Oh you know, party funding contributions, cash for questions, knighthood for editor of The Sun, rewards to specially appointed hatchet-men, use of insider information to make a fortune, family connections benefiting from government policies....the sort of thing that eventually brought about an ant-sleaze candidate.

And they were removed from the country as a result of the abolition of exchange controls?

So I think we've ascertained that there was no tangeable longterm benefit for working class families from the selling off of BT. A didn't think so, which is why I questioned Shard's outburst.

You really think there's a credible classification of 'working class' in the UK anymore?

Fair enough, no tangeable long term benifits for the non ruling class maybe?

The benefit was to introduce competition into certain industries. It worked for telecoms, for rail, not so much. As AC pointed out, the proceeds of the sale went into general government spending, which benefits all (in theory).

P.s. tangible, folks.

You mean the theory?

In theory, I asked for facts and you have none. Not so much for rail could be roughly translated to monumental cock up that tax payers are still paying for, I wonder if the the money from BT has all been spent on that?

Please excuse my spelling mistake, it quite obviously blows my point of view out of the water and you were right to point it out

Rail privatisation, like other essential service privatisation, were in theory supposed to incentivise the introduction of private finance.

In the rail instance it did this by separating the track and creating Railtrack (Network Rail). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Rail contains an interesting chart showing the total rail subsidies before and after privatisation. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._1986-2015.png

What this chart shows is that we, the bank, continued to supply the rail industry with large wadges of cash. What the article also describes is the denuding of skill from an industry that has had to be rebuilt. In the meantime, this subsidy, that used to provide employment and services was used to provide profit and hoped for investment.

I think it is well understood that rail privatisation was executed for dogmatic and financial reasons to the detriment of the service and the industry itself.

I've worked in the Railway industry since 1984, and when I worked for BR, then Network Southeast, Network Rail or whatever they were calling themselves that week, we forever had the sword of damocles hanging over us, the depot's going to close, we're rationalising staff etc etc. Now I'm not saying there wasn't wastage before privatisation, but standards were higher, and the focus was on safety. Since privatisation the focus has been on profit and arse covering. It's quite literally criminal what's been done with the British railway industry. Ever wondered why most people with senior positions on the railway drive to work now?

I'm a specialist in my particular field, it's incredibly safety focused and it bloody well needs to be. Privatisation has meant that there's a money saving cycle of multi-skilling people. So instead of people being good and knowledgeable about particular work, we have workers who through no fault of their own, know not enough about lots of things. This leads to safety incidents and accidents, and then I step in and charge the short sighted twats a fortune for taking risks with other people's lives, and advise them that multi skilling is a flawed idea when it comes to safety critical equipment. They listen, take on and train more specialist staff, everything's sweet for a few years, then the bean counters come back in see safety as an expense they can do without. They learn nothing.