those in authority whom you are criticising, not so much.
No one gets to criticise (at least without a solid basis for the criticism) an organisation/company of which they are part wthout facing potential consequences.
You have free speech and can say 'kangaroo court' and (other than perhaps, theoretically, libel?) there's no consequence for you as you're not an MP. But if your employer sacks someone and you say, publicly, 'kangaroo court' without some evidence, do you think your employer would take no action?
No one is going to prison over saying this. But free speech doens't mean the right to say whatever you like and be shielded from all consequences.
As much as it galls me, going to bat for Dorries and JRM here. As MPs they should be allowed to make silly and misleading comments such as they did, without official sanction. Would think differently if they were ministers or members of the committee, so it is a fine line.
As an aside, the Havant Thicket size of reservoir is a pretty good one - at 8.9 billion litres, it's about Farmoor size (a sixteenth of the Abingdon super-reservoir), and it's expected to be built in just six more years. Far more straightfoward to build and project manage and thus far quicker.
Any bigger than that is where you start running into the issues of size and length of project, so that should be about the ceiling. It'd be so much simpler to build sixteen of those than one Abingdon super-reservoir, as you could do them simultaneously. But you absolutely have to work on the water distribution issue first, so you have: a - Something to put into them b - The ability to get (most of) the water out of them and to the consumer
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
I notice you are not arguing the same with water though. With Water you have the choice of the private company who supplies water in your area, excruciatingly expensive (in comparison to tap water) bottled water, or drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike to the next region to fill up a water can. Sounds like a private mopoly to me.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
Hopefully back to the SDP's plans of 1982, and before the Falklands War, in terms of economic plans.
And back to 1976 socially, in terms of the highest ever year of recorded British happiness, and much higher overall social cohesion and equality ( except, though and notably, racism ).
And much more regular strikes, inefficent nationalised industries, high inflation and the brightest and best emigrating over very high tax
Oh, that sounds just like today. Only the nationalised industries are privatised but even more crap anyway.
Inflation is still lower, strikes lower, trains cleaner and more efficient and the top tax rate 45% not 90%
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
But other countries applied long-term solutions.
Look at several of our neighbours.
I know. I didn't say they were good nor long-term - IMHO they were neither. But they were solutions and they did have electoral appeal, which is the best a politician can hope for.
Politics is not a way of doing good things, it is a way of doing things that have electoral support. So the question for this political generation is: what is the set of policies that can obtain electoral support and what principles underpin them? The first will be answered by electoral success/failure, the second will be retconned from the first.
Of course it would be easier if we could work out those principles now - I have thoughts - but in practice I think it'll take time IRL.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
I notice you are not arguing the same with water though. With Water you have the choice of the private company who supplies water in your area, excruciatingly expensive (in comparison to tap water) bottled water, or drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike to the next region to fill up a water can. Sounds like a private mopoly to me.
Yes, water is much more arguably a natural monopoly.
I still think privatisation has worked and is a good idea, but for different reasons.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
Indeed. A right to say it and a right to expect the consequences.
Free speech is only free speech if you don't face "consequences" from those in authority you are criticising, so long as you're not breaking any laws in doing so.
If I say that the PM is a dictator, then he puts me in prison as a consequence for saying that, then that shows I am correct and is not free speech.
Consequences from the electorate, or others, is entirely reasonable. Consequences from those in authority whom you are criticising, not so much.
No one gets to criticise (at least without a solid basis for the criticism) an organisation/company of which they are part wthout facing potential consequences.
You have free speech and can say 'kangaroo court' and (other than perhaps, theoretically, libel?) there's no consequence for you as you're not an MP. But if your employer sacks someone and you say, publicly, 'kangaroo court' without some evidence, do you think your employer would take no action?
No one is going to prison over saying this. But free speech doens't mean the right to say whatever you like and be shielded from all consequences.
As much as it galls me, going to bat for Dorries and JRM here. As MPs they should be allowed to make silly and misleading comments such as they did, without official sanction. Would think differently if they were ministers or members of the committee, so it is a fine line.
There are silly comments and then there is lying to parliament. There is a difference.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
The privatisation setup was similar to the old companies - hardly any competition at all in the trains unless for certain journeys eg Edinburgh-London where you could go on two different routes. Even today there is only limited choice, though obviously LNER is a much better bet than TransPennine for say Edinburgh to Durham.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
There's limited choice between train firms (though there is sometimes choice), but there's a great deal of choice versus eg cars and privatisation has worked to see train firms attract passengers out of cars. You give credit to BR, but really the numbers speak to themselves regarding BR versus private passenger numbers.
My last trip up to Edinburgh I took the train rather than drive. I considered either, but was able to get a very cheap train ticket [from Virgin IIRC which probably dates when I travelled] which cost less than I would have spent on fuel so that made the decision easier for me.
The idea there's only competition between train and train is entirely fallacious, the competition is between trains, cars and other transportation.
I did comment on between-modal competition. The Edin-London improvements brought in by BR really hit the Edin/Glasgow-London airlines, unless one wanted to go to Heathrow anyway to change to some international flight.
And note I was talking about the initial privatisation setuip, which was predicated precisely on competition between train and train [edit: the modern equivalents of the Great Western Railway and of the London, Midland and Scottish of pre-1947, etc.] In other words, the entire railway privatisation weas based on an almost completely fallacious notion. Would have ben much more sensible to privatise BR as a whole.
