Talking about Nationalisation is all very well and good, but, simply put, it's not stealing. The Government has to pay full market share price for any industries they want to "buy" through Nationalisation and, let's face it, the government is broke.
The Government, currently, is still borrowing £60bn a year more than they get in receipts. Yes the last 7 years has seen that come down from the £160bn of Bumbler Brown and is significantly lower than the £200bn that idiot millipede wanted to borrow (every year), but, still, the money is simply not there.
As for talking about "nationalising" the rail, it might be worth reading the
Public/Private situation of Network Rail. Especially the part where we're putting £3.8bn into Network Rail every year but getting a minus sum out of it. Also the service companies who actually run the trains pay in £1.6bn a year (2015 figures), to operate the tracks. In 2015, with £5.4bn coming in, Network Rail spent over £6bn... Very creative accounting.
Also, if you dig enough, you read that:
In December 2013, the ONS announced that from September 2014, Network Rail will be classified as a "government body". This resulted in the company's debt of £34 billion being added to the national debt.
Yep, we already took on £34bn in National Debt by "nationalising" Network Rail by becoming the owner of the shares at market value...
If you read that link I posted, you read that:
In 2001 the then Labour government denied that it had nationalised the rail network in order to prevent Railtrack's shareholders claiming, via the European Court of Human Rights, the four-year average price of Railtrack, about £10 per share. Instead, Railtrack's shareholders were given only £2.60.[75] The Times reported that Gordon Brown's aide, Shriti Vadera e-mailed Stephen Byers in July 2001 asking: "Can we engineer the solution through insolvency ... and therefore avoid compensation under the Human Rights Act
Oh yes, if you say it quickly Nationalisation sounds like a really great thing. Until you get the bill.
After WWII the UK had nation debt to 250% of GDP. But the UK was the centre of a vast empire which, on picking up after WWII, could rely on huge influxes of money to bring that debt down. Nationalisation, then, was easier. Also, when you consider Rail, it had been in public hands in WWI and in a quasi public state since then, including full nationalisation during WWII.
Then we face the problem that most of our utilities are now in the hands of EU companies. Those EU companies ALL, without exception, have the Government of it's home country as it's single largest shareholder.
If we want to Nationalise our Utilities, then we're going to have to pay for it. If we want to pay for it, we're going to have to have some money. Because every nationalised industry has wound up as loss making.
Let's take this as a simple calculation. Regardless of how much tax the fat cats pay, how much tax the businesses pay, Utilities companies in profit pay taxes and their shareholders pay taxes on the dividend. That is a net influx to the budget. However if we nationalise them, to the tune of some £half a trillion, not only do we not make a profit out of it, we lose the tax paid by the companies which make the profit. We also lose the inward investment from investors who buy the shares and allow those companies to upgrade their infrastructure.
So we'll wind up paying top £ for infrastructures which are certainly not in top condition, lose money on the deal, lose the taxes and then have to pay to bring the infrastructures up to full spec.
WOW that sounds like SUCH a good deal doesn't it.
How about we do what every other country of the original 15 of the EU does. Let's price cap the Utilities and also mandate the investment into the infrastructure. This limits the money being funnelled to the shareholders and alleviates the impact on consumers. Even better, let's make the price cap based on the production cost for the Utilities. So if the cost of Gas and Oil and Coal drops, then the price cap on Electricity and Gas drops too.
Wouldn't that sound perfect. The Government doesn't have to spend a fortune buying a lame duck, takes the taxes for the Utilities and controls the larceny of the Utility companies.
Now, I wonder who's talking about that?? Not that Idiot Corbyn he's clueless.
If we want to talk about Public/Private ownership, with the Government being the single biggest shareholder but not being an overall shareholder, then I'm kind of OK with that. After all it will still be operated for a profit but the Government will receive the largest part of the dividends when a profit is made and the Utilities could still get inward investment from the markets. After all this is what EDF and E-ON have done and how they have taken over a huge chunk of the Utility infrastructures in the EU. However we should never let common sense get in the way of a great sound byte...
Corbyn? I wouldn't trust him with a tricycle let alone the economy. The man is an ideological idiot.
