| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:The assets of the nation | |
| Posted by: | Richard Greenhough | |
| Date/Time: | 26/06/07 14:34:00 |
| Philip, if you really think that under nationalisation businesses such as BT were competitive, you must wear blinkers. Although technically they "belonged to us all", in reality they were poorly run and provided an expensive and inefficient service for which users - the ordinary people - had to pay through the nose. The assets that had been built up by private enterprise were allowed to go to waste by inefficient public corporations, and in doing so harmed both the national economy and the consumers of their services, which due to monopoly protection they were forced to use as there were no alternatives. As it happens I do have concerns that strategic national industries have come under foreign control, which is one of the side-effects of EU membership whereby we cannot prevent other EU-based businesses buying up British firms. However, the overall effect of freeing businesses from the dead hand of state ownership has been beneficial to both the national wealth and the customers of those businesses. |