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(The only two countries voting against a UN investigation Australia and the US).
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/votes-send-war-crimes-investigators-gaza-180518142752946.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5734537/Jared-Kushner-pictured-returning-home-Israel-Ivanka-Trump-inaugurated-U-S-embassy.html
Often this magical thinking is compounded by the issue of public versus private ownership, and Mrs Thatcher used to rail against the dead hand of the state, yet as we discussed earlier in the week, many privatisations have eventually led to state ownership by foreign countries.
Well-run markets need management and regulation rather than a free-for-all but enthusiasts in both parties forget that, or never knew it.
Indeed.
Jack W is somewhat aged ....
Sadly, I don’t think the Tories have it in them to defend private enterprise, and to anyone under the age of 45 it appears the market is broken, since it cannot provide home ownership.
Most Tories are unable to do anything but mouth “private food, public bad” but as @DecrepitJohnL points out, it’s much more complicated than that.
You mention Carillion unrepresentative - but is it, really? Aren’t we now inured to grotesque inequality and payment for failure? We can all of us name a long string of corporate scandals: WPP, BHS, and Persimmon are the first into my head this early in the morning...
I would suggest several things.
Firstly they were run for the benefit of their staff. Service levels were absolutely chronic.
Secondly, and aggravating the first, they were used to create employment whether there was work or not resulting in gross over manning, absurd costs and very poor productivity.
Thirdly, particularly in hard times, they were starved of capital. There is absolutely no way that we would have seen the investment that has occurred since 2010 if these enterprises had been state controlled.
Fourthly, both the capital spending and the level of charge were political. So businesses would not be allowed to increase prices near elections and investment would be driven by pork like considerations.
Fifthly, strikes were endemic because staff knew political pressure could be applied and that their enterprise could not go bust.
David is right that fewer and fewer people remember the consequences of this. The Consensus since Blair did not make this necessary. He is also right that the case needs to be made now.
Let them eat cake !! .... wedding cake today ....
Mind you, Smith’s dictum - "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public” - applies equally to state and private businesses....
My three-year old son is currently having an early-morning strop because he can't go to the royal wedding, and watching it on TV is not enough.
Much to the amusement of his republican mother.
(Neither of us have mentioned it to him at all. He's got it from school.nursery...)
This government ?
No chance, I fear.
I am no advocate of renationalisation of industry or utilities, but there is little love out there for the companies that have fed on the carrion of British Industry.
Incidentally, swathes of Council houses were built in the 50’s, too!
If some banks had closed when they had gone bust and some bankers fined and jailed good and hard for false accounting then perhaps there would be a feeling at least they were being punished for their failures.
As it is, the state stepped in to rescue them, so the bankers who had lost our money were bailed out with another pot of our money so they could continue to be rich and successful at our expense. Meanwhile, we get more heavily taxed and our public services are cut to pay for it.
Now, before anyone tells me that's not exactly what happened, I know that. I know also that the City in particular and banking generally paid a huge share of national tax that paid for those essential services. I also know the consequences of not acting would have been worse. I further know that nobody was guiltless in terms of the age of excess - least of all people who voted in Blair and Brown three times. Above all I know that it's not just banks - we could mention Philip Green, Carillon or the BatshitCrazy woman who ran a pseudo charity in London on what seems to have been much the same basis.
I do say however that is what is perceived to have happened. And nothing discredits a system supposed to reward success and punish failure than a perception that it is punishing success based on hard work, honesty and thrift while rewarding failure based on greed, profligacy and criminality. That is where Trump, Corbyn, Tsipras, Podema and Beppe Grillo come in.
It is also where Brexit comes in. With hindsight, however true it may be, was it really wise to have lots of these despised bankers tell us it would be disastrous for the City?
The reasons are multiufaceted, but a lot of it is to do with priorities. The NHS and education will always be the priority for governments, and less 'sexy' industries are paid, at best, lip service.
I've had an occasional problem with flickering black boxes on Chrome for a while now. Few minutes ago the top bar (with the tabs) was affected badly so I closed it, but other programmes (top bar with the title) and the taskbar had become notably paler (though no boxes, thankfully).