Cricket highlights (of home England tests and World Cup games) are considered crown jewels and must be on free to air TV. Live cricket not covered, very little live sport is, its basically World Cup, European Cup, Wimbledon, Olympics, Paralympics, 4 cup finals and 2 horse races.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
That's not as true as it was. There's so much competition for talent that that sort of criteria is being quietly binned
As an aside, the Havant Thicket size of reservoir is a pretty good one - at 8.9 billion litres, it's about Farmoor size (a sixteenth of the Abingdon super-reservoir), and it's expected to be built in just six more years. Far more straightfoward to build and project manage and thus far quicker.
Any bigger than that is where you start running into the issues of size and length of project, so that should be about the ceiling. It'd be so much simpler to build sixteen of those than one Abingdon super-reservoir, as you could do them simultaneously. But you absolutely have to work on the water distribution issue first, so you have: a - Something to put into them b - The ability to get (most of) the water out of them and to the consumer
Carsington reservoir (in the Peak District) is an interesting one. Small streams run into it, but nowhere near enough to fill it. Instead, a 10km-tunnel/aqueduct takes water to/from the Derwent.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
Hopefully back to the SDP's plans of 1982, and before the Falklands War, in terms of economic plans.
And back to 1976 socially, in terms of the highest ever year of recorded British happiness, and much higher overall social cohesion and equality ( except, though and notably, racism ).
I made a modest contribution to the aura of national happiness by quitting my post as a junior civil servant to become a full-time hippy squatter, which was much more in keeping with my tastes and abilities. This was followed in short order by the longest, hottest summer on record, so my new career choice appeared to receive immediate divine approval. The spirit of the age was captured by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) in her psychological thriller A Fatal Inversion. Recommended to anyone who either missed it or would care to relive it.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
Not really. Think "drunkard's walk". History does not repeat exactly but it does rhyme.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
Indeed. A right to say it and a right to expect the consequences.
Free speech is only free speech if you don't face "consequences" from those in authority you are criticising, so long as you're not breaking any laws in doing so.
If I say that the PM is a dictator, then he puts me in prison as a consequence for saying that, then that shows I am correct and is not free speech.
Consequences from the electorate, or others, is entirely reasonable. Consequences from those in authority whom you are criticising, not so much.
No one gets to criticise (at least without a solid basis for the criticism) an organisation/company of which they are part wthout facing potential consequences.
You have free speech and can say 'kangaroo court' and (other than perhaps, theoretically, libel?) there's no consequence for you as you're not an MP. But if your employer sacks someone and you say, publicly, 'kangaroo court' without some evidence, do you think your employer would take no action?
No one is going to prison over saying this. But free speech doens't mean the right to say whatever you like and be shielded from all consequences.
As much as it galls me, going to bat for Dorries and JRM here. As MPs they should be allowed to make silly and misleading comments such as they did, without official sanction. Would think differently if they were ministers or members of the committee, so it is a fine line.
Not convinced. What MPs say in public is all relevant to their duties - private conversations are different.
Parallel: A barrister asserts in court that the judge is a lying criminal and that he has been paid to find against him. Disciplinary and criminal offence.
Barrister does the same during a case on a public forum - TV, radio, Twitter etc. Disciplinary offence.
It is time parliament and MPs acted in such a way as to remind the rest of us that they constitute the highest court there is in the UK under the crown. Contempt of parliament is like contempt of court. But on the whole they have stopped behaving in ways which earn that respect.
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
The privatisation setup was similar to the old [edit: pre-1947] companies - hardly any competition at all in the trains unless for certain journeys eg Edinburgh-London where you could go on two different routes. Even today there is only limited choice, though obviously LNER is a much better bet than TransPennine for say Edinburgh to Durham.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
Yes and no. BR was very efficient (yes, really), but it was managing a reducing network. 'Rationalisation' was the buzzword through the 1970s and 1980s, with everything possible being done to reduce running costs, even if it hurt current and future traffic. Examples are dualling of four-track lines, and singling of double-track ones. BR in the 1980s had some excellent managers, partially because the government let them get on with it as long as it was pretty much cost-neutral or the cost-benefits were clear (e.g. electrification schemes).
Privatisation changed the mindset of the management, from one of managed decline to one of expansion. At least for passengers; freight has suffered due to the decline in trainload coal and the DfT's dead hand.
Not just rationalisation, also ruthless cost cutting, including skimping on maintenance. Wasn't it Bob Reid Mk II who referred to 'the crumbling edge of quality?'
The truth is most of the trouble with infrastructure that scuppered Railtrack was deferred from years of state complacency and light usage. That wasn't helped by poor management and an inefficient system but for example, Hatfield and Potters' Bar would have happened anyway.
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
Indeed. A right to say it and a right to expect the consequences.
Free speech is only free speech if you don't face "consequences" from those in authority you are criticising, so long as you're not breaking any laws in doing so.
If I say that the PM is a dictator, then he puts me in prison as a consequence for saying that, then that shows I am correct and is not free speech.
Consequences from the electorate, or others, is entirely reasonable. Consequences from those in authority whom you are criticising, not so much.
No one gets to criticise (at least without a solid basis for the criticism) an organisation/company of which they are part wthout facing potential consequences.
