In article <5a15312b0cnoise@audiomisc.co.uk>,
Jim Lesurf <noise@audiomisc.co.uk> wrote:

> There is one physical distribution network. But we don't buy our
> gas from it. We as buy it from whatever 'suppier (of what gets
> though the physical network) we choose. These compete and are UK
> companies.

> NONE of the above are the ones making huge profits on the back of
> "World Price". Some may well be in difficulty because of this.

So it seems you admit competition between companies to supply our
energy is a good thing and works to keep prices as low as possible. I
thought socialists wanted such things nationalised.

> The problem is with the *offshore* companies - yet another
> *different* set of companies and role - who physically extract the
> gas/oil from under the North Sea.

Indeed but surely that means we need more competition to extract the
gas/oil both on land and sea. Not that I'm expert enough suggest how
that might be done but it must be possible, if there was a will.

But the other problem is clearly the government has no intention of
doing anything about high energy prices, just as it has no intention
of doing anything about illegal mass immigration.

It huffs and it puffs but it does nothing or just moves the deck
chairs around claiming we're doing this and that but they know it
will not make any difference. They deliberately will not do what is
required.

I think the reason for both is political pressure from the
liberal/left elite media. The brainwashed 'water melons' (green on
the outside, red on the inside) have painted energy as a great
poluting evil and the people must be starved of it for the good of
the planet. All fine if you're a wealthy champagne socialist.

The privileged, metropolitan socialists (the north London set) no
longer care about the poor and despise the working man, they only
care now about their crazy ideologies and they're happy to push
people into poverty and cold homes in the name of them. The
Conservatives are also now socialists, just blue ones.

The likely hood of serious gas and electric cuts this winter is very
high and it's entirely the fault of the media driven government. If
rationing has to happen, let it be on quantity not price, why would
socialists make the poor bare the load. Forgot for a moment, they no
longer care about the poor.

Real people are really going to suffer so that idiots like those that
glue themselves to pictures can feel pleased with themselves.

Bob.

On 09/08/2022 19:29, Bob LieToThem wrote:
>
> I think the reason for both is political pressure from the
> liberal/left elite media. The brainwashed 'water melons' (green on
> the outside, red on the inside) have painted energy as a great
> poluting evil and the people must be starved of it for the good of
> the planet. All fine if you're a wealthy champagne socialist.
>
> The privileged, metropolitan socialists (the north London set) no
> longer care about the poor and despise the working man, they only
> care now about their crazy ideologies and they're happy to push
> people into poverty and cold homes in the name of them. The
> Conservatives are also now socialists, just blue ones.

What utter tosh! Anyone watching the candidates for the leadership of
the Tory Party falling over each other trying to appeal to its far right
wing knows that the above is just another example of Bob-style deranged
paranoia!

--

Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
www.macfh.co.uk

In article <064da3e6-eb59-9eeb-fb33-18fcbbf58e0c@outlook.com>, Robin
<rbw@outlook.com> wrote:

> The only "legal base" the UK needs to have taxing rights is a permanent
> establishment in the UK or a trade carried on in the UK. Petroleum
> extraction is a a permanent establishment (PE).

Yet the companies you and I 'buy gas from' say they *aren't* making the
huge profits. Indeed, they say they are strugging. Whilst the offshore ones
*are* raking it in... yet this seems to be allowed.

Something seems to be missing from your view.

The 'tax' (sic) set on extraction is set by the license to extract, and
wasn't set with this sort of situation in mind.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
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On 09/08/2022 13:38, Jim Lesurf wrote:
> In article <064da3e6-eb59-9eeb-fb33-18fcbbf58e0c@outlook.com>, Robin
> <rbw@outlook.com> wrote:
>
>> The only "legal base" the UK needs to have taxing rights is a permanent
>> establishment in the UK or a trade carried on in the UK. Petroleum
>> extraction is a a permanent establishment (PE).
>
> Yet the companies you and I 'buy gas from' say they *aren't* making the
> huge profits. Indeed, they say they are strugging. Whilst the offshore ones
> *are* raking it in... yet this seems to be allowed.
>
> Something seems to be missing from your view.
>
> The 'tax' (sic) set on extraction is set by the license to extract, and
> wasn't set with this sort of situation in mind.
>

I suspect we are at cross purposes.

Your reference to the 'tax' set by the license suggests you have in mind
royalties. They were a share (12.5%) of the value of oil or gas
extracted. (And were abolished from 2003.)

But there were always, on top of royalties, taxes on /profits/ from UK
extraction. Currently 4 are in play:

petroleum revenue tax
ring fence corporation tax
supplementary charge
energy profits levy (the new "windfall tax")

And they apply to offshore companies as to companies registered in one
of the UK jurisdictions.

