Banks

[ahinton]

Ah. You're ahead of me!

"The English army had just won the war", as in (the Beatles' A Day in the Life)?...

[Flosshilde]

Originally Posted by scottycelt
What English Government ... ?

Ah. You're ahead of me!

The one in Westminster that legislates on English matters (including matters to do with local authorities & housing, which is what we are discussing)

[teamsaint]

The answer is to just have a government that does things for its people, especially if the private sector won't.
Build houses, provide jobs, run trains, generate power, etc etc.
Just do it.
Stop the pathetic excuses and pandering to the banks and big money. Government for the people, by the people.

In fact, stop the tail wagging the dog.
Trouble is, there is nobody to vote for who will do this stuff, because the banks bought them all. Check the CVs of the "labour" front bench. Bankers.

Yes, a rant. But all those who believe that the current so called free markets(and ours are usually rigged markets) will save us all, might be grateful for a bit of collective activity when the credit bubble finally bursts.

[ahinton]

The answer is to just have a government that does things for its people, especially if the private sector won't.

"The government" and "the private sector" are not entirely mutually incompatible, you know; participants in the latter have been known to vote for the former...

Build houses, provide jobs, run trains, generate power, etc etc.
Just do it.
Stop the pathetic excuses and pandering to the banks and big money. Government for the people, by the people.

Who pays for this? Who will be able to afford to live in those houses, who will find the jobs (and what happens to the profits generated by those jobs that are actually worked), who will be able to afford to travel on the trains and who will want the state-provided energy if they can generate their own?

In fact, stop the tail wagging the dog.

And bring the vet in (although I'm not sure at whose expense)...

Trouble is, there is nobody to vote for who will do this stuff, because the banks bought them all. Check the CVs of the "labour" front bench. Bankers.

The banks have no more bought all of the potential or actual voters than they have those for whom one can vote, as far as I know.

Yes, a rant. But all those who believe that the current so called free markets(and ours are usually rigged markets) will save us all, might be grateful for a bit of collective activity when the credit bubble finally bursts.

Free markets, rigged markets, state-run markets, village once-a-week markets - they're all markets. And what's this "collective activity" (who's collecting on behalf of whom?) of which you write if it doesn't involve markets? A has something, B wants it, there's an instant market thereby created even when A and/or B is the state.

Democracy for planet Earth?
They roll it back for all they're worth!...

G'night all!

[teamsaint]

AH..the banks bought the political parties, not the voters.

WE pay for this stuff. Taxes. Instead of bailing out banks and paying big profits to American healthcare companies, private train companies, rapacious bailed out banks who pay millions to their investment arm employees, private generating companies who do us for every penny etc etc.

Its been done before it can be done now.We, as a population have been utterly hoodwinked into thinking that only big private monopoly/oligopolies can run our world...... perhaps not...its never too late..

[Flosshilde]

"The government" and "the private sector" are not entirely mutually incompatible, you know; participants in the latter have been known to vote for the former...

Especially when the former promise the latter nice fat contracts from privatised public services.

[amateur51]

AH..the banks bought the political parties, not the voters.

WE pay for this stuff. Taxes. Instead of bailing out banks and paying big profits to American healthcare companies, private train companies, rapacious bailed out banks who pay millions to their investment arm employees, private generating companies who do us for every penny etc etc.

Its been done before it can be done now.We, as a population have been utterly hoodwinked into thinking that only big private monopoly/oligopolies can run our world...... perhaps not...its never too late..

Well if ahinton had his way, I'm sure private medicine would have been the sole-provider of healthcare after 1945.

Can't upset the bigboys, oh deary me no

[Dave2002]

Lobs another ball in: Has anyone tried peer to peer lending/borrowing? Examples - Zopa, Funding Circle, Quakle.

[amateur51]

Lobs another ball in: Has anyone tried peer to peer lending/borrowing? Examples - Zopa, Funding Circle, Quakle.

Very useful and admirable for small-scale lending, I agree

[PhilipT]

The answer is to just have a government that does things for its people, especially if the private sector won't.
Build houses, provide jobs, run trains, generate power, etc etc.
Just do it.

WE pay for this stuff. Taxes. Instead of bailing out banks and paying big profits to American healthcare companies, private train companies, rapacious bailed out banks who pay millions to their investment arm employees, private generating companies who do us for every penny etc etc.

