UK General Election 2024

[Irons]

The Tory MP who asked the police to investigate Rayner was James Daly, the same MP who asked the police to investigate Starmer. As you say, best to stay factual.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/angela-rayner-council-house-james-daly-b2530174.html
 

That is true Daly did report Rayner to police but the story was broke by Lord Ashcroft in his unauthorised biography of Rayner "The Red Queen".

https://news.sky.com/story/what-is-angela-rayner-accused-of-why-deputy-labour-leader-is-being-investigated-and-what-shes-said-13115839

[Luke]

I know, but if you look at the original exchange we had I wasn't talking about the person who made the allegation but about the person who urged the police to investigate.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Or has he simply had enough? Going to lose anyway.

One thing that I'm curious about:  who owns/runs various utilities in the UK?  I know that there have been problems with services such as water (which I believe is controlled by private companies).  Where does heating fall under?  And gas and electric (which I know can also be sources of heating).  Are they all privately held?  If so, what are the caps like?

PD

[Irons]

One thing that I'm curious about:  who owns/runs various utilities in the UK?  I know that there have been problems with services such as water (which I believe is controlled by private companies).  Where does heating fall under?  And gas and electric (which I know can also be sources of heating).  Are they all privately held?  If so, what are the caps like?

PD

Most were under state ownership and as they were in a mess the Conservative government sold them off to privatise them. Now they are in a bigger mess.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Most were under state ownership and as they were in a mess the Conservative government sold them off to privatise them. Now they are in a bigger mess.

Eck!  Roughly, when did that happen (or various dates)?

PD

[Mandryka]

Eck!  Roughly, when did that happen (or various dates)?

PD

Mid 1980s. It was interesting because the companies were publicly owned, and so in a way she was selling off an asset which was the people's. What she did was make the share offer very cheap for ordinary people,  in order to create an asset owning working class. Same with her sell off of publicly owned housing.

I remember the adverts on TV -- and the excitement about it all

[Todd]

What she did was make the share offer very cheap for ordinary people, in order to create an asset owning working class

Are ordinary, working class people the majority shareholders, or even material minority shareholders, of the publicly traded companies, or do large institutional investors, including foreign sovereign wealth funds, own most shares? 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Most were under state ownership and as they were in a mess the Conservative government sold them off to privatise them. Now they are in a bigger mess.

Eck!  Roughly, when did that happen (or various dates)?

PD

Are ordinary, working class people the majority shareholders, or even material minority shareholders, of the publicly traded companies, or do large institutional investors, including foreign sovereign wealth funds, own most shares? 

I was wondering too as to how this worked.  Does the government still own any of the shares?  Or, as Todd asked, do mostly big corporations or others own the biggest chunks of them?

PD

[Todd]

Or, as Todd asked, do mostly big corporations or others own the biggest chunks of them?

My question was rhetorical.  If a company is publicly traded, large institutional investors own the vast majority of shares.  Only if there is a multi-tiered share structure (eg, Facebook) does publicly traded share ownership not reflect actual ownership and control.  There is a reasonable probability that some of the companies have multi-tiered ownership structures, and ultimately, governments always have the power to nationalize such companies and industries if they choose, and they have done so before, so such companies and industries are not perfect equivalents to pure private market companies.  I was curious and did about fifteen minutes of digging and found this regarding the largest traded utilities on the FTSE:

Leading utilities companies listed on London Stock Exchange (UK) in August 2023, by market capitalization

I then looked up National Grid Plc to check share ownership, and all the standard names appear, with Vanguard the largest single shareholder.  BlackRock is listed, various sovereign wealth funds are listed, and interestingly, Capital Research & Management Co. (American Funds on the retail side) is listed twice, through two different entities.  That implies that in the UK as in the US, there are additional requirements if a company owns 5% or more of publicly traded shares.  More interesting yet would be to know which, if any, companies are owned outright by private equity funds, hedge funds, or special purposes entities (assuming those exist in the UK). 

This article from The Graun from a couple years ago also popped up:

Revealed: more than 70% of English water industry is in foreign ownership

The British have fully and passionately embraced private ownership of utilities, for good or for bad.

I may have materially misstated reality on the ground, of course, so if I did, perhaps a UK forum member can shed additional light on the affected companies and industries.