You have free speech and can say 'kangaroo court' and (other than perhaps, theoretically, libel?) there's no consequence for you as you're not an MP. But if your employer sacks someone and you say, publicly, 'kangaroo court' without some evidence, do you think your employer would take no action?
No one is going to prison over saying this. But free speech doens't mean the right to say whatever you like and be shielded from all consequences.
As much as it galls me, going to bat for Dorries and JRM here. As MPs they should be allowed to make silly and misleading comments such as they did, without official sanction. Would think differently if they were ministers or members of the committee, so it is a fine line.
There are silly comments and then there is lying to parliament. There is a difference.
In a similar vein I do also think MPs should be able to accuse each other of lying without sanction.
The complaints seem more silly opinion about the integrity of the court than clear lies. Lots of complaints about kangaroo courts and witch hunts, and a few about intimidation of Tory MPs and their future careers.
Is using language like kangaroo court/witch hunt/banana republic actually lying? Not sure how it provably is, it is just silly unfounded and hyperbolic language.
I don't think the committe either needs the level of protection it is using against its detractors, or that it is even helpful to their cause. Just let the few Boris lovers look like silly sycophants without making martyrs of them and giving them a free speech battle.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
No, and that might be a problem if, as the American tech firms discovered, it turns out the best future lawyers and accountants did not come from where they had been hiring from. A problem for the City firms and for the country as a whole.
As an aside, almost all accountants and most lawyers have not done vocational degrees anyway so what the hiring firms are effectively doing is subcontracting their hiring decisions to university admissions tutors. It is not totally absurd because at least the candidate has got through one admissions process but it's not wholly rational either.
France today is seeing the same results as England did in 2011: what happens when you open up immigration to the world's poor and unskilled. Over time, families should naturally progress and become more educated and successful. This happens with positive family life - two parents that support each other, integrate with society, provide their children with love and structure, and invest in their education. When this happens at scale, society progresses.
If you add to this people who are already skilled and educated, who come from cultures of abiding by the law, who have strong family structures and who want to be part of our country and culture, you will accelerate this process.
If you add to this people who are unskilled, who have unstable family structures, who come from cultures that frequently ignore laws or courtesy, or who have cultural resentments against Britain/the West, you will slow this, or even go backwards. You will end up with a large population of marginal employment, semi-criminal youth that respond to grievance with violence. We can decry the violence all we want, and that is fair, but our politicians brought this upon us.
Cricket highlights (of home England tests and World Cup games) are considered crown jewels and must be on free to air TV. Live cricket not covered, very little live sport is, its basically World Cup, European Cup, Wimbledon, Olympics, Paralympics, 4 cup finals and 2 horse races.
You can currently subscribe to Now TV at an introductory £21 a month, watch all the ashes, and then cancel.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
What's your beef with Bath university ?
Nothing, it is a pre 1992 university
But not Russell Group. Edit: not that that matters, except in your world.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
What's your beef with Bath university ?
A top ten in the UK, and just risen in the world-wide rankings too. We have no medical school (for reasons I could go into but can't be arsed) and are heavily science and engineering focussed. We outperform most Russel Group unis in general, but are a large-small uni (unlike the larger places such as Manchester, Nottingham etc.
BTW its probably my area, but I don't recognise the model of PhD students doing the teaching. I've not encountered this in my career, other than as demonstrators in labs, that are supervised by academics. I assume its more common in non-science disciplines?
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
What's your beef with Bath university ?
A top ten in the UK, and just risen in the world-wide rankings too. We have no medical school (for reasons I could go into but can't be arsed) and are heavily science and engineering focussed. We outperform most Russel Group unis in general, but are a large-small uni (unlike the larger places such as Manchester, Nottingham etc.
BTW its probably my area, but I don't recognise the model of PhD students doing the teaching. I've not encountered this in my career, other than as demonstrators in labs, that are supervised by academics. I assume its more common in non-science disciplines?
Good. Members of the House should be treated in the same way as Officers of the Court. If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" because I didn't like how it had treated one of my clients I could expect to be suspended from practice, at least.
If I called the Kings Bench Division a "kangaroo court" that would be free speech.
Whether you like what someone has to say or not, people should have a right to say it, that especially entails to MPs.
Indeed. A right to say it and a right to expect the consequences.
Free speech is only free speech if you don't face "consequences" from those in authority you are criticising, so long as you're not breaking any laws in doing so.
If I say that the PM is a dictator, then he puts me in prison as a consequence for saying that, then that shows I am correct and is not free speech.
Consequences from the electorate, or others, is entirely reasonable. Consequences from those in authority whom you are criticising, not so much.
No one gets to criticise (at least without a solid basis for the criticism) an organisation/company of which they are part wthout facing potential consequences.
You have free speech and can say 'kangaroo court' and (other than perhaps, theoretically, libel?) there's no consequence for you as you're not an MP. But if your employer sacks someone and you say, publicly, 'kangaroo court' without some evidence, do you think your employer would take no action?
No one is going to prison over saying this. But free speech doens't mean the right to say whatever you like and be shielded from all consequences.
As much as it galls me, going to bat for Dorries and JRM here. As MPs they should be allowed to make silly and misleading comments such as they did, without official sanction. Would think differently if they were ministers or members of the committee, so it is a fine line.
Not convinced. What MPs say in public is all relevant to their duties - private conversations are different.
