Hey, doncha remember Thatcher? How she said our service companies would be better, FAIRER(?), more efficent, etc, etc. Call me Old fashioned but it seems to me that the best/safest/most efficient place to get gas from is the Gas Company, Electricity from the Electricity company, Telephones(+ etc) from the Communications Company, Water, Sewerage, Trains, Health, Post, etc from their appropriate National Service? Didnt we used to have one of the BEST in all those areas? Our Electricity was the of the cheapest in Europe with the least interruption, etc. What have we done? We now have, what? a bunch of services with which were told the best way to deal with poor/expensive service is to increase its costs by us changing our suppliers. Who does that benefit? A team of management consultants, Lawyers, Accountants, Advertising companies etc? In the same vein their approach to people having difficulties paying their charges (fair or not) is to charge them more by fining. Ultimately to charge them more per unit by installing prepayment meters I know our local park was ruined during the period whilst it was run by a management company (not a gardening company), because they gave the cheapest quote for running same. My council has taken Parks AND Estate management back in house because as must seem obvious the only way anyone can provide a cheaper service AND pay its shareholders a dividend AND reward management highly AND cut training is to reduce costs with pay/benefit AND service reductions. Public Services are just that A Service for the Public, not a profit making opportunity. Is it really because politicians (be they local or national) did not want the responsibility? But surely that is the point of them, especially at local level, to control/direct the bureaucratic team running these things. Commercial confidentiality should not come into the running of Public Services and should not be a reason for lack of information. Our Country has been ruined by the Americanisation (please excuse this term, microsoft have underlined it) of its services. We are already told that if our local hospital is not up to standard to go somewhere better. That is not what we want. Every hospital should be at a National Standard, with that standard set high. The Americans complaining about the extra cost of their funding of the ACA (Obamacare), do so because they already pay for (or their companies provide) private health care. They would be better advised to make sure the ACA provided a cover at least as good as they get now such that they didnt have to pay anyone else. Their care then would be cheaper and it would be as good as it is insisted on being. We have allowed our politicians to persuade us that we are not a nation but a collection of individuals. Well we can be individuals, but some things we need are better organised on a National basis.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 01:17:45 +0000
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