BS: Selling England By The Pound

Subject: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 03:22 AM

So now the Port of Dover is 'up for sale'....and it's rumoured the French are interested.

I'm sorry, but we truly have lost the plot!

The government say it will bring in £300 million to The Treasury, so that's OK then?   It's OK to sell off Dover??????????????? Sweet Mother of All That Is Wrong!!

Last night I found out that Goldman Sachs already own many British Ports, as does Dubai...?????

Why the hell are we putting up with this? HOW has this happened without the media going absolutely crazy, alerting the public?

Or is just that no-one gives a shit anymore about this country?

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 03:25 AM

It's probably that you don't understand the concept. The buyers own the businesses transacted there, and/or the land pursuant to the local scheme of land ownership, which you would entirely expect to be possible.

Capitalism maybe an evil system, but it is its inevitable corollary that all manners of people and entities may exercise the rights recognised by it.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 03:56 AM

Yes, I understood that, Richard. It still does not make it right.

Why, when this exact same thing happened in America was there such a public outcry that it did not happen, yet here....there is...silence?

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Emma B
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 07:07 AM

This was reported in the press back in January

"The Dover Harbour Board, the body that oversees the operation of the largest British port still in the public sector, has applied to the Transport Secretary for voluntary privatisation. A sale, according to insiders, could net as much as £350 million for the Treasury, which has earmarked £16 billion of publicly owned assets, including the Post Office, for injections of private capital"
The Times January 27, 2010

With typical reaction the Mail reported the same story on the 8th Feb with the headline
"White Cliffs of Dover to be sold to the French to help reduce Government's debt"

In fact, the government is expected to make a decision on privatisation of the port this autumn as a second public consultation on the scheme ended last week
I think the cliffs still belong to the 'bluebirds' but we are talking the Mail here!

Dover is Europe's busiest ferry port (published accounts at the port from 2008 revealed that it made nearly £25 million in profits on revenues of around £61 million)

In January 2010 the Dover Harbour Board submitted a proposal under the Ports Act 1991 to government "leading to the voluntary privatisation of the Port of Dover." by means of a formal application for an injection of private capital.

Other major ports were sold off under the 1991 Ports Act, but Dover was retained because of uncertainty over how construction of the Channel Tunnel might affect it.

The port has operated as a trust for 400 years and with no shareholders all revenue goes back into the business.

The Unite union has said that privatising Dover would be against the national interest; their .national officer for docks and ferries Julia Long said: "We need a first-class sea port like Dover to be in public hands.
"There is simply too much at stake to leave the running of this vital link to Europe in the hands of those who will milk this national treasure for profits at the expense of the travelling public and British commerce."
However the Port of Dover board argues it would be for the long-term benefit of UK transport
"As a trust port, the Port of Dover is unable to finance significant additional capacity when required as its status as a public corporation does not allow it to borrow,"

Dame Vera Lynn is reported as saying she would support a scheme for local people to buy the port of Dover, if the government decides it should be privatised.

BUT - As Bob Crow, the General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), points out -

"The Port of Dover is already owned by the British people as a national asset. Why would you want to buy something you already own?"

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 07:51 AM

Since we own none of our airports, them being owned by foreign powers.... not surprising really.... No airports, no ports, no gold reserves..... what do we actually own???    All part of the 'New World Order' ?????

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 07:55 AM

I can't see the French doing this for Calais...

Privatising public goods and services is fundamentally corrupt, and corrupting.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Emma B
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 12:50 PM

Seconded Kevin, the recent proposal to privatize the Port of Dover is only one end of a long process - where were the emotive highly dramtic protests such as "that proud history is up for sale and the leading bidder is revealed as the former age-old enemy – France"
when 'Sid' was being encouraged to make a killing by buying shares in privatised gas?

In the UK, privatization started under Margaret Thatcher at the beginning of the 1980s

Cable & Wireless: Oct 81,
Amersham International: Feb 82,
Britoil: Nov 82,
Associated British Ports: Feb 83,
Enterprise Oil: Feb 84,
Jaguar: July 84,
British Telecom: Nov 84,
British Gas: Dec 86,
British Airways: Feb 87,
Rolls-Royce: May 87,
BAA: July 87,
British Steel: Dec 88,
Regional water companies: Dec 89,
Electricity distribution companies: Dec 90.

At the same time, Thatcher introduced Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) which started the sell off of national and local government.
John Major renamed this Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in 1992, and the policy continued unabated under Tony Blair

There has been wide coverage on the use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in health and education, but PPPs are also being used in a diverse range of projects like helicopter simulators for the Ministry of Defence and the redevelopment of the main Treasury building.
When Chancellor, Gordon Brown said that "there should be no principled objection to PFI expanding into new areas, such as the provision of employment and training services, the renovation of schools and colleges, major projects or urban regeneration and social housing

N. M. Rothschild & Sons website boasts

"1985 saw N. M.Rothschild & Sons win the 'beauty contest' to advise the British Government on the sale of British Gas.
This was the most significant piece of privatization work to be undertaken by N. M. Rothschild & Sons, pioneers in such business from 1971.
Further advisory roles were taken with regard to the privatization of British Steel and British Coal as well as the regional electricity and water boards."

