Posts Tagged ‘Privatisation’

Why, in England at least, do we still suffer with terrible connection speeds? Some people would say that over the years the amount of bandwidth an average user can expect has rocketed and on paper this is true. I am currently on an unlimited 8mbps line with BT, this is BT’s most expensive package however I am willing to admit it is still reasonable at £25 per month.

So you’re thinking to yourself 8 mbps that’s quite fast, yes? Well maybe if I actually received 8mbps I would be quite happy however I actually receive 3.5 mbps even though I am literally a mile from my local exchange. For those of you who don’t know the reason we do not receive decent internet speeds is due to the terrible condition of the local wire system.

Privatisation

The telephone system is controlled by the government and as such controlled by us however some in-bred conservatives came up with the idea of privatisation and it’s been downhill for most of our public services ever since.

The government get a chunk of money for letting i.e. BT run the phone system this saves the government any up keep costs etc and also earning them a nice upfront cash bonus for doing nothing. When anything goes wrong with the privatised services they can just point the finger at the company. Nice job running the country boys…. back to my place for tea and biscuits!

I have yet, in England, to see a good example of a privatised service that doesn’t run said service into the ground. Rail, Water, telephone they are all run at a minimum of maintenance costs eventually leading to bad service and in the case of rail travel sometimes great tragedy. One of the main reasons for the said privatisation was because the companies were meant to make a better job of upgrading our services and making them modern. FAT CHANCE

What we end up with is the same telephone lines, rail lines and water pipes that our parents used… at least when they used them they were new!

Of course the companies running these services are not interested in up grading them, all they are really interested in is how fast they can milk the cash cow they just rented. Why invest in upgrading your service when you can spend that money on advertising?

They keep us on the edge of our seats:

www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/09/bt_fibre_trial/

Then they let us down:

http://technical-itch.co.uk/2006/11/21/bt-rules-out-fibre-optic-roll-out/

You have been saying you’re going to give us good service and fibre optics since 1990!

ARE YOU WAITING FOR SOME BREAKTHROUGH THAT’S GOING TO ALLOW 100MBPS ON 40 YEAR OLD TWISTED PAIR CABLE? STOP DREAMING!

WHERE IS MY EXCHANGE TO HOME FIBRE OPTICS YOU BAS*E*DS?

WHY HAVE YOU NOT EVEN STARTED?

I would like to start by pointing out that “The Bank of England” is not a public institution as its name might suggest. So what role did they play in the nationalisation of Northern Rock and more recently Bradford and Bingley?

All the articles I have read regarding these transactions usually make the assumption/give the impression, that The Bank of England is a government run agency. In fact even though it is our central bank it is in fact a private company with private shareholders and is not subject to regulation by the British parliament.

Of course every country in Europe works in the same way America’s Federal Reserve despite its official bearing is still a private company.

So being a private company, why would they have anything to do with the nationalisation of these other banks?

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.” – President James A. Garfield (1831-1881)

The Bank of England control the supply of money in our country and this is because it is considered that if the government controlled this supply they would use it for political advantage and cause greater problems than are present at the moment.

Surely this is a Conservative policy…. I agree totally about limiting the government’s power and control over our lives however is giving this control to a group of private individuals, out to make profit, a better solution?

There are many sites and conspiracy nuts out there ready to tell you all about how these bankers are a “government within a government” and need to be stopped, so I won’t say anymore on that side of thing. Back to the point I am still tenuously pursuing….

When the government needed the money to nationalise Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley they, not having the power to print this money themselves, have borrowed it off the Bank of England. This borrowing of money is not free despite the fact that it is that governments currency you can be sure that a healthy rate of interest will be due.

We as tax payers will be paying this back to the Bank of England for quite some time. So when we pay taxes we are really paying this debt. In America it is calculated that all of the income tax collected goes to paying the “interest only” on the national debt.

So we nationalised lots of bad debt, which means that if these debts turn to defaults we the public lose out and in the meantime we get to pay the interest on the loans we took out to buy these failed institutions. Is anyone happy with that scenario?

So then why did we bail out these institutions? Is it because they were the foundation of our financial institutions? Was it to save the anguish of the people who held deposits with those companies?

With an election coming up it’s easier for Mr Brown to dump these costs on the future, using methods nobody really understands and clouded with misleading terms like “The Bank of England”. After all if you just lost deposits at your bank due to Mr Brown’s faith in deregulation and “Free Market Economics” would he get your vote?