[Luke]

The British have fully and passionately embraced private ownership of utilities, for good or for bad.

It's true that the powers-that-be have embraced private ownership. I'm not so sure it's embraced by 'the British' in the sense of public opinion. In general those in charge of the privatised utilities are unloved because they seem to put shareholders before service, and, in some cases (eg a current case would be that of the water companies responsible for filling our rivers with unspeakable pollutants whilst raking in enormous bonuses) positively reviled.

(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/26/england-water-companies-shareholders-dividends-river-sea George Monbiot on the environmental results of privatisation; he's a polemical, passionate writer but I'd say he probably reflects the views of most of the country when it comes to this issue - I may be wrong of course)

[Mandryka]

[Florestan]

40 years since privatization, are the services better and cheaper than they were when state-owned? That is the question.

the water companies responsible for filling our rivers with unspeakable pollutants whilst raking in enormous bonuses

Who owns the rivers? IOW, who has the right (or perhaps the duty) to issue anti-pollution regulations and the power to enforce them?

[Mandryka]

40 years since privatization, are the services better and cheaper than they were when state-owned? That is the question.

The service is better, I would say, in the case of Telecoms and primary and secondary Education. And the service seems to have deteriorated in the case of some key health outcomes, both absolutely and relatively.

[Irons]

40 years since privatization, are the services better and cheaper than they were when state-owned? That is the question.

A lot has changed in forty years which makes it a difficult question to answer. The Royal Mail is a case in point, forty years ago we enjoyed two deliveries a day six days a week. Today we are lucky to receive four deliveries total a week. But perhaps email and competition has more to do with drop in standards then privatization.
 

[Florestan]

The service is better, I would say, in the case of Telecoms and primary and secondary Education. And the service seems to have deteriorated in the case of some key health outcomes, both absolutely and relatively.

I'd say that some services are predisposed by their very nature to a good, even better, outcome in private hands than in the state's, and telecom and education are prime examples. Healthcare is a thorny issue, though.

[Florestan]

A lot has changed in forty years which makes it a difficult question to answer. The Royal Mail is a case in point, forty years ago we enjoyed two deliveries a day six days a week. Today we are lucky to receive four deliveries total a week. But perhaps email and competition has more to do with drop in standards then privatization.
 

That's my opinion as well.

[Mandryka]

In the case of healthcare, two things have happened in the Uk over the past 25 years. One is greater involvement of private provision, and the other is inadequate  of real per capita spend by Government. It's hard to separate the effect of these. You'd also have to separate out the private provision of day to day healthcare within the National Health Service, and the private funding of major infrastructure projects for the National Health Service.

To add to the complexity, health care capacity is partly dependent on the possibility of safely discharging hospital patients to free up a bed. But whether a hospital can discharge a patient is itself dependent on the availability of personal care for that patient once out of hospital. The UK's personal care sector is privatised, and has suffered greatly from tougher immigration controls and Brexit, it's a low pay sector and Britain's unemployment rate is low. So there's a political element too.

[Todd]

...and the other is inadequate of real per capita spend by Government.

The US spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other country in the world, yet measurable outcomes are often inferior.  The relationship between expenditure and outcomes is substantially more complicated than simply throwing money at the problem (the American specialty).  However, since the UK is below the advanced economy average, it perhaps should endeavor to match at least France in this regard.  One would think that would be a matter of national pride.

One thing that I would hope the Brits could take the lead on is killing off silly talk of a suitable percentage of GDP being an idealized cap on such expenditures. 

[Luke]

That is true Daly did report Rayner to police but the story was broke by Lord Ashcroft in his unauthorised biography of Rayner "The Red Queen".

https://news.sky.com/story/what-is-angela-rayner-accused-of-why-deputy-labour-leader-is-being-investigated-and-what-shes-said-13115839

Just to round that off, the police have just said they are not going to investigate Rayner any more.

[vandermolen]

A lot has changed in forty years which makes it a difficult question to answer. The Royal Mail is a case in point, forty years ago we enjoyed two deliveries a day six days a week. Today we are lucky to receive four deliveries total a week. But perhaps email and competition has more to do with drop in standards then privatization.
 

Often we get no post for several days - then it all arrives at once.