How did they get away with privatising public services?

One person refused to help a colleague when asked for help with a run of the mill problem stating that ‘it wasn’t in their job description’. That happens in the private sector too. My son repeated a staff member refusing to do a job she was asked to because "she didn't like it". That was private sector too.

Redundancies aren’t nice, but their threat certainly help instil a work ethic and they should be used more often in bloated government departments. How often would you like them? They're happening quite regularly in the public sector now. Each one causes enormous upheaval.

There's also the detail that you can't use redundancies to cherry pick who you get rid of. It's the job that's redundant, not the person. You can't get rid of one person, and then appoint someone else to do their job (better). Or you can, but you risk an Employment Tribunal. The way to get rid of underperformers is through the disciplinary process.

Social housing was for anyone who needed a home, not for the disadvantaged. So council estates were a mixture of tenants -I knew an accountant who stayed in the Council house he'd moved into with his wife when they were first married. Conservative ideology was to allow people to own their own homes, so there were a lot of people sitting in council houses who were perfectly able to get a mortgage and buy their house, especially at the large discounts offered.

So there wasn't less demand, just a wider base but also a lot more council houses.

The Council home sell off would have been fine if there had been a requirement to replace each house sold. Of course that wasn't financially viable since the houses were sold off at a huge discount. So we are where we are - not enough Council houses, too many people on the waiting list.

An older relative worked in power stations in the 1970s and said Thatcher was a necessary evil - most of the time they were unable to work because the miners were on strike again and there was no coal. The unions had brought the country to its knees and it urgently needed sorting out.

I’m too young to remember a Thatcher government but it would appear that was how, voters felt drastic change was needed and that’s what she offered.

I have mainly worked in the private sector in industries where redundancies are fairly common but have also had a role in the public sector. Some of the public sector departments I had to work with were shockingly lazy. One person refused to help a colleague when asked for help with a run of the mill problem stating that ‘it wasn’t in their job description’. I was so shocked. I’d never heard such a refusal to help another colleague before. There didn’t seem to be any motivation to work towards a shared goal whatsoever. Someone explained that that department was heavily unionised so nothing could be done.

Regular redundancies in my (private sector) employment would have had these lazy incompetents weeded out rapidly. Redundancies aren’t nice, but their threat certainly help instil a work ethic and they should be used more often in bloated government departments.

I certainly never said that and "punishing the little people more"??!. The fact is that in the UK it was the Tory government that decided to sell off public services. People who can afford to pay more tax should do imho. But what happens is that the argument then gets hijacked by people who object to supporting "benefits scroungers" and "illegal immigrants" and some people with plenty of money don't see the benefit to society of contributing more.

All that selling off public services did was push the problems around the way they were managed and operated onto someone else.

Plus they have almost finished privatising schools through the academies programme. Have standards gone up? Exam boards are also privatised hence exams cost 50-100 pounds to enter and yet they pay examiners about £5 to mark them - hence experienced teachers can't be bothered. Wake up and end this. In answer to your question OP. Thatcher is why we're in this mess. Plus a weak sniffling pathetic Labour Party that failed to argue against this and instead embraced privatisation.

Nonsense. In much of Europe most of the vital services such as utilities and transport are run by the public sector. They are run for the benefit of the stakeholders - i.e. the users and general public - rather than for the benefit of shareholders.

@SharpLily "Those hanging all of this on Thatcher might want to be aware that privatisation of public services is not a British/Thatcher thing. The same thing was happening on an international level at that time, not something Thatcher came up with to punish the little people even more. As the world was discovering after the disastrous previous decades, for some reason public owned services don't seem to work very well."

Except you provide no evidence for this. Throughout Europe, publicly-owned services run very well, and can be managed in order to support wider initiatives. For example, where I live (in Europe) transport is integrated - trains and buses dovetail and there is a common ticketing and pricing structure because they are both publicly run. Public transport is promoted using "Car-Free days" when all public transport is free for a day. The existance of a reliable, hourly bus service means that the rural village where I live remains viable as somewhere to live for families and older people - which in turn takes pressure off the housing stock and services in the nearest large town, means that businesses can remain based in the village (and actually attract staff and customers from the town) and keeps the place vibrant. A private company looks solely at profits while a publicly-owned entity can be part of a wider integrated plan.

