Originally posted by mattpryor
Do we have any treasures left to protect? I thought Gordon Brown flogged them all in a car boot sale 
I think you'll find the boot sale started under Thatcher, whose ideological commitment to privatisation has led directly to the wonderful state of
Britain today.
Years ago I worked for the pre-privatisation London Electricity Board. Their "mission statement" as it would be called today, was, "To provide
electricity to the people of London as cheaply and efficiently as possible".
Obviously there was something wrong with that because it was a missed opportunity for some fat cats to make money.
I've more recently worked for EDF, and I have to say that the promised increases in efficiency have not happened: but a huge layer of infrastructure
means people can now swap from one provider to another in the faint hopes of shaving a few pence from bills that are much higher than they would be
under a nationalised system.
Again, you have only to look at what happened to British Rail. Thatcher ran down its budget until it was ready for someone to turn around and say,
"this is terrible, we must get the private sector involved". Everyone fell for it and we now have an expensive and unwieldy system in which profit
is privatised but the losses are still picked up by the public purse.
It's stupid.
And while I have no brief for Brown, blaming it all on him is the kind of ignorance I was sent here to deny.
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