Parallel: A barrister asserts in court that the judge is a lying criminal and that he has been paid to find against him. Disciplinary and criminal offence.
Barrister does the same during a case on a public forum - TV, radio, Twitter etc. Disciplinary offence.
It is time parliament and MPs acted in such a way as to remind the rest of us that they constitute the highest court there is in the UK under the crown. Contempt of parliament is like contempt of court. But on the whole they have stopped behaving in ways which earn that respect.
It is time voters started to elect such MPs rather than charlatans and party lackeys!
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
The privatisation setup was similar to the old [edit: pre-1947] companies - hardly any competition at all in the trains unless for certain journeys eg Edinburgh-London where you could go on two different routes. Even today there is only limited choice, though obviously LNER is a much better bet than TransPennine for say Edinburgh to Durham.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
Yes and no. BR was very efficient (yes, really), but it was managing a reducing network. 'Rationalisation' was the buzzword through the 1970s and 1980s, with everything possible being done to reduce running costs, even if it hurt current and future traffic. Examples are dualling of four-track lines, and singling of double-track ones. BR in the 1980s had some excellent managers, partially because the government let them get on with it as long as it was pretty much cost-neutral or the cost-benefits were clear (e.g. electrification schemes).
Privatisation changed the mindset of the management, from one of managed decline to one of expansion. At least for passengers; freight has suffered due to the decline in trainload coal and the DfT's dead hand.
Not just rationalisation, also ruthless cost cutting, including skimping on maintenance. Wasn't it Bob Reid Mk II who referred to 'the crumbling edge of quality?'
The truth is most of the trouble with infrastructure that scuppered Railtrack was deferred from years of state complacency and light usage. That wasn't helped by poor management and an inefficient system but for example, Hatfield and Potters' Bar would have happened anyway.
A good point: just look at all the fatal accidents that occurred whilst the railways were nationalised in the 1970s and 1980s.
But be careful about trying to make a political point about that, as some people soon get onto a "But deaths under nationalisation don't matter!" line...:(
Nadine in more trouble, she could get suspended for 10 days or more so a by election may still occur, probably in late November early December. I did not expect this and have been puzzled why the Lib Dems are still sending workers to the seat, instead of diverting them to Selby and Somerton. Just shows another day, another dollar!!!
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
True, although some of the newer universities have many more students per academic so arguably they get less pro rata exposure to the academics. Most departments will have a mix of poor, average and excellent teachers.
What is sad is that the more research focussed places do often fail to appreciate teaching ability as part of the promotion criteria, or at least research income and outputs is far more favoured. Yet UG students, who make up the main rationale of the university, would generally prefer excellent teraching.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
It would appear that Mad Nads will be found in contempt of parliament later today. That may change the dynamic. Also in need of change is that various people proffered gongs in the Boris! Dishonours list will also be found in contempt of parliament - at least Mogg and Clarke off top of my head.
This one is pretty simple - anyone who committed contempt of parliament should have their stupid title cancelled. There can be no reward for that kind of behaviour, especially if (when?) the committee proposes sanctions.
Good morning
You are correct but does anyone really think anything will change
I see Sunak has guaranteed the triple lock and will include it in the conservative manifesto and predictably Starmer has affirmed the same commitment to the triple lock
We have another 18 months of this and frankly I doubt anything much will change with PM Starmer .
The country is in decline. Public services run down or absent. Visible dirt and decay and litter because councils can't afford to employ enough staff and people have stopped caring. Vast public debt and record peacetime taxes to pay for these non-services.
Fixing that, and giving people a brighter future, is not something where a new government can wave a magic wand. So you are right that change in the substance will be slow.
What will change rapidly is the grift an corruption will stop. No more billions in public money stolen from us and handed to Tory donors and patrons. No more gross incompetence and uncaring sneering when people across the social demographic complain about bills / fuel / mortgages / food etc. No more illegal policies written in crayon aimed at people who don't see a problem with golliwogs.
I like you will not vote for Starmer's Labour. But I will rejoice when the Tories get smashed as surely now is their fate.
Hard to disagree to be fair though gross incompetence is not the sole preserve of the conservative party as time will tell
It's not, but even a reversion to normal levels of competence and graft will be a meaningful improvement on the status quo.
That's what's so infuriating about the Conservatives right now.
This is not just a tory issue its a how the country is run issue. The same bunch of people are in power and bar a bit of spin follow the same policies. Macquarie who are getting criticised for Thames debt bought the company in 2006 under Blair. Blair Brown Cameron Boris none of them have have actually done that much to reform the state and address its fundamental weaknesses.
As I observed yesterday.
Our most intractable problems are at least a couple of decades in the making. We need to realise that it will take as long to sort them out, and stop pretending it can be done in an electoral cycle or two. But it needs to be started on now.
The disaster in the water industry is yet another example of the negative consequences of super low interest rates imposed by the BoE for more than a decade after the GFC. Basically, the model was that they could borrow at super low rates, invest a chunk of that money with the statutory right of a higher rate of return on it through water bills and take the surplus off as dividends. The whole model is predicated on interest rates being below the rate of return. How could anyone ever think this was going to be the case indefinitely?
Why would the people who have walked off with wheelbarrows full of cash care about the long term?
Of course they don’t. It has been a fabulously successful business for them. But the regulators…sheez.
The regulators who've operated a revolving door of getting into bed with those they're regulating?
