Privatisation Doesn't Work

Few things can be more obvious than that Margaret Thatcher was wrong. Wrong about closing the coal mines and wrong about introducing the poll tax but the greatest thing that she got wrong was her policy of privatisation because it just doesn't work.
The spread of the privatisation movement is grounded in the belief that market competition in the private sector is a more efficient way to provide services provided by the Government and allows for a better deal for us.
In practice, however, it increase costs, lowers the quality of services and leads to rising unemployment because simple logic tells us it's impossible for the private sector to deliver the same service for less and make a profit as well and making a profit is the only reason they are there.
Private companies exist to make a profit for their investors even if they are providing a service to the public, and the only way to increase profit is to reduce the money they pay out (wages) or increase the money they bring in (prices), both of which comes at a huge cost, financial and personal, to the public.
Cutting jobs does not mean cutting out the work those people once did, those who remain see their workloads increase resulting in the public receiving a standard of service less than they received formerly.
We are unlucky enough to see first hand today the results of Margaret Thatcher and her Governments round of privatisations in the 1980's and 1990's when she sold off the electric, gas, water, railways, council homes and telephones services.
The sale of these industries raised £48 billion for the Government and left us with a legacy of poor service and spiralling costs. Take a look at your utilities bills and wonder why your gas and electric has gone up by 10% this winter while Centrica, which operates British Gas, published figures stating a £922 million profit and shareholders enjoying an 18% gain in the value of their holdings .
An amazing 4.5 million households are living in fuel poverty, spending over 10% of its income on heating their homes and that was before the latest round of 7%-10% price increases across the board yet gas and electric companies are making billions in profits.
Now David Cameron is picking up the Thatcher baton and is looking to privatise schools, Royal Mail, forests, motorways and the National Health Service.
We know how this will turn out and we know that there will be a Government charm offensive to convince us that this is the best thing to do for us all with the excuse being the reduction of the deficit.
We know because we have been here before and it doesn't all turn out okay, it ends up with swelling unemployment, poor service and private companies bleeding us dry to make a profit.
Balance sheets are by nature unconcerned with suffering or providing anything to anyone at a loss and that is where the Conservative Party is leading us unless we can find a way to bring this folly of a Government policy to a screeching halt.