Omg 18%

Bobziz

ComicGeek said:

zagfles said:

Nebulous2 said:

zagfles said:

ComicGeek said:

Prism said:

sgx2000 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

sgx2000 said:

Tony Blair was the most successful PM im the last 50 years..

Electorally no more successful than Maggie.

Both succeeded in their time to address the challenges of the era.
Both implemented policies that were unpopular while carrying the populace with them.
Both set a vision and led (rather than managed) the country.

Maggie was only suceeded by, selling off all the family silver.... to the wealthy tory voters ....
We owned all the utilities
Now foreign companies own them

Who wants to own and run the utilities? We already control them pretty well with policy without having to run them. 

All profits are stripped from the utility companies and paid to executives and shareholders. Very small amount is reinvested into network maintenance and improvements, which is why 20-25% of water is lost through network leaks.

We have an ageing distribution system for all utilities - power outages and water supply issues are more to do with low network investment than anything else. 

This thread is descending into the sort of tw*tter soundbite hyperbole...there is a point, but even as this Guardian article, highly critical of the water companies, says https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders

"The payouts in dividends to shareholders of parent companies between 1991 and 2019 amount to £57bn – nearly half the sum they spent on maintaining and improving the country’s pipes and treatment plants in that period."

ie turning it around, they spent over double the amount in maintenance and improvements than they paid to shareholders

I'm not sure that is necessarily a record to be proud of. They're in a very capital intensive industry, with a local monopoly which limits competition. Does investing two-thirds of available money in the business and paying the other third in dividends seem reasonable? 

I doubt if my portrayal of 'available money'  would bear scrutiny either, as I'm sure a lot of the capital projects will have been financed and will be paid over many years. 

I'm not saying it is, I was just addressing the ridiculous tw*tter type hyperbole that "all profits are stripped..." etc. Two thirds might well not be enough, but it's not a "very small amount"

Maintenance and network improvement are costs incurred as part of the day to day work of the utility companies. They occur before profits are calculated.

Therefore the function of the utility companies should firstly be to invest sufficiently in the network before they pay dividends. The fact that they limit maintenance costs to increase dividend and bonus payments should be challenged. The reality is that they should be reinvesting all the profit into improvements/maintenance.

Agree within reason as investors need a fair ROI. Problem is the so called massive investment made by utilities such as the water industry has meant massive dealt, with interest payments paid for by the bill payers.

sevenhills

Surely it's the Government that control energy supply?
We got rid of gas storage and coal fired power stations because of government policy.

[Deleted User]

ComicGeek said:

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Prism said:

sgx2000 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

sgx2000 said:

Tony Blair was the most successful PM im the last 50 years..

Electorally no more successful than Maggie.

Both succeeded in their time to address the challenges of the era.
Both implemented policies that were unpopular while carrying the populace with them.
Both set a vision and led (rather than managed) the country.

Maggie was only suceeded by, selling off all the family silver.... to the wealthy tory voters ....
We owned all the utilities
Now foreign companies own them

Who wants to own and run the utilities? We already control them pretty well with policy without having to run them. 

All profits are stripped from the utility companies and paid to executives and shareholders. Very small amount is reinvested into network maintenance and improvements, which is why 20-25% of water is lost through network leaks.

We have an ageing distribution system for all utilities - power outages and water supply issues are more to do with low network investment than anything else. 

I am always curious why people would be visiting a retirement/investment forum if they are  ideologically opposed to profits and shareholders.  

I'm not ideologically opposed - I just believe that certain things are too important to allow private investors to control for personal profit, utility companies being the main one. Security of energy supply is critical for any country, and the lack of investment in infrastructure is dangerous.

Part of my work is dealing with large scale utility infrastructure connections - people would be shocked to see how much of the current infrastructure is held together by temporary fixes, with major issues to come in the immediate future.

So no, I don't believe that people should profit from dividends that should clearly be used for national security investment.

The model you so desire has been implemented in Venezuela. Formally the richest country in South America. So beloved by the former Labour leader (currently suspended).  Worked great.  You should experience it in person. 

ComicGeek

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Deleted_User said:

ComicGeek said:

Prism said:

sgx2000 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

sgx2000 said:

Tony Blair was the most successful PM im the last 50 years..

Electorally no more successful than Maggie.

Both succeeded in their time to address the challenges of the era.
Both implemented policies that were unpopular while carrying the populace with them.
Both set a vision and led (rather than managed) the country.

Maggie was only suceeded by, selling off all the family silver.... to the wealthy tory voters ....
We owned all the utilities
Now foreign companies own them

Who wants to own and run the utilities? We already control them pretty well with policy without having to run them. 

All profits are stripped from the utility companies and paid to executives and shareholders. Very small amount is reinvested into network maintenance and improvements, which is why 20-25% of water is lost through network leaks.

We have an ageing distribution system for all utilities - power outages and water supply issues are more to do with low network investment than anything else. 

I am always curious why people would be visiting a retirement/investment forum if they are  ideologically opposed to profits and shareholders.  

I'm not ideologically opposed - I just believe that certain things are too important to allow private investors to control for personal profit, utility companies being the main one. Security of energy supply is critical for any country, and the lack of investment in infrastructure is dangerous.

Part of my work is dealing with large scale utility infrastructure connections - people would be shocked to see how much of the current infrastructure is held together by temporary fixes, with major issues to come in the immediate future.

So no, I don't believe that people should profit from dividends that should clearly be used for national security investment.

The model you so desire has been implemented in Venezuela. Formally the richest country in South America. So beloved by the former Labour leader (currently suspended).  Worked great.  You should experience it in person. 

Not really, not sure why people have to work so hard to twist things on here. 