Seems like they've had a successful 'career' too.
Regulation doesn't work as well as the market does. If the market means that Thames Water dies and bondholders face a £14bn haircut, then they ought to be more careful in what they invest in next time. That's the market working, not failing.
Treating any firm as "too big to fail" destroys the market principles.
When/if Thames Water fails who or what, in your perfect scenario, delivers the relevant utility services. The administrators? The state?
Yes.
The administrators, or a new firm who buys them out, or a bondholder buyout, or as a last resort the Government could nationalise it for the £1 (after ensuring a haircut so no bailout) and then potentially re-privatise it later on.
The point is the principles of administration are well established. If they go out of business, then operations can continue, even if the bondholders and shareholders are wiped out.
There is no reason to bailout the bondholders and shareholders. If you privatise the gains, you privatise the losses. Its their losses, not the taxpayers losses.
What happens if the admins decide they can't run the water supply without trading at a loss, and tell HMG they are sacking everyone as of now, turning the taps off, and selling off the land and water to the highest bidder? Asking for a friend (but wondering if there is anything to stop that).
As I said, I see no reason why the Government can't at that point step in and buy the assets for £1 while that bondholders and shareholders are wiped out.
But considering the issue is not the business fundamentals, but that the company is too indebted, there's no particular reason why that needs to happen. It may happen if nobody wants to touch it, but if the bondholders take an appropriate haircut then the problem largely goes away.
The bondholders taking a haircut and owning the company as a result may be better for the bondholders than being completely wiped out. But either way the taxpayer must not in my eyes bail out either the bondholders or the shareholders. Their investment, their responsibility.
Which is logical, but may end with the government bailing out pension funds.
I suspect that is something they want to avoid if they can. If only because it will show with embarrassing clarity just how appalling our regulation of them has been.
So although I agree with you, I think a rescue of some sort is likely.
Bah, the pension funds are private, if they lose money then the pensioners they're funding should take the haircut as appropriate then instead. Again, they made the investment, they're responsible, why should the taxpayer bail them out?
Although even if the taxpayer does bail out pension funds not all the shareholders and bondholders are pension funds and even those who are, not all are British pension funds anyway.
If hypothetically Canadian pension fund has made a bad investment in a UK private firm and needs a bailout from the taxpayer as a result, shouldn't it be the Canadian taxpayer that bails them out, not the British taxpayer?
For most pension funds invested in Thames Water it will be a small fraction of their overall portfolio. Diversification means losing money on one bad investment doesn't put your overall strategy at risk.
Any funds who had a concentrated bet on a single company such that it has a significant impact on them overall have failed at risk management and so have themselves to blame.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Northern Ireland's water industry was never privatised and still works off government funding. Its miles behind Britain on capacity and environmental and nobody is investing in it. The Republic isnt much better.
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
Trains aren't a natural monopoly since in the field of transportation you have multiple options you can take. You can drive, get a taxi, get a train or tram if the latter exist, a bus or flight, ride a bike. Really you're only limited by your imagination.
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
The privatisation setup was similar to the old [edit: pre-1947] companies - hardly any competition at all in the trains unless for certain journeys eg Edinburgh-London where you could go on two different routes. Even today there is only limited choice, though obviously LNER is a much better bet than TransPennine for say Edinburgh to Durham.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
Yes and no. BR was very efficient (yes, really), but it was managing a reducing network. 'Rationalisation' was the buzzword through the 1970s and 1980s, with everything possible being done to reduce running costs, even if it hurt current and future traffic. Examples are dualling of four-track lines, and singling of double-track ones. BR in the 1980s had some excellent managers, partially because the government let them get on with it as long as it was pretty much cost-neutral or the cost-benefits were clear (e.g. electrification schemes).
Privatisation changed the mindset of the management, from one of managed decline to one of expansion. At least for passengers; freight has suffered due to the decline in trainload coal and the DfT's dead hand.
Not just rationalisation, also ruthless cost cutting, including skimping on maintenance. Wasn't it Bob Reid Mk II who referred to 'the crumbling edge of quality?'
The truth is most of the trouble with infrastructure that scuppered Railtrack was deferred from years of state complacency and light usage. That wasn't helped by poor management and an inefficient system but for example, Hatfield and Potters' Bar would have happened anyway.
A good point: just look at all the fatal accidents that occurred whilst the railways were nationalised in the 1970s and 1980s.
But be careful about trying to make a political point about that, as some people soon get onto a "But deaths under nationalisation don't matter!" line...:(
OTOH that ignores the secular trend towards improved safety - planes and cars too do it but they haven't been privatised in the relevant period (apart from BA in 1987, sort of). So some of the credit goes to that.
Hatfield was very specifically linked to breakup of the system and the use of contractors by the privatised railway.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
Perhaps the degrees or the universities are not so good as they think?
Or maybe, in some cases, they're just not taught critical thinking and in-depth analysis so can't deal with anything new or outside a very narrow area? That, incidentally, is one thing I have kept coming across with Oxford history graduates, although not by any means all of them.
Thatcher is lauded on here as having transformed Britain for the better after the inertia of the "Post-War Concensus", creating a privatised model to envy the world. Yet some of her keystones like the selling off of public sector housing and the privatisation of utilities are birds that seem to be coming home to roost forty years on.
