Corbyn effect! Re-nationalising! At last some sense!!!

missbiggles1

michaels wrote: »

LU drivers (public ownership) earner 50k+
London bus drivers (privatised) earn low 20s k

I rest my case.

Why is that a good thing?

How many people can afford to live permanently in the London area on a salary that low (even with free travel)?

lisyloo

How many people can afford to live permanently in the London area on a salary that low

Basically, those who bought their houses a while ago.

SnooksNJ

Corbyn's Salary £125K with taxpayer funded car
Average UK salary £26,500 no car.

Graham_Devon

Very first question put to David Cameron on Prime Ministers Questions.

What is he going to do about the lack of affordable housing and extortionate rents charged by landlords.

That's going to be all over the news and media.

Profile of the housing issue raised significantly.

DTDfanBoy

missbiggles1 wrote: »

Why is that a good thing?

How many people can afford to live permanently in the London area on a salary that low (even with free travel)?

Why do we need our bus drivers to live permanently in London, there's no shortage of people around my neck of the woods who choose to live here, and commute into London, as they get a lot more house for their money.

If professional people are happy to accept such compromises I fail to see why a bus driver can't also

gadgetmind

whitegoods_engineer wrote: »

How stupid is it that we have one product, energy, needed by everybody, being split up between various wholesalers, retailers, marketing and other companies!

I remember the days when gas came from the "Gas Board" and the only telecomms supplier was the Post Office, and it was rubbish. No real investment, lousy service, a telephone system decades behind the rest of the world, and high prices.

Privatisation certainly needs handling with care, but it transformed these utilities and services in ways that could never have happened under public ownership.

lisyloo

Corbyn's Salary £125K with taxpayer funded car

That's going to be useful in Islington !!

Profile of the housing issue raised significantly.

I don't think Jeremy Corbyn has any hope of being PM but I'm really glad he's changing the focus of the debate.

If professional people are happy to accept such compromises I fail to see why a bus driver can't also

Cost of commute is one reason.
If you're on £100K then paying £10K for a season ticket isn't an issue, but it is if you only earn £20K.

cells

Generali wrote: »

I just find it difficult to believe that each of the privatised utilities got more efficient, not as a result of privatisation but coincidentally timed to match when they were.

Conformation bias?

I'm only teasing general. I agree with you but I figure there isn't any good left wing counters so I've temporarily taken that side to try and up the debate

..... Would the state have gone to those more efficient power stations and methods? Maybe not in which case you could argue the private utilities under a more liberal market brought those technologies to market sooner than the state could/would have.

I would guess in that industry it was at least 2/3rd technology and all those other thing's but still some of the benefit was from privite owners

And last point state don't need to own utilities they can just regulate price or force them to use certain tech or standards.

cells

lisyloo wrote: »

That's going to be useful in Islington !!



I don't think Jeremy Corbyn has any hope of being PM but I'm really glad he's changing the focus of the debate.



Cost of commute is one reason.
If you're on £100K then paying £10K for a season ticket isn't an issue, but it is if you only earn £20K.

Some 2 million of London live in social homes surly a few of those can drive buses if taught. The argument of London is expensive and soon no one can live there as there will be no nurses or bus driver's is simply incorrect.

If people want a more affordable London the state needs to sell down its 850,000 council homes in London and reallocate the people in them to places in outer London or further

stator

The country can't afford to nationalise much. Our credit rating is currently ranging from AAA to A (two steps below AAA). If the UK government starts borrowing billions upon billions to buy Trains and Energy Companies it might cause people to question how much we can borrow.
Instead of paying profits to private companies, we end up paying interest on the debt we borrowed to nationalise them.
To begin with that might be ok, the interest will be lower than the dividends. But as confidence in our pile of debt falters, interest rates start going up.
When that happens it's not just new borrowing that becomes more expensive, but old borrowing has to be rolled over and we get into a debt spiral and soon we can't afford the interest.

For example a few years ago I worked out the market capitalisation of all the train owning companies (ROSCO) and it was approximately 10 billion. So the government would have to borrow 10 billion just to buy these trains, costing ~130 million per year in interest payments. And that would lead to absolutely ZERO improvements in the service, we would just own the trains, they wouldn't go faster or increase capacity.
In my humble opinion nationalised infrastructure is more often neglected and subject to budget cuts.
Wages in nationalised industries tend to go up too. Unions start demanding more and more and inflation goes up, which leads to more demands for wage increases. Cuts get made elsewhere and the service quality falls, trains that should be replaced are kept going because no-one has any capital to spend in their budget.
Regarding the Energy Companies, I don't see what benefit nationalisation would have.

Instead of nationalising, the government should put money into building houses with large scale schemes organised by the local councils. Selling off half the houses in the private sector would make the schemes self funding after the initial capital investment.