O/T Not a political question more of a business query...

Whilst talk of suspending VAT and environmental levies temporarily to reduce the burden on 'harder pressed' lower income families when the predicted huge price hikes kick in, is there not something fundamentally wrong here.
It is not a UK exclusive issue I have here as it is common practise across most of Europe. I am referring to reselling and so called 'competition'. I have never understood how the extra raft of businesses who are supplied by via a single 'National grid' which is fed by a handful of generating companies domestically and from other countries benefit the end consumer, business or domestic.
These middle sellers, exist solely to make profit (mainly for shareholders) which simply adds another cost to the end bill. If the entire supply chain was competitive I could understand but like all utilities, public ground transport , water, electricity, gas, there is only a single or at best a very limited source of supply so surely it is in the best interest of customers to simplify the supply chain to end user.
I suppose I am talking some form of 're nationalisation' here which would be nigh on impossible to revert back to, but the whole franchising system with Private business making profit but consumers i.e. taxpayers carrying the risks was always a recipe for problems and so it has turned out. I get the whole idea of privatisation was to create mmediate desperately needed investment in infrastructure but in many cases that did not really happen . I seem to think water companies were supposed to reduce leaks and replace ageing Victorian systems but they still ended up going cap in hand to Government whilst making large profits.

Simply applying 'caps' on price increases at the reseller level clearly does not work when they are at the mercy of the generating companies and the Oil and Gas producers.

 

Somebody should have told Thatcher all this....

 

Some things just aren't fit for "open market" and your example summarises it perfectly. If there were various suppliers and genuine competition, actual genuine competition, I could see an argument for it.

But as you say, single supplier feeding several re-sellers, no logic to it whatsoever.

 

Jimmy Viz and I welcome your conversion, comrade!

 

It makes no sense to me that public utilities be in private hands. There are national security issues too of foreign shareholders, as well as the points that the OP has made well. You only have to look at water privatisation that was meant to bring much needed investment. Well they've had 33 years to sort things out & we are seeing raw sewage pumped into our rivers on a regular basis. Likewise the steel industry should be a public utility. If we did have a serious stand off with China & we don't retain our steel industry we are screwed. We can't let it fail, so we may as well accept it should be publicly owned.

I'm all for competition, where true competition exists. E.g I had no problem privatising British Leyland. It was only in public hands as it was rescued in 1975 to save jobs at the time, but let's face it, it made some bloody awful cars! Telecoms is kind of another one, although in reality there are only 3 networks for broadband, Sky, Virgin & BT, but at least there is competition over service, repairs & hardware.

 

I thought they did re rail privatisation but she...ahem..knew best

 

If only there was a political party who constantly say the same but get accused of taking us back to the 70’s and get silly ridiculous arguments against it calling them Marxist and and and and!

 

Never thought common sense was party political. On the contrary when di common sense become the main influence on policy decisions overriding what they (any party) believe will win them votes. Contrary to some people on here I have never been a staunch supporter of any particular party right left centrist or pink with yellow spots. As regards Thatcher, I could not stand the woman and the one or two things she may have got right were overwhelmingly offset by the damage she did to the fabric of our society which is still impacting on the general population of the UK today.

 

Yes, the report is mixed, to say the least. But she was/still is undoubtedly the most influential prime minister of our generation