She applied solutions to the 1980s that enabled Britain to work in that era. But that era has gone and those solutions are now problems and we have to fix them. We don't know how. Boris knew vaguely, but Boris self-destructed. Power will now alternate between Cons and Lab or somebody else until somebody works it out and then they will be in power for a long while
So back to the 1970s then
Hopefully back to the SDP's plans of 1982, and before the Falklands War, in terms of economic plans.
And back to 1976 socially, in terms of the highest ever year of recorded British happiness, and much higher overall social cohesion and equality ( except, though and notably, racism ).
I made a modest contribution to the aura of national happiness by quitting my post as a junior civil servant to become a full-time hippy squatter, which was much more in keeping with my tastes and abilities. This was followed in short order by the longest, hottest summer on record, so my new career choice appeared to receive immediate divine approval. The spirit of the age was captured by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) in her psychological thriller A Fatal Inversion. Recommended to anyone who either missed it or would care to relive it.
A wonderful story there.
I'm now somehow imagining Neil, from the Young Ones, throwing away his Monty Python's civil servant bowler hat, and stretching out by a lake near Glastonbury in the midsummer's sun.
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
That's not as true as it was. There's so much competition for talent that that sort of criteria is being quietly binned
No it isn't, the vast majority of City firm employees and trainees come from established older universities, not 1992 or later ones.
Even if they may have a few more non white or female or LGBT employees
Fears are growing for four more water firms as Thames Water teeters on the brink of collapse with contingency plans reportedly being made to nationalise swathes of Britain's water industry.
Ministers have looked to allay fears around the impact of Thames Water potentially going under as the regulator vowed to work with the sector to deal with its debt levels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said there were 'contingency plans in place for any eventuality' as Thames Water battles to finance the £14 billion of debt on its books following interest rate rises.
It comes as several reports suggested concerns about Thames Water's finances had now broadened to other firms in the industry.
The financial health of up to four other English water companies is being monitored, according to reports.
These include Southern Water which serves 2.6million people and Yorkshire Water with 5million customers, it is understood.
The Times cited a Whitehall source as saying: 'A lot of these companies are highly geared and struggling.
'There is a worst case scenario where other companies end up in the same place as Thames Water.'
It's not particularly easy to get a good picture of the extent of the problems as the most recent published Ofwat financial stability report is for 2021/22, before the interest rate hit.
Presumably the water utilities are not the only zombie companies loaded with debt that they will struggle to finance at higher interest rates.
This zombie government too, for that matter.
There’s going to be an awful lot of companies and organisations who are over-leveraged or over-indebted, and are going to be screwed by rising interest rates. The only real surprise, is that it’s taken so long for them to come into view.
Yes, this very much includes the £2trn national debt, as governments of all colours havn’t run a budget surplus for more than two decades. If government ends up paying say 5% average on that £2trn, that’s £100bn a year in debt interest!
As for Thames Water, if they can’t refinance their debts for a sensible amount, then the bondholders will have no choice but to enforce a bankruptcy and take over management themselves, wiping out the existing shareholders.
Let’s not forget also, that many of these shareholders are pension funds, who saw utilities as a stable source of dividend payments over the years, and didn’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to the management of the companies.
I'd put Universities in that too. I think we're going to see a Post-92 hit the wall in the short-medium term.
Although TBF that is as much as anything due to regulatory failure.
Post 92s are struggling because Russell Group unis are essentially taking every undergraduate going, due to the mad idea that they are the best place to do an undergraduate degree because they are better at research. Nobody disputes the latter as a general point (although some research focused unis, e.g. Bath, are outside) but that doesn't mean they're any good at teaching. A lot of them are not, pushing it on to their PhD students while the lecturers write books.
In a sane world, it would have been the other way around - post 92 unis have no cap, and could therefore charge whatever fee they wanted. Russell Group fees could be regulated for undergraduates and therefore they had a cap on numbers.
And that would have meant people going to post 92 unis for undergrad, which could actually have worked quite well given their focus on teaching, and the ablest would have done postgrad at Russell Group.
But - Gove was in hock to the VCs and didn't understand they were out to line their own pockets.
Oxbridge and Russell Group unis should have no cap on fees, certainly for STEM subjects and medicine and economics and MBAs and law which will earn the highest in the workplace on average post grauation, even if a cap on numbers.
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
Given how crap Russell Groiup and Oxbridge can be in some subjects, and how good the redbricks and post-polys in some, how on earth do you think that helps improve the quality of educastion and teaching? Your proposed solution serves only to cement poshness and elitism still further.
Given the (big generalisation, but I think to some extent true) newer universities tend to employ people who can teach while the RG tend to employ people who can bring in research funding, it's quite possible that the better education, in general, at UG level is to be had in the newer unis. Some researchers are very bad teachers.
If you want to make a really big generalisation, you could argue that what the Russell Group are actually selling to undergraduates isn’t the education itself, but the scarcity and the networking opportunities that come with admission.
It's not even that - it's the fact that coming from a Russell Group university you may have slightly more chance of getting on a Graduate scheme as many companies are biased against post 92 unis...
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
That's right about employment. Employers' bias towards Oxbridge, Russell Group and the hiring manager's alma mater needs to be addressed for all our sakes.
