Vocal Voices

As those who don't want to see. Now, because a Japanese tech investment company has bought ARM, there is a sudden fear that the UK will be "bought up".

Excuse me but our car industry is gone to Europe, America and, more recently, India. Our Steel industry is in Indian hands, our utilities are owned mainly by France and Germany. Our trains are slowly going European run and, only recently, our London Stock Exchange was bought out by a German company even though the Americans offered more money and a better deal; now we're worried about the family silver being raided because the government and the BOE talked the economy down to the point where the £ crashed when the people decided do defy the government.

People need to wake up and realise it's only the scraps which are left. The really big plumbs are already long gone. Just because it was the EU countries who bought them out. using companies part state owned to bankroll them, does not mean they are any less sold off.

Sometimes the group think in the UK really defies logic...

And the point is ... ?

The fire-sale was started by the Tories under Thatcher. Many of us, including Labour, called for protection of our assets at the time, but ooh no, the free market had to rule. Short term profits were to be made. The sale continued under Major, and then under Blair and Brown, and now only the scraps are left.

It might well be the case that a lot was bought up by EU countries, but it was the UK government(s) selling off our assets, and our gold, at rock-bottom prices without holding on to a majority share. Caveat emptor never came into things as there was nothing to be aware of ... except for free money and the overseas control of the UK's infrastructure.

Caveat vendor was not considered, or was brushed aside, by all those 'none so blind' marketers of things they did not own.

The point is that there is all this hot air about Brexit causing a run on British busiess, when in reality the run was long ago and nobody ever cared because the "people" didn't go against the wishes of the government, the press and the businesses themselves.

The compeition office in Brussels was often used to route the purchase of businesses to "acceptable" countries and Britain was never considered acceptable. When Vodafone bought up Mannesman there were demonstrations in the street. After all that was not allowed, was it?

I'm just sick of the small minded day by day view of the world being trotted out by the press, the BOE and the Government right now. I want them all to shut up and let the mechanism of leaving the EU take control and get on with it.

Of couse I won't get what I want because that won't sell media...

The UK not being in control of its infrastructure has sod all to do with Brexit. It has everything to do with the political ideology of Thatcher and those who followed her. State owned was bad, very bad; private owned was good, better than good - phenomenal.

Thatcher sold off British Aerospace, Cable & Wireless, British Rail, Jaguar, British Telecom, Britoil, British Gas, British Steel, British Petroleum, Rolls Royce, British Airways, and water and electricity companies; and she did it without any help from Brussels. She also did all this without putting in any safeguards for when things went TU.

There was, of course, serious opposition to the 'internal market' enough so to prevent the NHS from also being privatised. Unfortunately big 'private' business was in the driving seat and we plebs got no say in the matter.

Thatcher's 'Sale of the Century' started almost two decades before the EU came into being and long, long, before Brexit was even thought of.