Lord Wakeham was the Conservative Chief Whip from 1983 to 1987 and Secretary for Energy from 1989 to 1992.
He authorized Enron to buy into the privatized water and electricity systems, and then, in 1994 when he resigned as leader of the House of Lords, he joined Enron as a non-executive director and sat on its audit committee.
Lord Wakeham had also awarded a contract to N. M. Rothschild to advise the Government on coal privatization.
In 1995 he became a director of N. M. Rothschild.

In November 2003, Oliver Letwin resigned his directorship of N. M. Rothschild, which he had held since 1991, to become Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer for the Conservative party.
He is author of the book 'Privatizing the World' and has worked as an adviser to foreign governments on privatization

AND don't get me started on STEPS - the £1.5 billion Strategic Transfer of the Estate to the Private Sector (STEPS) PFI deal entered into by Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise with a private sector consortium known as Mapeley STEPS.
The deal incorporates the transfer of the ownership and management of the Departments' estates to the consortium

The National Audit Office at the time found that the parties had 'yet to achieve a sufficient level of partnership, for example there are on-going problems with the performance measurement system outlined in the contract'

Ironically, Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has announced plans to disband the Audit Commission - its in-house audit practice, which is the fifth largest audit practice in the country, will be transferred out of public ownership.

A range of options will be developed for converting the audit practice into a business independent of Government which could be sold or otherwise transferred into the private sector.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 02:23 PM

Yes, but that is capitalism. That is all it is.

Save that Thatcher's agenda was to try to make capitalists of those with no capital - a ballot-box gerrymander at its simplest.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 02:38 PM

As always, everything is for sale under the Tory's, now aided and abetted by the fuckwits, sorry Lib Dems.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Penny S.
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 03:00 PM

Seems more appropriate to change the rules so it can borrow. It used to be proud of its status. But then town used to be a place to be proud of, as well. Used to live there. Liked it a lot. Wouldn't go back. Somebody ruined it, with her tunnel, and other changes. Probably the loss of the mines, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 03:59 PM

"everything is for sale" was pretty standard New Labour policy too. And strictly speaking they weren't trading as Tories.

To sell something that you are continuing to need to use is silly. People only buy things because they think they can make money out of them, largely by charging you to continue to use them. If they can make money out of them, so can you.

The assumption that somehow private ownership is efficient and public ownership of one sort or another is inefficient doesn't stand up. There's inefficient management and efficient management in both sectors.

In the wake of the banking meltdown the rubric "private good, public bad" has been shown up as the rubbish it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 04:19 PM

Don't you by the "pan'" as in "pan' a boaw' " in many south London markets!!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 06:52 PM

Look I know what is really going on, but if I tell you, you must promise to keep it a secret!

There are two concurrent concepts here, but both are playing together, because, if one doesn't happen, then the other one works!

1) The 'Catastrophe Effect' - when the big asteroid hits, nobody will care 'who owns it' cause only the people who live near it - if it survives - will be able to do anything, so 'ownership' will defacto devolve to them (Mutalisation)! - and they are 'British' (or whatever they will be called then!) you see!

2) The 'Crumble Effect' - when the Political scene crumbles bad enough that people are fighting over food and water, but there is still enough of a political structure to be worth a damn, you just take over all this stuff by the Government again (Nationalization), so that in about another couple of centuries, you can sell it off again!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Sep 10 - 06:53 PM

"To sell something that you are continuing to need to use is silly"

It called "Selling the Farm to Fix the Fences"!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: MikeL2
Date: 02 Sep 10 - 02:52 PM

Hi georgiansilver

<"Since we own none of our airports, them being owned by foreign powers..">

Not quite true....Manchester Airport is UK owned by.......er Manchester ....and the same Group own East Midlands, Bournmouth and Humberside.

cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Mr Happy
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 07:43 AM

I really am at a loss as to what some here are making a fuss about.

It really doesn'r impact on ordinary folks who owns what in any state, other than if you prefer to be screwed by home grown capitalists or by foreign ones

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 08:34 AM

In this case it is a matter of publicly owned property being sold off.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 04:56 PM

"It really doesn'r impact on ordinary folks who owns what in any state"

It can make quite a difference if it changes the point at which the company is liable to tax, so that a former source of revenue no longer contributes to the local economy.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 02:31 AM

Putting a US perspective on this: my utilities companies (electricity and natural gas) are owned by a UK company. My two closest supermarkets are owned by companies in the UK and Belgium. However, my 3rd closest market is owned by a company in my state, and I often shop at farm stands and farmers markets. Talk about a global village!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 03:51 AM

They call it 'The Gateway to England' This is Dover and...it's up for sale

Dovorian Bonds

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Emma B
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 07:06 AM

ChanteyLass points out that her local supermarkets are owned by firms outside the US - but the real issue here, in my opinion, (and, as also reiterated by McGrath of Harlow) is not that the port operation may be purchased by (shock horror drama) the FRENCH! but that a profitable business/monopoply in public ownership should be sold off into the private ownership "of those who will milk this national treasure for profits at the expense of the travelling public and British commerce" in order to finance expansion of the business.