Magic circle law firms and top banks and accountancy firms are not going to higher someone with C grades at A Level, average gcses and a 2.1 or even a 1st in law from a 92 university over someone with A* grades at A Level and top gcses and a 2.1 in law from Oxbridge or the Russell group
Although it's not a guarantee of quality. Why, some people with excellent a-levels and a Russell Group degree can't even spell 'hire.'
What puzzles me is how it is that some people with good degrees from fine universities can turn out to be utterly stupid.
My own view: we are all utterly stupid *in some things*. The key thing is for us to realise this, and not to expose that stupidity to everyone else. A task I frequently fail to achieve...
Yes, that makes sense. I'm confident I know what I'm talking about, when it comes to law or military history.
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.
Comments
You are not an Officer of the Court so you can describe the KBD as you wish, unlike me, who would be up before the SRA or the SDT faster than you could blink if I did so on, say, GB News.
Neither are you a Member of Parliament, so you can describe any of its committees as you wish, in the Mail or anywhere else.
I'm sure, however, if you publicly described an internal disciplinary tribunal at your workplace (unless you own and run it) as being a Kangaroo Court you would face severe consequences.
Although even if the taxpayer does bail out pension funds not all the shareholders and bondholders are pension funds and even those who are, not all are British pension funds anyway.
If hypothetically Canadian pension fund has made a bad investment in a UK private firm and needs a bailout from the taxpayer as a result, shouldn't it be the Canadian taxpayer that bails them out, not the British taxpayer?
The MoD has today confirmed the reconnaissance aircraft shot down on Saturday as an Il-22M, one of no more than a dozen such aircraft, used as an airbourne command post and relay station.
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1674296106157502464
Post 92s should have a cap on fees, ideally to half the amount they currently charge given the debts their graduates end up with but yes could be allowed unlimited students, at least in theory if they can run cheap courses with lots of demand
I remember all the nonsense that only the private sector could fix this ageing infrastructure. Nationalised industries = old. And then water, and other utility investment fell off a cliff in the mid-'nineties.
There is merit to @Andy_Cooke's plan; I am just very wary that whilst water meters will definitely get put in, the other bit (network of smaller reservoirs to serve communities) wouldn't happen, because EU law on this is still being followed. The consumer would just be shafted and told to use less and less water (which in the UK is absurd).
A majority of MPs vetting and kicking out a minority of MPs who criticise them is not the hallmark of a democracy, it is what happens in countries like Russia, Iran or Chinese Hong Kong.
And back to 1976 socially, in terms of the highest ever year of recorded British happiness, and much higher overall social cohesion and equality ( except, though and notably, racism ).
But to do so with a monopoly, and not mandate and iron fisted regulator with a mandate to ensure continued investment, was obviously idiotic.
The water companies didn't command a particularly high price at the time because such regulation was half expected, and the requirement for a lot of money tp be spent not exactly a secret either.
Subsequent governments could, and should have acted.
Though someone, I think @ydoethur , recently mentioned one university which actually positively said "**** this research funding compettition stuff for a game of soldiers" and concentrates on teaching. I forget which - somewhere in the Midlands. Wolverhampton?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-57737142
Got to say that in the case of English at Leeds Uni it's remarkable how similar next years course is to the one Beckett was teaching 2 years ago...
And Beckett has permanent English lecturers, At Uni they all seem to be on temporary contracts...
https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1674334125090648066
I used to have some humdingers with @HYUFD . That hasn't happened for a very long time. I think both of us have changed the way we react to one another and it is noticeable we are more likely to like each others post as much as disagree and when we do disagree it is civilised.
We'll probably have a huge row now!
I don't know much about NI, but the issue about nationalisation of utilities is that if voters think they are badly run (overpricing, sewage, power cuts, whatever) and attach great importance to it, they can vote out the Government responsible. Nationalisation is by no means a guarantee of good service, but you know whom to blame for poor service and can influence choices of priority by the usual means (writing to MPs etc.). If I want to influence how Thames Water is run, I wouldn't know where to start.
The counter-argument that competition works wonders is clearly true for something like breakfast cereals where competition provides real choice (who needs an official British Rice Krispies?) but nearly always false for natural monopolies (utilities, trains).
That is part of the reason why train passenger numbers changed dramatically post-privatisation.
https://www.london.gov.uk/new-report-reveals-transformational-impact-expanded-ultra-low-emission-zone-so-far
It is true that some researchers are very bad teachers, but I also know many researchers who are very good teachers as well. Those who are excellent at research but know that they are bad at teaching do at least have the opt out of getting grant money to "by themselves out of teaching" for much of the time.
BR were makign excellent progress in competition from other modes eg car, plane vs new trains Edin-London when privatisation happened, and a lot of the supposed credit for privatisation was actually inherited from BR.s work.
He's just wrong to say there should be a cap on fees because 92 unis are automatically inferior. If they are, which they are not in all cases in all faculties, the market would cap their fees anyway.
Either we have a market in higher education, or we don't. What we have right now is the worst of all worlds - a market interference based not on a realistic assessment of quality but on snobbery.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AAA-v-SSHD-judgment-290623.pdf
is fairly narrow, leaving lots of grounds for appeal from both sides. The majority basically say that the government is in the clear except that Rwanda is not shown to be a safe third country. All the other grounds fail. So the govt could go ahead if it gets all its ducks in a row.
The SC view will be interesting, and could go anywhere from doing a Lady Hale and blowing the government out of the water to saying the policy is fine, and Rwanda is a great place to be sent.
