thats the problem with polarising politics...it swings between extremes and extremes of anything is bad...tories...labour, they're each as bad as each other. The answer is not full on privatisation or full on nationalisation. There are many reasons why some privatised ventures have failed and not one of them is because of the fundamental concept of privatisation. It's just privatisation done badly by a bunch of incompetent cretins looking to lining their own pockets. Private companies work to contracts. They're very simple entities. It's the contract and nothing more or less. totally predictable and shouldn't be surprised by anything. Of course parties will look to maximise benefits of their contract and that is the point of negotiations before signing them and you have to try to anticipate any and every way a contract could be interpreted and exploited so you can protect yourself. If you start with a bad contract then you're going to get a bad outcome, and we have some pretty terrible contracts with companies running our services and that is the fault of the incompetent people who negotiated the contract...or the limitations placed on them by their political bosses. The airline industry has gone from strength to strength once it was privatised and those airlines that are still in the clutches of their governments today are inefficient and not providing good value to their taxpayers or their customers.
The problem with politics is many people think politics is all about principles and ideals, when in actual fact politics is all about solving real life practical problems and challenges and its when you introduce idealologies and principled dogma into it then your route to the best outcome becomes derailed.
The NHS is a classic example. The future of the NHS is not totally public like it has been, that cannot work in the modern world not matter how much money you throw at it, nor is it totally private, but a blend of the two. the question is what is the best blend of the two. Having just come back form a holiday in Europe where I got injured and experienced the public/private hybrid health service of Austria where I received a 'service' that made our NHS look positively 3rd world, its clear to me the NHS cannot and should not continue in its current form. The NHS is becoming a national embarrasment. The sooner we recognise this and start having sensible adult discussions about our future health service the better.
