Re: Budget 2017
 

I've heard talk of putting charging points in lamp-posts as they nowadays have a constant live feed. That would not be that expensive to do with a special cover to replace the existing one.

Re: Budget 2017
 

There would have to be a lot of charging points in the future to cover all the cars on the road that they want to be electric.

Could be the way forward though for a lot of things would deffo cut down on the amount of crap that is pumped into the atmosphere

Re: Budget 2017
 

I see they shafted the people they told Diesels are good.

Thank god I expected this and bought a brand new petrol engined car over diesel.

Re: Budget 2017
 

It's interesting that Hammond's encouraging the public to use more electricity i.e. to charge their electric cars at a time when the National Grid is struggling to cope with the existing demand simply because the government had made insufficient provision for the supply of electricity.

Re: Budget 2017
 

Sadly governments when it comes to developing a robust infrastructure with plenty of capacity is a bit like asking them to organise a piss up in a brewery,

Re: Budget 2017
 

Wow! You mean street lamps have never had an electromechanical clock switching the supply on and off before now? Even at 61 I live and learn.

What were those council workers changing in the lamps when daylight savings ended? I guess I'll never know.

Re: Budget 2017
 

That's exactly why the utilities, rail etc. fell into such a decrepit state after decades of under investment by government. It's also the reason that taking them back into public ownership would be a massively expensive disaster. Politicians want the brownie points for telling people what they want to hear but, when faced with the reality of having to pay for it all via taxes or spending cuts elsewhere, soon get very cold feet about it all.

Re: Budget 2017
 

I think other countries manage to invest in infrastructure despite much of it being publically owned. After all we've all got to pay for it somewhere down the line, companies aren't in the business of losing money. At least if it were publically owned the investment the government puts it gets to reap the reward of, at the moment we're in the mad case where any real investment (i.e HS2) is paid for by the government but profit will be extracted by the companies who'll give some of it back in the form of tenders.

Re: Budget 2017
 

Where I used to live they were all switched en-mass in the local substation. If you were near it you could hear the contacter slam shut as the lights came on. The only thing in the lamp-post was a fuse and balast.

These days all the lamps have their own light sensor to switch them individually as it gets dark or light. Hence they all now have a constant live feed which could be used as a charging point.

Re: Budget 2017
 

Whoa there Osem! The rail companies fell into a decrepit state due to WWII and during that time cost thousands to repair and maintain far outstripping the revenue received from the Government for the contracts in place so much so that the only alternative was to take them into Government ownership as the companies were on the verge of going bust.

Yes, when B.R. came into existence there was an attempt to standardise everything thereby saving costs but going forward bad judgements by succeeding Governments added to the decay.

The rest about rail is for another discussion. Your post was about utilities so let's look at the rest.

Water. How many water shortages were ever declared under public ownership? How many reservoirs were closed after the utility went into private hands?

Gas. When has there ever been a shortage? OK, North Sea gas was supposed to last a lifetime (I remember the hype) but that was when we had elecricty production mainly relying on coal and to a lesser extent nuclear.

That nicely brings us to electricity. When has there ever been a shortage brought about by the lack of infrastructure or investment? You cannot include the winter of discontent under the labour party when power cuts were due to industrial action of unions.

As regards the GPO, it should never have been privatised but there was a deal done with the US that caused it which may have been beneficial to the country but we have never been made aware of.

To summarise, please explain this statement.

"the utilities, rail etc. fell into such a decrepit state after decades of under investment by government"

Re: Budget 2017
 

Yes they do but that's not ever happened here and isn't likely to hence my point. The arguments you raise applied just as much in the past as they do now and look what happened to our infrastructure. Unless you believe our glorious leaders have seen the light it'll just happen all over again but with the huge additional costs of nationalising it first.

---------- Post added at 18:05 ---------- Previous post was at 17:52 ----------


Thames Water has had to spend billions on rebuilding, repairing and replacing vast amounts of infrastructure for one. There was never enough money in public hands to enable the utilities to modernise for the future, hence it was all too often put off, just like replacing all those Victorian sewers we've known for decades would need to be replaced. Keeping pace, if at all, rather than building for the future seems to me what we got under nationalisation. Yes it could and should have been different but it wasn't.

I didn't say we had frequent power cuts or shortages in the past but the lack of investment, had these things not been privatised, would by now have left us with even bigger problems. Just look at the handling of nuclear power and we're still in a state of flux with that...

I wish that it'd had been different and I do think there's a strong case for HMG having control of certain key assets/utilities but if our politicians haven't made it work well in the past why would we imagine they can/will now?

Re: Budget 2017
 

Hmmm, for some reason I can't recall any water shortages in the Greater London area pre-privatisation.

Oh wait a minute, I forgot following many reservoir closures on privatisation Thames Water came up with a brilliant plan of recycling.

As regards those aging Victorian sewers what a cash cow that is turning out to be for Thames Water.

Re: Budget 2017
 

I didn't say there were water shortages pre privatisation, well there were in 1976 but that was extreme. Neither did I day there haven't been any problems with privatisation. There have. My argument, for the reasons I've explained and regretfully, is that nationalisation by and large didn't work particularly well in this country. It could have done had our politicians been more forward thinking but they weren't. Had things carried on as they'd been allowed to for decades then the utilities we all depend on would have become a great deal worse than they currently are but no I'm not saying that privatisation has been a panacea. It clearly hasn't.

Re: Budget 2017
 

It's a long time since British Rail and it was a different time. Trains are used more now rather than being an afterthought. It's not as if the current operators are doing so well either.

Besides it would be a government owned but separate organisation that will run it. Just like SNCF does in France or even TFL in London. TFL do a pretty good job running the oldest metro system in the world and one of the busiest and certainly better than the private operators for the commuter trains going into London. The East Coast Mainline was a success for the period it was publicly owned: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/m...ayer-235m.html

The best argument is the franchise system is simply a nonsense. It doesn't encourage long-term thinking from the operators so that still needs to be done by the government. You then get tenders going to the highest bidder who need to milk the line to return a profit to their shareholders. Their only incentive in terms of punctuality and quality is to do just enough to keep the line since competition is non-existent.

Without real competition the rational behind privatisation fails. It's only a religious devotion in the concept that meant it was privatised in the first place but people have become so obsessed with the battle between privatisation and nationalisation they don't take a pragmatic approach to it and decide what makes sense for which industry. Thatcherites think everything is improved by privatisation and Corbynites would nationalise Greggs if they could. :spin:

Re: Budget 2017
 

As I've already said, I have no great philosophical preference for privatisation (quite the reverse in these cases) but I've stated my opinions and reasons for thinking that a) going back to nationalisation is impossible and b) the same old funding problems would reappear. Just to unravel it all would cost billions and that's before anything else got done. Frankly I don't think our politicians/political system is up to the task and it makes me sad to say it. Just look at the NHS and how hard it is to fund and reform it to deliver what we all want. I don't want to see it privatised but do think it could be far better and more efficiently run. Where does that leave us?