Greatest political blunders of all time.

[jimslip]

Whilst i agree that Thatcher was also crazed in her recklessness, I think Gordon Clown wins so far for sheer stupidity. In fact to this day no one actually knows for sure why he did it. During the last government Osborne vowed to find out why, but naturally being a slime bag politician, has so far done nothing to get to the bottom of the matter.
One major difference between Thatchers sell off and the sell off of the gold, is that unlike our gold, foreigners didn't dismantle all our infrastructure and take it abroad!

[RoddersUK]

Waddaya mean?
She aint some big fat fucking chav. She has a decent figure on her and well worth giving a portion of the pork sword to, albeit with her fizzog covered.

[spider]

I?ve also read that the Railway Privatisation was 90-95% complete when Major lost to Blair and Blair finished the job for him.

I suppose I should say for historical accuracy that John Major finished his affair with Currie a long time before he became PM.

The only reason the affair became public was because Currie was plugging her autobiography and though that by spilling the beans she?d sell a few more copies.

What a horrible woman.

I recall listening to a documentary on Radio 4 about Brown selling off the gold. It must have been about a year ago.

This documentary posed the question as to why did Brown sell off the Gold Reserves to all these economists and bankers.

They all, to a man, replied that selling off the gold at the time he did it was the right thing to do. I know economists and bankers are perceived to be the nearest thing to scum now, but when Brown did what he did they were part of a respected profession.

The ?experts? they interviewed more-or-less said that ?world markets? considered investments in other currencies gave a better return than hoarding gold. Every other government was doing the same and Brown was right to sell when he did because the price of gold was falling because of this international policy of selling gold.

I know the experts have now been proved wrong, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I get the impression that selling Gold was the fashionable thing to do at the time and Brown was just following the fashion.

The same could be said about privatisations I suppose, that the fashion is now to privatise everything. The Private Sector can do it better!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps Osborne couldn?t find any dirt on Brown because there wasn?t any to find in this particular instance.

Can anyone give me an example of something where privatising it has made it better for the man-in-the-street?

The only thing I can thing of is telecoms, although whether the improvement was driven by privatisation or technological development is debateable.

[rgb]

spider wrote:

> Can anyone give me an example of something where privatising it
> has made it better for the man-in-the-street?
>
> The only thing I can thing of is telecoms, although whether the
> improvement was driven by privatisation or technological
> development is debateable.

I agree about telecoms. In the late 70s I needed to get a phone answering machine. The Post Office didn't allow any equipment other than theirs to be connected to a phone line and you could only rent a machine from them at an extortionate rate. I think there was a waiting list too!

As much as we complain about things these days, an awful lot has improved.

[spider]

I remember having to wait three months to have a phone installed in about 1980.

Things are much better now.

Did we need to sell Post Office telephones off though?

Couldn?t the same result have been achieved through technological developments and investing a bit of money on the Post Office all those years ago?

Same with the railways.

I just look at the rest of Europe.

Look at France and Germany.

Can you see the French selling-off SCNF, or the Germans selling-off DB Bahn?

[jimslip]

"Can anyone give me an example of something where privatising it has made it better for the man-in-the-street?"

Yes as much as it galls me to admit it, BT was probably a good idea. At the time late 1970's I was in telecoms and BT was run by, "The National Association of Jobsworths". You were not allowed to plug anything into their lines without a "Jobsworth" checking it first, which of course took years. I remember at the time, thanks to Jobsworths, we still had the "Strowger switch" sorting out out telephone calls, we also had telephone answering machines as big as a small fridge:



I remember going to France and behaving like some native being faced for the first time with a camera and flash, when I went into a public phone box and dialled a number. It didn't matter how fast you dialled, the phone at the other end rang immediately! I remember, cowering in fear at this, "Big magic of the telling-bone!" You see thanks to BT jobsworths, when you dialled a number, well the worst case would be 888 9998, because you'd have to wait for the stupid Strowger switch to click its way through all the bloody digits, you could be there all day if the number was engaged!

You young folk don't know how lucky you are, when you phone your drug dealer, glue supplier or riot organiser and his phone instantly rings!

Anyway, thanks to privatiisation, all the jobsworths were booted out and BT advanced more in 3 months than it had done in 10 years.

So in short, low tech, heavy, industries like water, rail, etc should be always nationalised (Why should some wankers make profit out of our water?) and hi tech stuff is best left in private hands.

[spider]

I recall though the all the talk in PO Telephones in the late 1970's early 1980's was about something they all "System X".

That was in reality the digitalisation of the phone network.

It didn't happen though when the government owned the service because they wouldn't stump-up the money.

"Service".

There's an old-fashioned word that you don't hear any of the public utility industries use these days!

[David Johnson]

"One major difference between Thatchers sell off and the sell off of the gold, is that unlike our gold, foreigners didn't dismantle all our infrastructure and take it abroad!"

No, they just dismantle our savings and living standards without any of the expense of having to dismantle the infrastructure.

Cheers
D

[spider]

Foreigners didn't need to dismantle our infrastructure and take it abroad; they bought it up lock, stock and barrel and left it here for us to pay inflated prices to use it and channel the vast profit into their bank accounts.

I did a stock-take not so long ago.

I used to buy my gas from a state owned Gas company, now I buy if from EON, a German owned utility company.

I used to buy my Electricity from a state owned Electricity company, now I buy from EDF (Electricity De France).

I used to buy my water from a state owned Water company, now it?s French Owned.

I used to bank with National Girobank (state owned). It?s now part of Santander (Spanish).

Mobile phone ? Spanish owned.

The Railway line I use is owned by DB Bahn (at least they know how to run a railway which is unusual for Railway Companies in the UK today).

I used to drive a Jag, now owned by an Indian company.

And next year of course when they sell off Royal Mail my postman will be working for either a German or a Dutch company.