If I had to guess the SC will support the CA majority and add to it some of the other grounds the CA have rejected. Here's hoping.
BTW it must be close to a record for the number (and quality) of barristers you and I were simultaneously funding for a single case. Good thing we taxpayers have deep pockets.
My last trip up to Edinburgh I took the train rather than drive. I considered either, but was able to get a very cheap train ticket [from Virgin IIRC which probably dates when I travelled] which cost less than I would have spent on fuel so that made the decision easier for me.
The idea there's only competition between train and train is entirely fallacious, the competition is between trains, cars and other transportation.
Privatisation changed the mindset of the management, from one of managed decline to one of expansion. At least for passengers; freight has suffered due to the decline in trainload coal and the DfT's dead hand.
Any bigger than that is where you start running into the issues of size and length of project, so that should be about the ceiling. It'd be so much simpler to build sixteen of those than one Abingdon super-reservoir, as you could do them simultaneously. But you absolutely have to work on the water distribution issue first, so you have:
a - Something to put into them
b - The ability to get (most of) the water out of them and to the consumer
Politics is not a way of doing good things, it is a way of doing things that have electoral support. So the question for this political generation is: what is the set of policies that can obtain electoral support and what principles underpin them? The first will be answered by electoral success/failure, the second will be retconned from the first.
Of course it would be easier if we could work out those principles now - I have thoughts - but in practice I think it'll take time IRL.
I still think privatisation has worked and is a good idea, but for different reasons.
And note I was talking about the initial privatisation setuip, which was predicated precisely on competition between train and train [edit: the modern equivalents of the Great Western Railway and of the London, Midland and Scottish of pre-1947, etc.] In other words, the entire railway privatisation weas based on an almost completely fallacious notion. Would have ben much more sensible to privatise BR as a whole.
< Joke >
It also partially collapsed during construction. The reasons for the failure are fascinating if you're sad enough to be interested in geotechnology:
http://st-reunited.org.uk/History/Carsington/slides/Carsington_landslip.html
http://st-reunited.org.uk/History/Carsington/slides/Section_of_Carsington_Dam_Failure.html
Parallel: A barrister asserts in court that the judge is a lying criminal and that he has been paid to find against him. Disciplinary and criminal offence.
Barrister does the same during a case on a public forum - TV, radio, Twitter etc. Disciplinary offence.
It is time parliament and MPs acted in such a way as to remind the rest of us that they constitute the highest court there is in the UK under the crown. Contempt of parliament is like contempt of court. But on the whole they have stopped behaving in ways which earn that respect.
The truth is most of the trouble with infrastructure that scuppered Railtrack was deferred from years of state complacency and light usage. That wasn't helped by poor management and an inefficient system but for example, Hatfield and Potters' Bar would have happened anyway.
The complaints seem more silly opinion about the integrity of the court than clear lies. Lots of complaints about kangaroo courts and witch hunts, and a few about intimidation of Tory MPs and their future careers.
Is using language like kangaroo court/witch hunt/banana republic actually lying? Not sure how it provably is, it is just silly unfounded and hyperbolic language.
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/40679/documents/198237/default/
I don't think the committe either needs the level of protection it is using against its detractors, or that it is even helpful to their cause. Just let the few Boris lovers look like silly sycophants without making martyrs of them and giving them a free speech battle.
As an aside, almost all accountants and most lawyers have not done vocational degrees anyway so what the hiring firms are effectively doing is subcontracting their hiring decisions to university admissions tutors. It is not totally absurd because at least the candidate has got through one admissions process but it's not wholly rational either.
If you add to this people who are already skilled and educated, who come from cultures of abiding by the law, who have strong family structures and who want to be part of our country and culture, you will accelerate this process.
If you add to this people who are unskilled, who have unstable family structures, who come from cultures that frequently ignore laws or courtesy, or who have cultural resentments against Britain/the West, you will slow this, or even go backwards. You will end up with a large population of marginal employment, semi-criminal youth that respond to grievance with violence. We can decry the violence all we want, and that is fair, but our politicians brought this upon us.
BTW its probably my area, but I don't recognise the model of PhD students doing the teaching. I've not encountered this in my career, other than as demonstrators in labs, that are supervised by academics. I assume its more common in non-science disciplines?
But be careful about trying to make a political point about that, as some people soon get onto a "But deaths under nationalisation don't matter!" line...:(
What is sad is that the more research focussed places do often fail to appreciate teaching ability as part of the promotion criteria, or at least research income and outputs is far more favoured. Yet UG students, who make up the main rationale of the university, would generally prefer excellent teraching.
Any funds who had a concentrated bet on a single company such that it has a significant impact on them overall have failed at risk management and so have themselves to blame.
Hatfield was very specifically linked to breakup of the system and the use of contractors by the privatised railway.
Or maybe, in some cases, they're just not taught critical thinking and in-depth analysis so can't deal with anything new or outside a very narrow area? That, incidentally, is one thing I have kept coming across with Oxford history graduates, although not by any means all of them.
I'm now somehow imagining Neil, from the Young Ones, throwing away his Monty Python's civil servant bowler hat, and stretching out by a lake near Glastonbury in the midsummer's sun.
Even if they may have a few more non white or female or LGBT employees
But, I'd be a fool to advise someone how to install a boiler, or rewire an office.