Not sure what it is. Did virus scans and found nothing. Wondering if it's just my computer being old and knackered...
Edited extra bit: just got a message about low memory and restarting programmes...
The mid 50s was also a time when huge amounts of money were pumped into the railways. Unfortunately the results were disastrous due to poor management. Just to give the silliest example, some civil servant thought that Diesel engines should share sheds with steam engines, apparently not thinking of the problems the soot would cause in terms of maintenance and air quality by the engine intake. That would have mattered a great deal more if most of the diesels they bought hadn't been so underpowered as to be useless anyway.
I would say, however, that the key problem is not the principle of private ownership of the railways but the exceptionally dumb model that was seized upon by the Major government and further buggered about with by Mr Cab for Hires Byers. The only sensible model is vertical integration, because the system is already extremely complex and making it more so just increases the number of things that can go wrong.
The NHS is the priority. Education doesn't even come a poor second.
Would it be cynical of me to say this is because children don't vote?
The problem with the header is that the current government (or at least May) don't understand/believe that markets and freedom more generally are good. They're busy nannying everyone - any problem can be solved with a new law.
Edit - I wonder if he will ever be made Duke of York or if this is where his run of titles will end and Louis will take York next. I suppose it may depend on whether Charles outlives the Queen or not.
(Sits back and wonders if anyone will spot that pun.)
May's control freakery combined with indecision is not a good advocate of Free Markets and Trade, indeed her major policy is to worsen our terms of trade with our neighbours. A pro-business Tory party is in hock to the economic protectionists who voted Brexit.
The Tories veered off towards an unregulated market economy under Cameron.
His nonsense about "enemies of enterprise" and bonfires of regulations.
"What has brought Capitalism into disrepute is its headlong drive for globalisation, with well paid jobs being off shored along with the profits."
A few years ago, I watched 'Dragons' Den" and one episode featured one of the Dragons buying an applicant's company, some sort of doll maker. Later on, a spin-off company featured how the Dragon got on.
She closed down the UK company and started producing the dolls cheaper in China. What a genius this Dragon was, an example of female entrepreneurship at its best. I begged to differ.
But I'm old enough to remember the nationalised companies at their worst. I was a union rep for many years so I've no illusions about them. They exist for the good of their members, and where there is a political bias, it's not a right wing one. First priority - increase wages, second priority - increase staffing. Not so bad when its a genuine service industry, not so good when it's a competitive environment.
I'd vote Liberal Democrat if they ever became democratic again.
And the last couple of times in private hands is perceived to have failed. In addition much of our rail franchise system is owned by foreign state enterprise.
My proposed third way would be to run it by the state (Direct operated railways) invest the surplus it creates back into the line. But also ban any union involvement.....
Where are the Tory MPs, yet alone cabinet ministers, making this case?
In the 1980s you'd have had the likes of Keith Joseph, Norman Tebbit, Nigel Lawson and - in particular - Margaret Thatcher almost continually on the airwaves, explaining this to people.
Today, the only one I occasionally hear doing it (when he's not talking about Brexit) is Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Fascinating fact - no Duke of York has directly inherited the title from a parent since 1402, and even if we extend it to uncles the last person to claim it by inheritance was Richard of York (1411-1460) in 1415.
It's not necessarily the ownership that is at fault. It's the model itself.
My previous statement was certainly lacking in detail, but I don't think it was incorrect.
Why would we want to give that up!?
I happen to think electricity, gas and the railways work far better as privately run industries, and are much more innovative markets now, and we do get a much better deal. The issue with all of those is a perception of high prices and poor service, particularly British Gas/Centrica, and Southern Railways, which offends our sense of fair play and triggers nostalgia that some Unions are skillful at exploiting.
In reality, gas and electricity would be likely be more expensive under a nationalised system, slower to fix faults and have poorer service. The railways would start to suffer from under-investment, run older rolling stock, less frequently, be more susceptible to strikes, and be far less innovative at pushing new service innovations.