I just want to point out that Transport for Wales is run by the Welsh Government. It is dire!
Cardiff airport was bought by the Welsh Government years ago for a shocking amount and every year since, they give it millions of pounds as it runs at a massive loss. It is obscene the amount of money they have thrown at it.
Also our water is supplied by Dwr Cymru, a non shareholding company whose mantra is ‘Not for profit’ and yet we have one of the highest water bills in the UK.

It's called Neolibralism and there's a great book about it by George Monbiot called The Invisible Doctrine.

"Absolute rot. Does this include the utterly privatised healthcare that was the only option available before the NHS, back in Victorian times? The rich elite hobby doctors who would happily tell miners that their breathing issues were due to drinking stewed tea?."

NHS doctors used to tell people to smoke for their asthma, etc. Luckily we have better medical knowledge now.

Like it or not, the private sector is just much more efficient at providing goods and services. Not to say that everything should be privatised but generally that's how you produce the most value for money.

Ask Sid

And council housing does not provide net income to councils. Its purpose is to house people not provide income.

That's not true. The public sector is poorly managed and many of its properties have been demolished or degenerated into slums. The cost comparison is like for like anyway.

Many studies have shown the differential in build costs. www.building.co.uk/social-housing-costs-a-quarter-more-than-private-built-homes/3053916.article

Building companies will build what people want so they can sell. Councils and housing associations often build impractical homes in inconvenient locations because those making the decisions do not face the same accountability.

Of course some council homes are well built but but so are private properties. Many council properties are extremely poorly built and badly maintained. I grew up in a council estate and they knocked a lot of it down because no one wanted to live there.

Absolute rot. Does this include the utterly privatised healthcare that was the only option available before the NHS, back in Victorian times? The rich elite hobby doctors who would happily tell miners that their breathing issues were due to drinking stewed tea? Even Thatcher, especially Thatcher, knew of the dangers of specialised knowledge and professional monopolies.

We are seeing the results in our sewage-filled rivers and Ofgem’s current plans (forced by the last Tory government) to make domestic consumers pay for the energy use of private business too.

There isn’t much evidence to come up with about benefits of regulation in the U.K. because we don’t have it here and only got half way there with the birth of the public sector. It did not have long enough to effect real change, enough to undo the issues of an imperial country making the most out of disadvantaged working class lives for hundreds of years.

They got away with it because enough people voted for it. It really is a simple as that.

They got away with it because enough people voted for it. It really is a simple as that.

Yanbu. I can't even get an abandoned trolley picked up or streetlight fixed without dealing with a useless external company. Trolleywise and Enervo are both shite.

The council or supermarket should be dealing with it.

All of the actual evidence though shows that the private sector runs services better - more efficiently and cost effective- especially when well regulated. In every single country in the world that is the case.

Dh had to leave a few years ago. it was such a shit show and he did not want a death on his hands. He could see the way it was going

I remember British Rail and BT were particularly shite before privatisation.

I remember waiting over 6 months for a phone line to be installed. Trains cancelled, late, dirty and totally in thrall to the Union.

Public companies were run to benefit the staff, not to provide customer service, who could just fuck off as far as the staff were concerned.

They were truly appalling.

Not really - the public sector savings were used to keep taxes low, which only benefits those paying high levels of tax.

Ahem! You are forgetting that basic rate income tax in the 1970s was over 30%.

I remember well all the power cuts of the 1970s (occasionally these were several times a week and could last for hours - we always needed to have candles handy). I also travelled on trains a lot from the mid 80s to the early 90s, and spent many hours just sitting around in train stations waiting for trains that were cancelled or extremely late. I learned I had to allow most of a day to get somewhere that was only 1h 20mins away by car. I missed a uni exam because I'd only allowed 6.5 hours to do a 2h45 min journey when I really should have known better. But both rail and energy services were utterly dreadful at the time and in my experience things definitely improved after privatisation. Of course private services aren't perfect and I've had a few rubbish journeys amonst my mostly good ones recently, but it's still way better than what I remember of the 80s. I now only use trains a few times a year but I'm still very wary of the government being in charge of rail or energy again, because it really was that bad before.

You know you can refill empty water bottles at every airport? No ones forcing you to buy a £3.50 bottle of water. I didn’t think anyone actually bought those.

Those hanging all of this on Thatcher might want to be aware that privatisation of public services is not a British/Thatcher thing. The same thing was happening on an international level at that time, not something Thatcher came up with to punish the little people even more. As the world was discovering after the disastrous previous decades, for some reason public owned services don't seem to work very well.

Yes you are right.