More labour waste

[Jon_in_london]

As if it wasnt enough that almost £500 million (thats around a $billion) of taxpayers money was spent on just negotiating the contracts for the privatisation of the tube- the boss of 'Tube Lines' has just been given a £100,000 bonus (all funded by the taxpayer and the passenger, who are often the same person).

This is despite incurring hundreds of thousands of hours of train delays and several derailments. In fact they were fined £15 million for doing so. Not that this bothers Tube Lines- they have made a £42 million pre-tax profit so far, after recieving £360 million of taxpayers money.

Thank you Labour! Thank you so ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ much for wasting my money. I will be sure to vote for you, just as soon as I see a squadron of flying pigs, that is.

 

[Jon_in_london]

Even more Labour waste!

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/124/124705_what_a_waste.html

TRANSPORT Secretary Alistair Darling today stands accused of squandering millions of pounds of taxpayers' money clearing the way for the massive Metrolink expansion which the government has now abandoned.

Around £200m has already been spent getting the route ready for the new lines

.................................................................................................

In Droylsden £2.3m was spent moving a school yards from its original site to make way for the Ashton line - £200,000 of the cash came from the Department for Education's budget.

Yup, educashun, educashun, educashun.

 

[The Don]

Transport seems to be a money pit. The options appear to be:

- Public money, public contractors (expensive and useless)
- Public money, private contractors (snouts in the trough boys)
- Private money, public contractors (recipe for disaster)
- Private money, private contractors (who'd take it on)

Public transport is viewed as a government thing. Even when the railways were privatised, every problem was a government problem (not the problem of the corner-cutting private companies).

 

[Jon_in_london]

Public transport is viewed as a government thing. Even when the railways were privatised, every problem was a government problem (not the problem of the corner-cutting private companies).

This is because Bliar refuses to hold private companies to account for their failings. Probably because they made a contribution to labour coffers or some such thing........

 

[Jon_in_london]

To elaborate Don, the whole point of PFI is that if the private company does well they are welcome to make a profit. Conversley, if they fail, they carry the can- all the way to bankruptcy if need be.

The problem arises when the failing company receives a massive government bail-out. In this case, there is no incentive to succeed. Just fail and still make a monumental profit at taxpayers expense.

Labour wastes our money because they are corrput or cowards or (most likely), both.

 

[Jim Bowen]

The problem with PFI is that a private company normally ends up holding a substantial and vital asset, which means that they have the government over a barrel. Whenever a major problem crops up, the company can threaten to walk away from the contract leaving chaos in its wake unless they are bailed out. A while ago WS Atkins walked out of an education contract in London because it was not as profitable as previously forecast.

Beats me why a labour government would want anything to do with schemes like this. Public ownership can be inefficient, but at least things worked, or weren't asset stripped, with the new owners only wanting to cherry pick the profitable bits.

Jim Bowen (who's family used to own shares in all of the utilities - until they were privatised)

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Public ownership can be inefficient, but at least things worked

Possibly some selective memory going on here.

Pre-privatisation most of the utilities you talk about were so horrificly inefficient they managed to lose enormous sums of money while operating monopolies charging customers higher prices than they pay now to privatised businesses - in effect you got to pay an inflated price for the "service" you received plus you got to pay for the inefficiencies of the organisation through your taxes. Must have been great being a shareholder!

 

[E.J.Armstrong]

originally posted by Jaggy Bunnet
Pre-privatisation most of the utilities you talk about were so horrificly inefficient they managed to lose enormous sums of money while operating monopolies charging customers higher prices than they pay now to privatised businesses - in effect you got to pay an inflated price for the "service" you received plus you got to pay for the inefficiencies of the organisation through your taxes. Must have been great being a shareholder!

The Thatcher government, as a matter of policy, declined to properly support many publicly owned organisations, such as public transport, only to say when the inevitable happened -'Oh dear they're not doing well are they?' - thereby justifying selling the railways off on the cheap to her friends in the city. After she promised that they would cost the public less, the public still picked up much of the tab for the safety, performance and reliability mess that followed, as predicted by many of those who actually knew how to run a railway.

 

[The Don]

There's a balance to be struck between the engineered and run for availability which was the basis for the inefficient public utilities and the underengineered and run for profit organisations which took over and were able to sweat the assets without sufficient concern fo the future (certainly with 7 year contracts). Jon is right that the government allowed itself to be blamed by failing to hold the companies to account.