Benefits of privatisation?

[the_bloke]

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest

of motives, will somehow work for the benefit if all."

 

John Maynard Keynes

 

As an ex teacher Anna, maybe you might think different of him:

 

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

 

John Maynard Keynes

[El Cid]

There's quite a bit of the NHS which is already privatised. Mainly started under Labour, less so under Conservative but they are still finding these cost savings by using private companies.

 

I thought it was only 6%

[Eric Arthur]

I thought it was only 6%

It's much much more but it seems that doctors don't like admitting that they are private businesses so they pretend that they are part of the NHS instead of private contractors.

 

I'd agree, though the NHS is packed full of private providers and always has been. GP's are the obvious example that everyone uses but thinks is part of the NHS, whereas they are nearly all privately owned NHS contractors. Huge numbers of operations are handled privately with great success for lower costs.

[El Cid]

Yes that's my experience of public sector managers. Where I work it is stuffed full of 'managers' who are paid a fortune for doing very little - just writing reports to each other, and have no specialism in the area that they're managing.

 

You get that in Government bodies like the Environment Agency - Philip Dilley is a former business adviser to David Cameron, he is now the ex head of the Environment Agency.

[lottiecass]

Anna, lets just say for 1 minute that a private company CAN and DOES give us a better NHS for the patients, quicker A&E times, better surgical outcomes (whatever defines a 'better' NHS for you), and they do it at less cost per capita than the government does currently. Would you still not support it? I'm not trying to catch you out, with mostly argue alongside each other on many topics, but for me it's all about the end user or the customer and if they get a better deal then I'm not bothered about whether that company is private and profit making or not. As long as there are cast iron 'recovery' clauses to pull the NHS back into public hands if this company failed to deliver then I'd be supportive of it. However, I don't think for one min that any company could ever deliver better than what we have at a lower price so I'd likely never be pro-privatisation!

 

Kate,you do know that the medical staff agencies are mega expensive and a drain on nhs funds?

[RonJeremy]

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest

of motives, will somehow work for the benefit if all."

 

John Maynard Keynes

 

This is a little more accurate:

"The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society."

 

---------- Post added 14-01-2016 at 19:03 ----------

 

I admit I was being deliberately provocative with my quote.

Victorian times were littered with businessmen who were great philanthropists, as are some today, and many small businesses do look after their workers like a family. But it's the big Corporate giants I have issues with, who pay minimum wage at the bottom while harvesting enormous profits and pay gigantic bonuses at the top.

 

These mega corporations are taking over, buying out a lot of the smaller firms (the competition) and making it almost impossible for newcomers to get a foothold. Beware the corporatisation of business, it decimates competition, and once they have a strangle hold they will eventually run amock.

 

I think this is the first time I have agreed with not only the gist of what you are saying, but also almost all of what you have typed.

 

I dont have a problem with the level of profits. Bigger the better.

[Eric Arthur]

You get that in Government bodies like the Environment Agency - Philip Dilley is a former business adviser to David Cameron, he is now the ex head of the Environment Agency.

 

As an engineer and former CEO of one of the world's most respected and succesful engineering consultancys, Dilly was just about the most qualified person imaginable to run the EA. I have some sympathy with him to be honest. If he failed at something it was at understanding the fickle nature of politicians looking for a fallguy, even if that person wasn't to blame for anything.

 

---------- Post added 14-01-2016 at 19:13 ----------

 

Kate,you do know that the medical staff agencies are mega expensive and a drain on nhs funds?

 

Do you know that's because the people in the NHS sometimes can't organise a **** up in a brewery?

Edited January 14, 2016 by Eric Arthur

[El Cid]

As an engineer and former CEO of one of the world's most respected and succesful engineering consultancys, Dilly was just about the most qualified person imaginable to run the EA. I have some sympathy with him to be honest. If he failed at something it was at understanding the fickle nature of politicians looking for a fallguy, even if that person wasn't to blame for anything.

 

Perhaps rather than engineering flood defences, he should have been building more cooperation with farmers and making natural flood defences; so perhaps his expertise was too specialised.

That is if he did anything wrong at all, apart from only work 2/3 day per week for loads of money.

Surely anyone earning such large sums of money should get the job done, with good results.

[Eric Arthur]

Perhaps rather than engineering flood defences, he should have been building more cooperation with farmers and making natural flood defences; so perhaps his expertise was too specialised.

That is if he did anything wrong at all, apart from only work 2/3 day per week for loads of money.

Surely anyone earning such large sums of money should get the job done, with good results.

 

You don't seem to understand what a non exec chairman does, but that's ok. It's not his job to be responsible for everything that happens day to day at the EA. That is the CEO's job. A chairman is there to guide and advise on the organisation's general direction. There was nothing happening here that he couldn't have handled from Barbados but the press were on his case because they didn't understand either and there was no other news over Christmas.

 

The EA job would have been a MASSIVE drop in pay by the way, £100k really is not a lot of money but it is about right for the post.

[jfish1936]

I have no time for ideology but there are one or two exceptions I'd be happy to remain public as a matter of principle such as the fighting part of the military so long as all the guns, aircraft, tanks, ships, and other equipment is leased, and err, no that's probably it.

 

Terry Pratchett's "Ankh-Morpork" does good business leasing weapons to other nations. Then when they attack, Ankh-Morpork simply terminates the leases and repossesses the weapons!

(from memoery, can't recall which book at moment)