Not if they can play different sections of society against each other. How many Daily Mail/Express readers are secretly pleased that the selfish disabled people (who we all know really caused the problems today) are finally getting their well deserved comeuppance.
I think the historical facts are more that they are the RESULT of a revolution.
On Tuesday 26 March 2013 01:46 Arfa Daily wrote in uk.d-i-y:
I agree. The level of ignorance is frightening...
I've said it before though - they *will* care when they can watch East Enders or heat up a Ginsters because the power's out.
Then there'll be trouble!
I blame two things here - and education is actually not one of them:
1) Too much crap on too many channels so people immerse themselves in oblivion that neither informs nor imroves (yes, I know I sound like Lord Throat-Warbler-Mangrove from the 1930's, but it's true).2) Political parties that stand for nothing but centralist mediocracy. No- one (and not just the "chattering classes") believes any of them are fit for purpose any more. Hence the interest in the EDL and BNP. I am not ascribing greatness to the two scumbags - just that by default, they actually have more conviction than most of the mainline parties. It's a crap conviction, but people who are not leaders tend to want to follow someone with a spine, even if they are a nasty sod.
I fully agree. I did not much like Maggie - in particular the selling off of the family silver, but I did respect her. She had a plan and she got it done.
There never was any family silver as I've pointed out before.
The "family silver" was a ternm used for state assets. We had power, water and railways amongst others. They were sold off so that others could make pots of money.
On Tuesday 26 March 2013 09:22 charles wrote in uk.d-i-y:
And then make as big a pig's ear of them as any government did and end up being renationalised - eg Railtrack.
Which were owned by an entity called the "Government".
"We" didn't have anything. We had no say in how they were run, or what prices were charged. This is the worst sort of private ownership, where the owners (the Government) had no incentive to prevent waste. They could - and did - just ignore their responsibilities.
They were sold off so they could be run better, and in most cases they were. BA, f'rinstance, went from being a loss making company (thus requiring injections of our taxes every year) to being a profitable company (which contributed to the Exchequer by paying taxes).
NB, for the hard of comprehension:
Loss-making = wasting society's resources Profit-making = using society's resources more efficiently
When the water industry was privately-owned (i.e. by the Govt), there was no investment in infrastructure. So prices were relatively low, which contributed to waste and the notion that water should be "free". Like petrol should be free, too, I suppose, after all oil just needs pumping out of the ground, doesn't it? Water just falls from the sky, doesn't it?
So we ended up with an antiquated water/sewage infrastructure, which is only now being fixed, courtesy of the regulator.
It could be argued that there are some entities (electricity grid is one) where this model is not optimum for other reasons. But that doesn't invalidate the general principle.
Under the mantra that private enterprise is always more efficient than public ownership.
Would our current financial crisis have happened if Northern Rock etc had remained a mutual organisation (owned by its investors rather than private enterprise)?
And then others sold off by their new, failing, "owners" to foreign companies.
They (and others) were lending money on property recklessly - something that wouldn't have happened when they were mutuals. Traditionally, a BS would *make sure* both the borrower had the income to re-pay the loan - and that the property was worth more than the loan. Not treat it like some form of minor personal loan.
Quite. At all costs. Regardless of the interests of either the company itself or others.
When profit is the *only* motivation, you end up in the mess we are in now. Of course any company needs to make a profit, but blind following of profit *only* soon becomes greed.
after the "owners" had made a personal fortune.
Not sure that's entirely the case. My old BS, Britannia, seemingly got itself involved in some bad decisions:
And with my mortgage, in 1993, they sold worthless protection insurance as a condition of the loan. The mortgage was union endorsed and attracted a discount - so it cost less overall. But I was never convinced of the moral high ground of such 'mutuals'.
All i would say is that Britannia appeared to have been less bad than RBS etc, so not toxic assets, more unsustainable domestic loans. 600m can easily be explained through 2000 or so mortgages.
And did the decent thing by sorting it out themselves - effectively going bust by handing itself over, free, to the Co-op.
Rob
Probably trying to gear itself up for sale?
If there are lenders around who give mortgages to *anyone*, they're likely to take lots of business away from traditional prudent building societies. Who then relax their terms just to survive. Bringing the whole lot crashing down. All in the name of free market competition.
We have that, the normal cordless DECT thing with answer phone, all the bells and whistles etc. But we also have a £4.99 Tesco (or was it ASDA or...) job[1] that just plugs in and doesn't require a power point we call it our 'emergency phone'.
[1] Extremely basic, no model memory, no selectable r> One other thing, if you have a home phone you really do need to have a basicHomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.