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Margaret_Thatcher wrote: Only way to make them run effectively...simple. How much tax do you think you'd be paying now if they were in public hands...and how efficient do you think they would be?
Bollocks.
Sorry to be blunt and confrontational. But that argument makes my blood boil.
If state-owned industries are badly run, that's an issue of management and policy implementation, not a question of ownership. Please tell me what law of physics states that working for a publicly owned corporation causes a drop in efficiency.
There is none, of course, what there is instead is an historical artefact. There are well-understood reasons for the tendency of publicly owned institutions to run less efficiently than private ones. When people advocate selling public assets into private hands, they are essentially stating that they are unaware of, or do not understand those reasons. Or if they are aware of them and understand them, they are not competent to address them.
The question, to me, then becomes: why the fuck are you standing for office?! The job of running a nation includes running those assets owned by the nation. Standing for election on the platform "we don't know how to run this stuff efficiently, so we're going to sell it" is mind-boggling to me. And that people should vote for that platform in large numbers merely demonstrates the irrationality of crowds.
Public assets can be run efficiently and effectively. It's really not impossible. Selling them off is both criminally negligent (and I mean that literally; a government that fails to protect the interests of those it represents is negligent; one that actively schemes to damage those interests is criminally so) and an admission of incompetence.
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