Absolute madness.
The Queen's father was of course Duke of York before becoming George VI albeit there was the interval of his brother inheriting from their father in January 1936 before abdicating in December.
It is worth pointing out quite a number of pre-WW1 locomotives were still in service at that time as well.
I was posting on here throughout the coalition years, and post GE2015, about the Cameron/Osborne administrations failure to properly advocate basic Conservative principles.
Yes, they won an election with long-term economic plan, but that's not the same as winning the philosophical argument, and post GE2015 Osborne started straight away exploring Reddish things in the believe that was the way to show the Tories cared about social justice.
Dr. Foxy, May's not good at much in politics. Would've been interesting if Boris or Leadsom had become leader.
The Tories are the party of Brexit, and all other political beliefs have been sacrificed on the altar.
Civilised values that we've taken for granted are being trashed at the same time as our only effective barricade-membership of the EU -is being dismantled
Corbyn's might be rubbish but if Trump is the embodyment of capitalist values lets give Corbyn's socialism a chance
The issue is not with the ownership per se, but with the incentives and dynamics that it creates.
A successful business is one that provides a great service to clients, at a cost they are prepared to pay, while operating in full compliance with regulations and with due consideration to their other stakeholders.
That can be delivered independent of ownership.
The problem is that when a domestic government owns a business these forces get out of whack. As we see in any case where there is a concentrated group (in this case the employees/unions) vs a diffuse group (the customers) the concentrated group benefits disproportionately because of their more focused political weight. Moreover, given other pressures on government resources there is a tendancey to under invest because of the demand for dividends to fund other government spending
1. To defend free enterprise, it's important to choose defensible examples. The classic division was that de facto monopolies should be public, competitive industries should be private. As David recognises, it's a struggle to explain why, say, water should be run by a bunch of private companies with no genuine market at all. Arguably, free market supporters should not try, because it undermines their very strong case where there really is a market.
2. Conversely, even the most Corbynite of us don't really think that we need state control of vigorous consumer markets - a British Rice Krispies, say. There's a reason why nobody serious is campagning for renewed state ownership of telecomms, because the telecomms market is highly competitive and, let's admit it, works well. A possible exception is delivery of cable to the home, where there is a very small market (BT vs Virgin) and notably that's the part which doesn't work very well - slow service, refusal to provide fast broadband to awkward locations.
3. Gasman and DavidL have pointed out the risks of state ownership, but Gasman also inadvertently puts the case for it too when he says that the Government might take actions with the industry to win votes. That's the point. If you really hate how a new British Rail is run, you can vote out the incompetent party who run it. If you really hate how your local regional private monopoly run it, there is literally NOTHING you can do about it. That, I suggest, is not a free market. It's a licence to print money and then push off, leaving the problems to the Government to sort out.
4. Union power in monopoly industries is an issue (actually for the same reason), but applies equally in the private sector (cf Southern Rail). Long-term agreements and workers on the board in exchange for a no-strike deal is a possible solution which has worked in other countries.
They have to mirror Blair and become Labour-lite to attract swing votes. Then the question will be asked "What are the Tories actually for?".
The pendulum swings with a very long period - about 30 -40 years.
1945 - 1979
1979 - 2017
I know who is getting married but I honestly haven't a clue about which teams are playing the football.
Does that make me a royalist? Hmm.
The poor quality, lack of investment and high prices in key utilities and services is the problem. Neither nationalisation nor privatisation is going to solve that by itself. More money and better regulation is required, and rather more important. Neither side is talking much about what the targets should be and how in detail they are to be achieved.
"The current Labour party has no interest in wealth creation. It just assumes it will happen. That is a profound mistake."
I thought Jezza was a Trot. Surely he believes, like his hero, that the state, which controls everything should be world-wide. Therefore there's no competition to worry about. Everyone has a job making wellingtons - all left-footed and size nine.
More seriously, he believes capitalism is wrong. A benevolent state will provide all that is required and any nay-sayers are enemies of the people.
Sorry about that - I think it's an age thing.