Chris Laming, from P&O Ferries, one of three ferry lines who claim £60m they provided to fund a second terminal at the port of Dover will have been wasted if the sell-off goes ahead.stated -
"We've now filed a complaint to the secretary of state because we're so concerned about the prices we could be charged in the future under the Dover scheme, which is really the PRIVATISATION OF A MONOPOLY, and it could threaten the whole of the ferry industry in Dover."

As for a community 'bond scheme' it seems a "vain thing fondly invented"
The port would still be run for profit by a private operator even if the land itself is leased
Although the "Sids" were encouraged to buy shares in Gas if they wanted to the professionals still managed and ran these privatised companies not a load of well intentioned but inexperienced "volunteers" as envisaged under the Tory's 'Big Society' which is simply political dogma disguised as giving 'power to the people'.

Unlike the libertarian principle of anti 'big government' many people in the UK still prefer as one reader of a conservative blog replied -

"People don't want parents running schools or laypeople running hospitals, traffic control, the police or any other essential services. They want the State to do by means of professionals. Charities don't want it, voters don't want it, professionals don't want it.
It's just an excuse to cut essential services.

I want to know that when I send my kids to school or go to hospital, or get on a bus, I don't have to run the damned thing myself, but pay my taxes and have someone well paid and well qualified to do it for me."

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: GUEST,Steamin' Willie
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 09:04 AM

Having been a director of businesses in the private sector and then chairing a couple of public sector organisations, (NHS Trusts) my general opinion tends to be that either can run businesses good or badly.

When NHS facilities such as cleaning went to the lowest bidder in Thatcher's day, the levels of hospital hygiene went down. After the Clostridium Difficile and MRSA problems, more resource went into cleaning, some brought back in house, some not. Success was not measured in who owned / ran the service, but in how the contract was managed and funded.

I could give lots of other examples of where in my experience public or private should make little difference to the quality for the customer or the employees. However....

The bottom line for a public concern is zero. The bottom line for a private concern is zero plus profit margin.

In any case, nobody actually owns land. Freehold actually means the Crown owns the land but you have free holding of it. At the fundamental level, talk of selling the white cliffs of Dover to the French is good old jingoistic nonsense. The crime is selling us what we already own....

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Mr Happy
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 11:36 AM

'In this case it is a matter of publicly owned property being sold off. '

What I understand as 'publicly owned property' actually is in the control of whatever regime is in power at a given time.

So for the ordinary citizen/ member of public - how does it impact them in any different way?

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 12:13 PM

Dover is.....The Gateway to England.

Why do the Americans stand up and say "No!" to their ports being sold off, yet we say "So what does it matter?"

Our apathy has brought us all we deserve in this country.....

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Mr Happy
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 12:17 PM

............unless, of course, you're a shareholder!

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 12:22 PM

So for the ordinary citizen/ member of public - how does it impact them in any different way?

As Steaming Willie pointed out in the previsu post to that, if it's owned privately it will always be bound to add a profit margin on top of its running costs. And in fact it will have a legal obligation to try to give the shareholders, rather than the users, as much as possible.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Emma B
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 03:46 PM

For information........
"Most US Ports Are Foreign-Run"

In 2006 a controversy arose in the US pertaining to management contracts of six major United States ports
Dubai Ports World was a company owned by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates via a holding company which was under the direct control of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who was also the prime minister of the UAE.

There was considerable opposition to the plan despite the fact that -
OVER 80 PERCENT OF THE TERMINALS IN THE USA WERE ALREADY CONTROLLED BY FOREIGN OWNERS.


An interview at the time between Adam Davidson the correspondent for International Business and Economics for National Public Radio and Joe King, former chief of the terrorism unit at US Customs gives some of the actual facts

Joe King: There is always a debate in the US government between trade and security. In the last twenty years, trade is winning.

Davidson: Even King says that foreign ownership is inevitable. Too much security could cause real pain.

King: You'd have containers backed up so you could walk across the Pacific Ocean, they'd be so tightly packed.

Davidson: Some, like Senator Hillary Clinton, have suggested that the US should allow foreign companies to run US terminals but forbid companies owned by foreign governments.
That's almost equally impossible, says Tirschwell of the Journal of Commerce.

He points out that foreign governments have interests in many US ports. The government of Singapore owns most of a company that operates terminals in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
Two Chinese companies, both with close ties to the Chinese government, manage terminals in New York, Long Beach, and other places. And the government of Venezuela owns all or part of marine terminal management at ports in Pennsylvania and Maine.

Subject: RE: BS: Selling England By The Pound
From: Mrrzy
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 04:26 PM

This is a mucis thread, no? Tull?