What services should not be privatised / profit making?

[Febrier]

www.theguardian.com/society/2022/mar/26/revealed-top-10-childrens-care-providers-made-300m-profits

So, I'll start with children's care. There's no way that money should be siphoned away from care for most vulnerable in order to line others' pockets.

Anything funded by the public purse should be publicly run - from defence to schools to health and social care to council housing.

Railways, gas, electricity, water, broadband. Those things which are necessary and competition is of no benefit to the consumer.

It’s hard now to believe that we used to live in a country where that was just a normal state of affairs.

Subcontracting should be tightly controlled and minimised.

@SoManyTshirts

Anything funded by the public purse should be publicly run - from defence to schools to health and social care to council housing.

Railways, gas, electricity, water, broadband. Those things which are necessary and competition is of no benefit to the consumer.

It’s hard now to believe that we used to live in a country where that was just a normal state of affairs.

Subcontracting should be tightly controlled and minimised.

Agree. There shouldn’t be profit in it

Prisons

Children's services, health, education, transport, utilities
I'd look to Scandinavian countries for a good model. They consistently have higher levels of happiness too but our great leaders are only interested in profit for them and their mates

I agree with T-shirts. All privatised services are underwritten by the state in any event. When train companies fail, companies providing hospital and school meals etc, the state carries the loss. Private gain, public loss. As a model, it does none of us any good. Is there anywhere in Europe where women feel it's not worth returning to work after having children because of the crippling cost of child care? How does that benefit the economy?

Railways!

@SoManyTshirts

Anything funded by the public purse should be publicly run - from defence to schools to health and social care to council housing.

Railways, gas, electricity, water, broadband. Those things which are necessary and competition is of no benefit to the consumer.

It’s hard now to believe that we used to live in a country where that was just a normal state of affairs.

Subcontracting should be tightly controlled and minimised.

Agree.

My big one is social care, because I work in it (elderly) and am fed up of being expected to work short staffed (from already precarious numbers) and short change the people I care for to make someone else rich while I earn a pittance, buy my own uniforms, work for bloody free regularly and try to reach standards demanded, may as well be trying to reach the moon with a kite.

There should not be large profits made from caring for people - imagine how much better the actual care could be if just what is paid now all went to caring - and I don't just mean better wages (though that would be nice!), the same wages but more staff with better training to ease the workload and improve the care each individual receives.

@SoManyTshirts

Anything funded by the public purse should be publicly run - from defence to schools to health and social care to council housing.

Railways, gas, electricity, water, broadband. Those things which are necessary and competition is of no benefit to the consumer.

It’s hard now to believe that we used to live in a country where that was just a normal state of affairs.

Subcontracting should be tightly controlled and minimised.

Totally agree. I’ve worked in the water industry for 25 years. The public/private ownership mishmash makes who owns/is responsible for which infrastructure/structure/flooding so flaming complicated.

Healthcare and everytbing related to it, public transport (all types so buses, trains, trams etc), education at all levels from preschool to university, childcare, public roads incl tolls, utilities incl water electric gas, social care, social housing, elderly care, sewerage, waste and recycling, prisons, police, etc etc etc.

It seems we are all agreed. But we're in the minority, people keep voting in the Tories and this drags Labour to the centre and privatisation.

Utilities, transport, social care. As others have said, countries in Europe seem to have high standards. We are supposed to be a G7 economy.

post offices
train & bus services
schools colleges & universities
power companies water
Health & social care social workers foster care etc

Hospital parking. It's so bloody mean-spirited to make life so difficult and expensive for people who are worried/ scared / ill.

Public transport in general.

Schools
Prisons
Children's homes
Care homes
Post office
British Rail
BT
Utilities
The Tube
Hospitals

Health, education, adult and children's social care. Care homes. Prisons, Transport, Gas, electric, broadband.

Do you think that these things will ever go back to being public as opposed to privatised? Or am I living on a wish and a prayer 😕

All the things already mentioned, basic services.

I do understand the problem about waste in the public sector and having worked in it for 30 years I, along with everyone else in a similar position, could come up with endless examples of things we do inefficiently or pay too much for, so that needs tackling. Those of us on the ground are powerless to do this, we just have to do what we are told/follow policies and procedures, even when they make no sense.

Eg a few weeks ago I needed a train ticket. But I couldn't do what a normal person would do and go online, buy the train ticket and claim back the cost. Oh, no. What I did was:

Go online and find the cost/provider of the ticket I wanted
Fill in a form to send to the team PA.
Team PA tries to buy the ticket via the travel agency we have to use
Travel agency refuses to buy the ticket I asked for and suggests a completely useless alternative.
Back and forth between me, travel agency and Team PA a few times.
Eventually travel agency agrees to buy part of the ticket for the outward journey only (I was going away to do a job where we weren't sure how long it would last, so I wanted a flexible ticket, which was available at minimal extra cost because I knew I would be travelling back at off peak times).
Ticket arrives and it's slightly wrong and I can also see we've been charged approximately 20% more than what it would have cost if I'd just bought it straight off the website myself, but it will do.

And then I was able to come back earlier than originally planned so the fixed ticket they wanted me to have would have been completely useless and non-refundable and I just bought my ticket out of the machine at the station.

And breathe...

So what would be good would be essential public services that are provided efficiently and well run and don't strangle the people who work in them in red tape. Do any countries actually manage this?

"Do you think that these things will ever go back to being public as opposed to privatised? Or am I living on a wish and a prayer 😕"

Some of these things have never been in the public sector. Specialist schools for children with disabilities ( of the type that are run by private companies) and specialist residential schools for children with disabilities, which are frequently part funded through social care, never existed in the public sector. There was simply no provision for those children.

I agree basic services should be state owned. I'm on the fence about broadband. I'm not sure it would be a great idea for that to be state controlled.

BarbaraofSeville is correct about amount of wastage in the public sector. I use to work in the NHS and remember receiving a stationery order with invoice once and could not believe the price we were paying for office basics. I went on line and costed the same order from Tesco which I then presented to my manager but she was unable to do anything to change how we purchased these items although we could have saved about 80% of the cost. It wasn't huge sums of money but when it happens hundreds of times everyday it adds up to a wasteful and inefficient system.

The procurement department were also rubbish at negotiating with big suppliers too, they seem to exist only to rubber stamp things but not before they had slowed the whole purchasing process down.