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Short answer is that the UK gave private companies to extract as much wealth as possible with minimal re-investment in infrastructure. The nation has since seen
by hnhg 1y ago
Short answer is that the UK gave private companies to extract as much wealth as possible with minimal re-investment in infrastructure. The nation has since seen water rationing and raw sewage being pumped into rivers and beaches, but at least some shareholders have benefited, right?
- peterfirefly 1y agoWater meters work better than rationing.
- elAhmo 1y agoYes! Same with trains.
- psd1 1y agoWell tbf, there is a regulator and there are price controls. They've been given license to extract wealth, but not as much as possible. I do share your bitterness. Free-market fundamentalists have flogged assets for years, and the cost to the citizens is some future government's problem.
- alt227 1y agoA regulator so weak that they have not been able to enforce pretty much anything, and are about to be systematically decontructed and replaced https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofwat-to-be-abolished-in-biggest-overhaul-of-water-since-privatisation https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofwat-to-be-abolished-in-...
- jaccola 1y ago> there is a regulator and there are price controls > Free-market fundamentalists have flogged assets for years Maybe the problem isn't the free market (since one does not in any way exist in this case) but government interventionism.
- psd1 1y agoThere are a few services best left in the public sector - e.g. defence, water, mail delivery. When one government, for its own reasons, sells a service, intervention is required to return it to public hands. The cost of that intervention was created by the government that sold the service. The intervention could be more or less problematic, but it isn't the problem.