In that I find myself agreeing with Branson. Everything has its moment I guess.
Labour’s plot to renationalise industry is a mistake that would drag Britain back to the chaos of the 1970s, Sir Richard Branson has warned.
The billionaire entrepreneur said that young voters only support public ownership because they never lived through the strikes, power cuts and inefficiency the country suffered before Margaret Thatcher’s wave of privatisation.
He’s a bit older than I am, but I recall the same things. I recall the strikes, the flying pickets (not the pop group) and the power cuts. And on the good days, the sheer inefficiency and underlying feeling that these industries were being run for the benefit of those working in them rather than the paying customer. And anyone who bought a vehicle manufactured by these nationalised industries can hardly be surprised by the rapid influx and success of Japanese competitors. My old BSA made at the height of nationalisation, for example, simply could not compare in performance and reliability with its Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha or Kawasaki equivalents.
And as for the cars, Austin Allegro anyone?
Yes, Richard Branson is right – but he should also bear in mind that he has been a vocal supporter of the SJW agenda. Still, one sinner repenting and all that. There is an old saying about those who do not learn from history…
I don’t think that BSA group was ever state owned. It was however a massively bloated organisation that found it impossible to adapt when faced with superior competition.
It had a state bailout in 1973. To be fair, my C15 did predate that.
Remember when British Leyland, British Gas, British Rail and other nationalised industries were staple fare for our comedians. Always good for a laugh:
(Comedian: “…British Rail sandwich…”
Audience: Howls of laughter)
Yet youngsters don’t believe us when we tell them how bad they were. Or maybe they think the nationalised industries were so bad because it was us old people running them, they’ll do it right this time.
Agree with almost everything you say and remember the dark days well.
It is worth pointing out that it was the state owned Railtrack that caused the problems with the Virgin train deal.
It is at this point I always have to confess that I owned two Allegros – both of which were 100% reliable and cheap to run and service too with bits from Unipart. Perhaps I had the only two…?
Just to be pedantic – Railtrack was privately owned and no longer exists. Network Rail, which took over, is a company guaranteed by government backing.
Okay, pedant hat off now.
I’ll also admit to having two Allegro Estates from new and they were both totally reliable. Considering the mindless damage inflicted by the unions I’m amazed they managed to make anything that worked at all.
‘… would drag Britain back to the chaos of the 1970s…’
And 20%+ inflation, 16% mortgage rates, bottom income tax rate 35%, top rate 83% with a 15% supertax for the very rich (who all fled abroad), £50 limit on amount you could take out of the Sterling area, waiting time of months to get a phone if you could afford one, and the NHS in its perennial not enough staff, not enough funding… yes, the good old days of Socialist Britain.
A few more thoughts.
I think that I would be right in saying that state owned industries have been a failure, not just in Britain but all over the world. I seem to remember that parts of the French car industry have been partly state owned at certain times and that they do seem to have made it work, but that would seem to be a rare exception.
During the Thatcher era when the mess of wholesale nationalisation was gradually being undone by selling off state run industries one by one, the lefties take on it was that the people owned them and that therefore they were not for the government to sell. If these industries had been well run and profitable and we were all benefiting by having the profits deducted from our tax bill you could say that they had a point. But they weren’t so they didn’t.
BSA-Triumph proved that an industry doesn’t have to be state owned to become a horrific mess of clueless unprofessionalism. A few examples.
The C15 was the result of the change in the law that restricted learner riders to 250cc bikes. Rather than invest in a new design to meet a new market that had been handed to them on a plate, they dug out the drawings of the Tiger Cub, scaled it up slightly and put it into production.
Triumph produced a prototype twin with electric start in response to the trend for Japanese imports to be so equipped. At this point the Japanese were only producing small capacity bikes but the Honda 450 could already match the performance of larger capacity British bikes and managed to do so without leaking oil. It is difficult to even imagine the reasoning that must have been used to justify the decision not to begin to equip their bikes with electric start.
As multi cylinder and V twin engines became popular, the parallel twin came to be seen as a hopelessly dated layout. The Triumph/BSA triples were flawed from the start being based on the Triumph twins. There was however a brief glimmer of light when the group decided to develop the triple idea and produce a 250 and 350 DOHC three cylinder design that, at last, was modern and state of the art. The prototypes had hideous Earles type front forks but that was something that could easily be rectified. At the last minute they decided to can the new triples and drag Ed Turner out of retirement to design a new parallel twin.
I recall an interview with a Swiss guy that ran the Swiss railways from about the time that the railways were privatised. In Switzerland, it isn’t just the clocks that run like clockwork. He was invited to come to Britain to sort out the trains here.
He refused the job because of the restrictions that the Government placed on the running of the system. These included franchises that lasted only (if I recall correctly) 7 years which meant that no franchise holder would risk buying new rolling stock as the lead times and the potential of losing the franchise meant owning trains that were useless to be sold off at a loss. He argued for longer franchise periods but the Government looked at the cash cow of having potential franchise holders bidding against each other and ignoring the fact that they had no cash left over for investment.
Who’d a thunk it, eh?
That and railtrack being at the time owned by the Government meant that the maintenance of the permanent way was subject to massive and persistent underinvestment as the Government milked it of operating profits and pissed the said profits away on various welfare and social security schemes etc. (Though that’s true of every publicly owned organisation from the Post Orifice to BT –
as it was then – etc.).
Network Rail not Railtrack — the 9/11 “Good day to bury bad news” by same Bxxx that left “No money left” note in 2010.
On Rail, imho Major and subsequent messed up hugely.
Gov’t should have sold slots like airports, not de-facto rail route monopolies:
08:00 GWRT EDI-LDN Express – £100 – 4h 20m
08:10 LNRE EDI-LDN Stopping – £50 – 6h 45m
08:20 SCVR EDI-LDN Economy – £75 – 5h 30m
etc