this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
141 points (99.3% liked)

United Kingdom

4077 readers
403 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 87 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Stop privatising infrastructure you maniacs.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Stop? Do you think it's continuing? They already are private ☺️.

What you should be saying is: Ask the government to raise billions to buy out private companies that own and operate the vital infrastructure of our country you maniacs!

Not being funny, but this is what you're calling for (nothing wrong with that) but what are you going to not fund whilst you spend money on this. Even Labour has pretty much said this isn't going to happen for this very reason.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Fine them a billion pounds per kilo of sewage dumped, then seize all their assets when they refuse to pay their debt.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's actually not a bad idea. Although I would imagine passing regulation like this would be difficult, even with a change in government. 😔

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Why should they assume nationalising them means paying them?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How else is the government going to nationalise the assets?

[–] ephemeral_gibbon 6 points 5 months ago

Fining the shit out of them for their many many environmental breaches. Then when they're bankrupt, re-nationalise them for cheap.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Our genius is not familiar with CPO's. Or thinks CPO's are communism. Let's find out.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

No need for name calling. We're all being civil here.

CPOs as in, Compulsory Purchase Order? Do you think that applies here? Given that we're talking about more than just the land, we're talking about assets and running operations. Also ... the land owner still needs to be paid. Where is that money going to come from?

If there's another CPO you're taking about do let me know 👍.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Nah, just get the government to send in the army to seize the assets and infrastructure. At this point in time, these companies are the enemy of the people, and what else is the army for, then to protect its people from enemies

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

So essentially, what happened is billions (probably 100's at this point) of public money have been handed to private individuals and everyone is left in the shit, literally.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They already are private ☺️.

Except for viewers in Scotland.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And Northern Ireland, but let's be honest, Scotland has it's own issues with nationalised bodies cough ferries cough so we Scots can't sit here with too smug a grin on our faces. I'm sure Northern Ireland has it's own issues in this field as well, but I don't live there so I pay less attention to that.

I broadly agree with nationalising critical infrastructure like water, electricity and gas, some other key infrastructure like railways, the post office and probably a few others I can't think of at this moment in time but it's far from perfect and isn't going to make everything perfect overnight.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Dinnae get me started on those bastard ferries. Scandalous from head to toe.

You're absolutely right that nationalising something doesn't automatically make it function. What it does fix however, is equity and profits being siphoned off and moved out of the country to foreign stakeholders for example.

If private infrastructure fails, the public is still on the hook for it whether it's privately owned or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

People mean, don't renew the contracts and also fine the ones that aren't sticking to expectations.

We won't need to buy them out because the only reason this is an issue is because they are breaking agreements. Any that stick to agreements are by definition not a problem

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

You don't need to buy them out. Fuck them. They can raise bills by inflation and not a penny more, and increase the water and sewage processing to match the extra people they need to over the years. No dumping sewage in rivers or the sea.

If they can't do it, then they go bust and you get them for nothing.

All this shit was working when they took the services over, and if it's not now, then it's because they stole all the money that should have been used for upgrades.