I purely responded to your claim about there being no immigrants at cyb.

No you weren’t – no sensible person digs at minor details like that, not even TJ when he’s on form.

If you can’t tell who is and isn’t an immigrant, then either A) There aren’t any on the trail or B) There is no way you can assume that is what is driving increased trail use.

Every time I go into the cafe there – I never here anything but English and Welsh accents by the way. Shall we start a demographic poll at the top of the trails to satisfy racists like yourself, to see if it really is the immigrants that are clogging up the trails or just idiots with too much money?

So, I hear there is an election on….

Costs and efficiency? With Privatisation? Ha Ha. You sound like you still believe its a good idea from the 1980’s, when sensible people will have seen in the intervening years its been anything but.

Actual Privatisation has landed a killing blow on the ideology of privatisation.

I think there are some rose-tinted glasses regarding public ownership on this thread. Remember BL for instance?

Public ownership tends to result in stupid bureaucracy, jobsworth employees and a backwards attitude towards change and innovation. I witnessed this firsthand when I worked in HE and managed staff who were remnants of LEA control, from the time that the university was a college of HE. They were universally awful in a thoroughly institutionalised way.

A friend of mine is currently working on a major project with the civil service. He comes from the tech sector and can’t believe how many barriers the civil service place in the way of seemingly simple decisions. I think a quote from Futurama sums it up:

“Don’t quote me regulations. I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulation’s in… We kept it grey!”

Funnily enough, I’ve never been an advocate of privatisation, especially of natural monopolies like water, but I’m also pragmatic and sensible enough (unlike some on here) to see that nationalisation isn’t some sort of panacea.

JP

Public ownership tends to result in stupid bureaucracy, jobsworth employees and a backwards attitude towards change and innovation.

No, these happen because of idiot people at the top of organisations, as pretty much anyone who’s ever worked in a large multinational can attest to, everything you describe of publicly owned is true of privately owned as well.

This single policy could win the election. If it doesn’t, then people are even more stupid than I thought.

I thought it was the least thought out, most ridiculous notion I had ever heard. I couldn’t believe anyone could fall for such tosh; clearly designed to distract from real policy.

But there you are.

The Observers latest polling today has the Tory’s with a 16 point lead over Labour

A quite staggering achievement by Grandad and the assorted gaggle of clueless, voter-repelling muppets around him

Surely that must be a deliberate Partridge

LOLZ/TEARS

That you double down on your stupidity is rather telling.
You utter retard.

Watch out! The politics of inclusion is here!

Which side is called the Nasty party? I’ve forgotten….

Secondly, the British work ethic, it’s pants and still is, it’s all about minimum input for maximum output.

Perhaps if the notion of a fair days pay for a fair days work backed up with fairness in every other aspect wasn’t so alien to many UK companies, then the workforce would be more invested in the companies they work for.

It’s not pretty, is it. Focus on something else.

I’ve never seen anyone from the North Western subcontinent of India at CyB?

Social care, parts of the health service, roads, policing,etc etc all need a lot more spent on them before we start taking anything else into public ownership.

Social care is mostly privately supplied, at the moment, no? Are you suggesting nationalisation there, or more state owned providers competing against the private providers, or simply putting more money into the private provision? It’s a tough area to sort.

The OpenReach thing is about sorting out infrastructure that the country needs for economic reasons, not just social ones. It’ll cost the government to do it, but it’ll cost the country not to do it.

Social care is in large part funded by local government is it not. It clearly needs more funding, I think the private sector is perfectly capable of providing the care, but it has to be paid for, for those who can’t afford to pay for it themselves.
I take you point about a lack of infrastructure for broadband provision – although I think some here are overstaing the problem. But looking at the state of the roads as an example, I’ve no confidence that taking it into public ownership is going to help at all.

But looking at the state of the roads as an example, I’ve no confidence that taking it into public ownership is going to help at all.

Broadband roll out also has lots of public money already going into it. That’s the thing, for so many services there is a different mix of public funding with private provision that may or may not work. With OpenReach, a near monopoly private provider, that takes public money, isn’t delivering what the country requires to play a leading role… but for so many people it is just a knee jerk reaction that taking it into full public ownership and control must be a “bad thing”, where, objectively, that might not be the case in this instance.

As a counterpoint to “roads”, I’d give you “Corrilian”. But as it happens, I personally approve of the idea of additional roads being built and maintained privately, and a toll charged.

There are plenty of other areas Labour have been taking the wrong approach about ownership of companies, for me, but I strongly suspect they might be dropped on Thursday.

And promising that they’ll fund the huge cost of training some new police recruits to replace some of the experienced staff they’ve been getting rid of.

Oh, but Scotland didn’t make the cuts to Police Numbers the Tories did in England and Wales. Let’s compare London & Glasgow for knife crime increases… shall we…

All these Conservative Party pledges to either undo the damage they’ve done, or to do what they promised in the last few elections but still haven’t delivered on, assume we have the memory of Goldfish.

There’s an awful lot you could do with ofcom to get openreach to sort their shit out, without the expense of re-nationalisation. They’d whinge like stuck pigs, obviously, but a private operations primary responsibility is to it’s shareholders. Put the legislation in place and the shareholders will have to suck it up.
As for this being a policy that could win them the election – hahaha!

Its not impossible, but as Del says, its not necessary. And the evidence suggests ultimately it would be worse.

Perhaps Del is wrong. Perhaps experience shows us that sometimes regulating and subsidising a monopoly private provider isn’t always the best approach.

A labour party led by someone as radical as Corbyn with so many anti business policies

What anti-business policies?

Most of the policies I can see are to the benefit of everyone, businesses, and the people who work for those businesses. Businesses are made of ordinary people, and when people’s lives are better and easier they will be more productive. When the infrastructure is in place and works well business will run better. When employees have a stake in a business they run better.

Any idiot knows that people need a strong economy. Corbyn knows this and McDonnell certainly does. But letting fat cats skim all the profits off the top and **** the rest of us is NOT pro-business, it’s pro-rich people. Big difference.

OpenReach no longer being a “business” may well prove to be in the interest of thousands of other existing and new businesses, and those who work for them.