Comments by "gerhard7" (@gerhard7323) on "UK's Energy security: Trade unionist Paul Embery and Arlene Foster discuss" video.

This is the denouement of all the politically expedient privatisations of vital infrastructure in the 1980s and 90s. This is also reflected in the situation with the now 70% foreign owned UK water private companies regularly spewing millions of litres of sewage into our seas and waterways with impunity. What we're seeing now is what happens when so-called free market forces that only think in the short term and are driven purely by the profit motive are left to run strategically vital, long term national infrastructure.
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@acthompson9983 Strange how a good many other countries in Europe seem to have held onto their nationalised industries and spent the ensuing decades often delivering vastly superior services than their privatised UK counterparts. On this basis, presumably you think it's uniquely just UK vital infrastructure that can't be state owned and run?
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@mrsmith4489 See my reply below.
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@acthompson9983 The point is that given that these services which are fundamental to everyone's everyday lives is that they work, they deliver and that they endure. The UK has been buggering around for decades over its energy policy apparently waiting for 'the markets' to step in and do their job. Look at our nuclear industry. Privatised in the 90s. Sold to the part nationalised French EDF and when it came to building vital new nuclear power stations it fell to the UK to try and negotiate a deal with the 'nationalised' EDF and the state owned Chinese provider to build a new facility. The attempts crashed and burned for various reasons and here we are in midst of an energy crisis no further along the line minus a crucial industry in which were a world leader up until it was sold off. In terms of public ownership Scottish water, which is to all intents and purposes publicly owned, ranks the highest out of all the UK water companies in satisfaction surveys and it continues to invest healthily and successfully in the vital service it provides.
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@mrsmith4489 So, in essence, what you're saying is that you'd rather trust faceless individuals and corporations to run your vital services than your successive elected governments? Further to that, whilst it is done so with considerably more success elsewhere in Europe for example, you're close to suggesting that it is a particular enduring failure of UK governance but nowhere else?
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@acthompson9983 Looks more like someone is choosing to ignore it because it doesn't fit with their own self serving ideological belief system to me. CBA or Leon Trotsky have got nothing to do with the price of fish. Nice try. Scottish Water has a debt level of £80m? You presumably and seriously think that is large amount of money for a company required to make regular, ongoing substantial investments in infrastructure crucial to people's everyday lives? How about this then? Britain's big 9 water companies have built up debt levels of £50bn siphoning off vast payments in interest rates, dividends and 'finance fees' each year. Six of those – Thames Water, Anglian, Northumbrian, Southern, Yorkshire and Wessex – are almost exclusively owned by foreign interests, including Chinese government interests. Thames Water, the largest, in 2021, had a net debt level of over £14bn. All of these debt costs add to the cost people pay for their water bills. Do the maths. Is that clearer for you?
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@mrsmith4489 You have issues with politicians as do I, but politicians don't actually run nationalised companies. I refer you again to the answer I gave to the other gentleman on this thread regarding the state of privatised UK water companies and their current debt levels. Since privatisation over 30 years ago UK water prices have risen 40% above the rate of inflation and if you look at the figures, nevermind the sometimes shady foreign interests that own them, it's not difficult to see why.
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