The Netherlands would be a better example of publicly owned infrastructure, although renewable energy provision is lagging behind.

Moby

I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated economic and political thinking for far too long now.

When inflation hits, 'common sense' dictates that working men and women should accept below inflation pay rises, otherwise inflation bites. When the banks crash and the government bails them out, working men and women have to accept lower public spending and higher taxes, because reducing public debt is 'common sense'. In an external energy price shock, if the government wants to keep prices down, then it's 'common sense' that the costs should ultimately be borne by consumers through higher future bills and through some complex tax on profits that allows multiple loopholes to reduce the cost to business owners.

At no point in any of this is the legitimacy of the market pricing mechanism questioned, as neo-liberal orthodoxy dictates that market mechanisms are sacrosanct. Putin's actions has shifted thinking on such issues in ways that Jeremy Corbyn was never going to do....sometimes it takes a war to change the way we do things.

zagfles

Moby said:

I can't help feeling that what we are seeing is the end point of the neo-liberal orthodoxy that has dominated economic and political thinking for far too long now.

  No we really aren't. Really. Every time there's any sort of economic turbulance or social unrest the revolutionaries get all excited. The inner city riots in the early 80's, the miner's strike, the poll tax riots, black Wednesday, the global financial crisis, the 2011 riots, the occupy protests, the yellow jackets, Corbyn. Yeah, man, this time it's real! The age of neo-liberalism is over! We'll overthrow the system!

Err....no. Some minor tweaks are made, a few lessons are learnt, but the system survives. Because people aren't stupid, they've seen the result of revolutions all over the world. They don't buy the ridiculous "well they did it wrong" or "the rest of the world conspired against them" arguments.

When inflation hits, 'common sense' dictates that working men and women should accept below inflation pay rises, otherwise inflation bites. When the banks crash and the government bails them out, working men and women have to accept lower public spending and higher taxes, because reducing public debt is 'common sense'. In an external energy price shock, if the government wants to keep prices down, then it's 'common sense' that the costs should ultimately be borne by consumers through higher future bills and through some complex tax on profits that allows multiple loopholes to reduce the cost to business owners.

At no point in any of this is the legitimacy of the market pricing mechanism questioned, as neo-liberal orthodoxy dictates that market mechanisms are sacrosanct. Putin's actions has shifted thinking on such issues in ways that Jeremy Corbyn was never going to do....sometimes it takes a war to change the way we do things.

Have you read the energy board recently? That's the trouble with living in a "neo-liberal" democracy, you're allowed to question what your leaders do, and people do. Come the revolution, that neo-liberal idea will be consigned to the scrapheap of history.

You're right that Putin's actions have shifted thinking though. Who'd have thought Europe would because so united, even in the face of the severe pain being inflicted on us? Who'd have thought the UK's standing in the Europe would improve so much after the lows of Brexit, we even came second in Eurovision after several years of finishing at or near the bottom! They're actually starting to like us after Brexit!

Andy_L

sgx2000 said:

Prism said:

sgx2000 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

sgx2000 said:

Tony Blair was the most successful PM im the last 50 years..

Electorally no more successful than Maggie.

Both succeeded in their time to address the challenges of the era.
Both implemented policies that were unpopular while carrying the populace with them.
Both set a vision and led (rather than managed) the country.

Maggie was only suceeded by, selling off all the family silver.... to the wealthy tory voters ....
We owned all the utilities
Now foreign companies own them

Who wants to own and run the utilities? We already control them pretty well with policy without having to run them. 

We control them?  Hahaha

Before the tories sold them off. 
We all paid the same price per unit......
We had large stockpiles of gas  ... remember all those gas towers?
And utility managememt didnt give themselves bonuses in the millions....

Gasometers weren't for stockpiling, there were a pressure regulating mechanism 

Andy_L

ComicGeek said:

Prism said:

sgx2000 said:

Grumpy_chap said:

sgx2000 said:

Tony Blair was the most successful PM im the last 50 years..

Electorally no more successful than Maggie.

Both succeeded in their time to address the challenges of the era.
Both implemented policies that were unpopular while carrying the populace with them.
Both set a vision and led (rather than managed) the country.

Maggie was only suceeded by, selling off all the family silver.... to the wealthy tory voters ....
We owned all the utilities
Now foreign companies own them

Who wants to own and run the utilities? We already control them pretty well with policy without having to run them. 

All profits are stripped from the utility companies and paid to executives and shareholders. Very small amount is reinvested into network maintenance and improvements, which is why 20-25% of water is lost through network leaks.

We have an ageing distribution system for all utilities - power outages and water supply issues are more to do with low network investment than anything else. 

AIUI the water leak %age isn't high by either international or historical comparison 

daz378

The reason I mentioned capping the price  at the moment...while personally would be good...I recognise  the potential  debt burden problems.. I thought they may do it to protect the economy..  alternative then to help the poorest  and others to a lesser extent  as your income rises... surely in future    there needs to be  more contingency   spending  around energy resilience...wonder if   because  of the  shocks that have impacted global trade....economic  systems  will move away from the just in time/global Village  and  concentrate  on national resiliency.   Bet solar panel sales to those that can afford it are going through  roof

Andy_L

NedS said:

sevenhills said:

NedS said:

And Gordon Brown, then Chancellor in Tony Blair's government, sold off the family gold (at the worst possible time)

Did you know gold prices would increase after Gordon Brown sold off the gold?
Tell us all now if the price of gold will increase, we can all buy now and become rich 😭😭

My point was to illustrate that Labour behaved no differently than Maggie 'selling off the family silver'.

"The money raised from the gold sale was put into assets that yielded a return - bonds and currencies"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48177767

What was done with the income from privatisation?