chissitt wrote:
Might be wrong here but wasn't they sold off because they were all running at a massive loss aided by the unions.
There was certainly a desire to break the power that the Unions had and privatization of the utilities was seen as an effective way of doing so and it's fair to say that the policy was very effective in reducing the power of the Unions.
The loss making issue was a little less straight forward.
If government wants to cap prices for certain utilities, they would certainly have to "help" by increasing their financial input or, show a loss on the balance sheet.
Some of the price increases that we are seeing at the moment on gas/electric, would have very likely been "subsidised" under public ownership, something with just doesn't happen in the private sector.
Some would argue that the utilities were sold "on the cheap" to help curb the Unions and that many are now making hefty profits for overseas companies and on the face of it, that seems crazy.
Has privatisation been good or bad, well, I suppose it depends on your politics and who knows whether our bills would have been higher or lower under the previous regimes.
It was certainly simpler back in the day and you didn't have to worry about shopping around, exit clauses etc and you knw exactly who to contact when there was a problem
