Newsnight tonight: Housing

ukcarper

the_flying_pig wrote: »

in real terms calls [especially] & line rental [perhaps not so much] are vastly cheaper than they used to be.

but telecom is a v misleading example of the potential benefits of privatisation since most of these cost savings were the inevitable result of technical progress [which mostly took place overseas] whereby pieces of kit that used to be the size of a house & need half a dozen blokes to operate, become, over time, the size of a matchbox & self-sufficient. a state-owned company would have been no worse placed than BT to buy the new kit off the shelf. of the former state-owned 'utilties' telecom is uniquely high tech & as such not v comparable with others.

social housing provisioon is just about the lowest tech industry imaginable. it's all about renting money to buy & develop land/property. the 'technology' never changes.

telecom service quality has indeed increased but that's really the result of competition rather than privatisation - important not to conflate two very different things. would a privatised monopoly have delivered the same improvements? i doubt it. the current model of HB/private BTL isn't 'competition' at all. the benefits of competition are driven by people shopping arouind to buy the cheapest, best, stuff. with HB the person who does the shopping around [tenant] is not the same person who picks up the bill [the taxpayer], meaning that the shoppers-around have no incentive at all to get the cheapest stuff. in fact we hear [possibly apocryphal] stories about tenants willingly colluding with landlords to increase prices! in other words there are no benefits of competition at all.

Do you really think service quality has increased because of privatisation? Yes you probably would not have to wait so long for a line now but that was improving before privatisation. But they way faults were handled might have been more cumbersome but it produced better results. Prices might be lower but by how much as you say the savings due to technology have been enormous.

I would agree the present system of BTL does not seem very efficient to many groups taking profit along the way. But there seems to be no desire for the government or any body else to set up a more efficient system.

the_flying_pig

ukcarper wrote: »

Do you really think service quality has increased because of privatisation? Yes you probably would not have to wait so long for a line now but that was improving before privatisation. But they way faults were handled might have been more cumbersome but it produced better results...

no, due to competition rather than privatisation. if you want to see what telecoms provided by a single privately owned monopolist looks like, go to Hull.

as to how much service quality has increased by...yeah, i dunno. i was a child when BT was privatised & can't massively remember what it was like before then [although I did like 'Busby' very much]. but my current experience suggests that outright monopoly almost inevitably leads to poor service quality. why wouldn't it?

ukcarper

the_flying_pig wrote: »

no, due to competition rather than privatisation. if you want to see what telecoms provided by a single privately owned monopolist looks like, go to Hull.

as to how much service quality has increased by...yeah, i dunno. i was a child when BT was privatised & can't massively remember what it was like before then [although I did like 'Busby' very much]. but my current experience suggests that outright monopoly almost inevitably leads to poor service quality. why wouldn't it?

I agree a monopoly has no incentive to improve service although BT were making efforts before privatising (could have been the threat of it) but competition doesn’t seem to guarantee it either and how much real competition is there in the telecoms market.

the_flying_pig

ukcarper wrote: »

I agree a monopoly has no incentive to improve service... but competition doesn’t seem to guarantee it either...

it's usually better than the alternative. it doesn't guarantee the best service that you can possibly imagine.

ukcarper wrote: »

...how much real competition is there in the telecoms market.

well, some. like, these days most people get line rental + calls + broadband from the same person. most people have at least a choice between BT [quite expensive] & TalkTalk [cheaper but with costs stripped down to the bone, especially their customer service... trying to get hold of the person you need to speak to in a TalkTalk call centre, if you ever need to, is a lot like trying to get hold of a patient in a downmarket Mumbai asylum]. If you're in a cable area there's also a choice of going with Virgin, where you can get some TV stuff as well. There are the other guys who use BT's network in teh way that TalkTalk does, er, Sky & whatnot. They tend not to be as cheap as TalkTalk but offer some stuff. It's maybe not the greatest textbook example of competition ever but it's OK.

ukcarper

the_flying_pig wrote: »

it's usually better than the alternative. it doesn't guarantee the best service that you can possibly imagine.



well, some. like, these days most people get line rental + calls + broadband from the same person. most people have at least a choice between BT [quite expensive] & TalkTalk [cheaper but with costs stripped down to the bone, especially their customer service... trying to get hold of the person you need to speak to in a TalkTalk call centre, if you ever need to, is a lot like trying to get hold of a patient in a downmarket Mumbai asylum]. If you're in a cable area there's also a choice of going with Virgin, where you can get some TV stuff as well. There are the other guys who use BT's network in teh way that TalkTalk does, er, Sky & whatnot. They tend not to be as cheap as TalkTalk but offer some stuff. It's maybe not the greatest textbook example of competition ever but it's OK.

Do they what % of the line rental you pay Talk Talk goes to BT who will clear a fault on the line.

The drive in telecoms seems to be lowest cost at expense of evrything else. I personally pay more for my broadband than I need to becuse of the good service my provider gives. As i've got older i have come to realise cheapest is not best.

the_flying_pig

ukcarper wrote: »

Do they what % of the line rental you pay Talk Talk goes to BT who will clear a fault on the line.

The drive in telecoms seems to be lowest cost at expense of evrything else. I personally pay more for my broadband than I need to becuse of the good service my provider gives. As i've got older i have come to realise cheapest is not best.

dunno. i should think that if you're paying TalkTalk [say] £10 per month for broadband that a good £7 or £8 of that goes straight back to BT.

on price vs. quality - fair pt for some markets but in the BTL example, there's no sense in which landlords borrowing can introduce a better quality of borrowing than govt doing it.

ukcarper

the_flying_pig wrote: »

dunno. i should think that if you're paying TalkTalk [say] £10 per month for broadband that a good £7 or £8 of that goes straight back to BT.

on price vs. quality - fair pt for some markets but in the BTL example, there's no sense in which landlords borrowing can introduce a better quality of borrowing than govt doing it.

Yes as it's just another level of profit whereas BT are forced to rent thier lines to talk talk at a set amount. Perhaps there is an idea there.

the_flying_pig

ukcarper wrote: »

Yes as it's just another level of profit whereas BT are forced to rent thier lines to talk talk at a set amount. Perhaps there is an idea there.

It’s very hard to have competition in social housing. Competitiononly works if customers suppliers, or at least consider switching suppliers.But if you agree with all the Guardian newspaper sob stories about people beingforced to move from expensive areas etc, in social housing the opposite’s true,there’s a presumption that people should be able to stay in the same placepretty much for ever. Read: basket case.

Types of competition-lite that they might have, I suppose,is, “we [govt]’ve just built 1000 council houses, we’ll award a contract tomaintain them for the next 10 years to whoever can bid the lowest amount” –this seems sensible, but in terms of actually housing people the best I can thinkof is something like, “look, here’s a family who need a house for the next 5years. whoever can offer a decent 3-bed terraced house at the lowest rent gets thecontract to be their landlord”. Sounds like a poor second best to councilhousing IMO.

ukcarper

I don’t think much council housing still exists, in the area where I was bought up the council stock was moved over to a housing association. Although old people occupying 3 bed houses can be a problem, where I lived whilst they were still council properties the council build sheltered accommodation. There is no shortage of old people willing to move out of their 3 bed houses into it.