I'm a little confused. Are you suggesting that if all the funding for housing, industrial investment, railways, power generation and so on were to come from the public purse rather than be raised by private companies, that taxes would not have to go higher than they are now? Where will the public purse get the money other than by taxing people? It really would be taxing the people, too - if businesses aren't allowed to make profits, they can't be taxed.

I'd like to focus on one particular point. Over the next few years there will be, if nothing is done, a real electricity supply crunch in this country. Elderly nuclear power stations will be decommissioned, coal-fired stations will be closed to meet carbon-dioxide emissions targets, and so on. What is to be done about this? To build new power stations will require money, lots of money. Where is that money to come from? Taxes on the people, or from an excess of income over expenditure among the power supply companies?

[Flosshilde]

Philip, construction of new power generation (which is the issue, not supply) infrastructure is subsidised - windfarms are, any new nuclear reactors are, domestic solar panels are, & I think (I'm not as certain about this) any new coal & gas fired generation is. Funding for council housing, for railways, for new hospitals & schools & so on used to come from the public purse without any problem. It was wrecked by Thatcher (or possibly more accurately Keith Joseph) & her followers. & it wasn't because it wasn't working - it was because they couldn't bear the fact that it did work. They were ideologically committed to the 'free' market, which is in fact anything but, and 'personal responsibility' - the ancestor of the present government's view that anybody on benefits is a 'scrounger', living off 'hard working families'.

[Resurrection Man]

The need for low-cost rented housing was met quite well by council housing, until Thatcher insisted that it should be sold to tennants at massive discounts, & prevented councils building new housing with the income. Then Blair/Brown completed the job by blackmailing councils into handing over the remaining stock to private organisations.


Is that sane & sensible enough for you?

That was then. What do you propose now?

Just picking up again the micro-thread on using a personal account to run ones business through. Leaving aside the ethics of that, what you're now doing (TS and MrGG) is doubling the chances of you going into the red unexpectedly/financial mismanagement/poor credit control of debtors/whatever and then when you get allegedly 'penalised' by the banks, somehow it is their fault? Always 'someone else's fault'.

[Resurrection Man]

Philip, construction of new power generation (which is the issue, not supply) infrastructure is subsidised - windfarms are, any new nuclear reactors are, domestic solar panels are, & I think (I'm not as certain about this) any new coal & gas fired generation is. Funding for council housing, for railways, for new hospitals & schools & so on used to come from the public purse without any problem. It was wrecked by Thatcher (or possibly more accurately Keith Joseph) & her followers. & it wasn't because it wasn't working - it was because they couldn't bear the fact that it did work. They were ideologically committed to the 'free' market, which is in fact anything but, and 'personal responsibility' - the ancestor of the present government's view that anybody on benefits is a 'scrounger', living off 'hard working families'.

That is not what Philip asked. He asked a very sensible question as to where the money to fund/subsidise/build new power generation plant is going to come from.

Funding for council housing, for railways, for new hospitals & schools & so on used to come from the public purse without any problem

Please can you tell me where I can buy some of those rose-tinted spectacles that you are using. I will pick only one of your 'funded without any problem'...the railways. There was chronic under-investment in our railways by all Governments. That is why the German engineering company who won the contract to supply us with trains recently had to build a special track that was bumpoy. lumpy, broken and uneven so that they could test out their rolling stock on a comparable track to what they would find over here.

[Flosshilde]

That is not what Philip asked. He asked a very sensible question as to where the money to fund/subsidise/build new power generation plant is going to come from.

No, that is NOT what he asked. He asked

I'm a little confused. Are you suggesting that if all the funding for housing, industrial investment, railways, power generation and so on were to come from the public purse rather than be raised by private companies

No mention of subsidies, but a clear opposition of public/private sector funding. Which is, in fact, not a clear division because the private sector receives subsidies from the public sector. This is true of most, if not all, areas where the private sector has taken over from the public sector.

[Flosshilde]

There was chronic under-investment in our railways by all Governments.

As I've said before, that was a deliberate policy of the Tory governments; and the Inter-City section was profitable. The point is that the taxpayer is still paying for railways, except that now some of the money goes into shareholders pockets.