--
Robin
reply-to address is (intended to be) valid

On 09/08/2022 13:52, Java Jive wrote:
> On 09/08/2022 02:05, Owen Rees wrote:
>>
>> Look up what Peter Cochrane former CTO at BT has to say about how the
>> rollout of fibre to the home across the UK was shut down in 1990 for
>> political reasons.
>
> Some links would have been useful, but the first thing I found was this:
>
> How Thatcher killed the UK's superfast broadband before it even existed
> https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

(Extremely annoying website with pop-ups &c.)

'Dr Cochrane knew that Britain's tired copper network was insufficient:
"In 1974 it was patently obvious that copper wire was unsuitable for
digital communication in any form, and it could not afford the capacity
we needed for the future."'

'"In 1979 I presented my results," he tells us, "and the conclusion was
to forget about copper and get into fibre.'

Both statements are long before the domestic Internet; digital
communication, especially fibre, was something that only companies would
be expected to need, not access to homes.

It indicated a lack of foresight; but, building Windsor Castle
underneath the Heathrow flight path was a lack of foresight.

--
Max Demian

Max Demian <max_demian@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> On 09/08/2022 13:52, Java Jive wrote:
>> On 09/08/2022 02:05, Owen Rees wrote:
>>>
>>> Look up what Peter Cochrane former CTO at BT has to say about how the
>>> rollout of fibre to the home across the UK was shut down in 1990 for
>>> political reasons.
>>
>> Some links would have been useful, but the first thing I found was this:
>>
>> How Thatcher killed the UK's superfast broadband before it even existed
>> https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
>>
>
> (Extremely annoying website with pop-ups &c.)
>
> 'Dr Cochrane knew that Britain's tired copper network was insufficient:
> "In 1974 it was patently obvious that copper wire was unsuitable for
> digital communication in any form, and it could not afford the capacity
> we needed for the future."'
>
> '"In 1979 I presented my results," he tells us, "and the conclusion was
> to forget about copper and get into fibre.'
>
> Both statements are long before the domestic Internet; digital
> communication, especially fibre, was something that only companies would
> be expected to need, not access to homes.
>
> It indicated a lack of foresight; but, building Windsor Castle
> underneath the Heathrow flight path was a lack of foresight.
>

If you read the report it says that the plan was to replace the local loop
with fibre. As for much electronics there are huge economies of scale. The
political error is partly in the competition dogma and partly in the
inability to understand the potential of fibre to the premises everywhere.

We could have had fibre because it would have been cheap at the whole UK
scale just for telephones.

On Wed, 10 Aug 2022 23:25:48 -0000 (UTC), Owen Rees
<orees@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Max Demian <max_demian@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>> On 09/08/2022 13:52, Java Jive wrote:
>>> On 09/08/2022 02:05, Owen Rees wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Look up what Peter Cochrane former CTO at BT has to say about how the
>>>> rollout of fibre to the home across the UK was shut down in 1990 for
>>>> political reasons.
>>>
>>> Some links would have been useful, but the first thing I found was this:
>>>
>>> How Thatcher killed the UK's superfast broadband before it even existed
>>> https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
>>>
>>
>> (Extremely annoying website with pop-ups &c.)
>>
>> 'Dr Cochrane knew that Britain's tired copper network was insufficient:
>> "In 1974 it was patently obvious that copper wire was unsuitable for
>> digital communication in any form, and it could not afford the capacity
>> we needed for the future."'
>>
>> '"In 1979 I presented my results," he tells us, "and the conclusion was
>> to forget about copper and get into fibre.'
>>
>> Both statements are long before the domestic Internet; digital
>> communication, especially fibre, was something that only companies would
>> be expected to need, not access to homes.
>>
>> It indicated a lack of foresight; but, building Windsor Castle
>> underneath the Heathrow flight path was a lack of foresight.
>>
>
>If you read the report it says that the plan was to replace the local loop
>with fibre. As for much electronics there are huge economies of scale. The
>political error is partly in the competition dogma and partly in the
>inability to understand the potential of fibre to the premises everywhere.
>
>We could have had fibre because it would have been cheap at the whole UK
>scale just for telephones.

Even if we had started in the 1970s it would still be nowhere near
complete now. If you decide to replace all copper with fibre
everywhere, it wouldn't matter when you decided to do it, not everyone
would want it straight away, if at all. Many are perfectly happy with
what they've got, so it would only be feasible to replace their copper
in the event of a fault. You can't force an entire population to
accept the nuisance of changing to something they don't want and which
has no perceived advantage for some of them. Total replacement
couldn't be done overnight anyway, so it has to be done in such a way
that both systems can exist side by side for an overlap period that
will probably last many years.

This appears to be what they're doing now, as my own recent experience
changing from copper to fibre simply involved an Openreach engineer
climbing the pole across the road and running a replacement fibre
"cable" across to and into my house. The only significant difference
in what he did was the use of a fusion splicer instead of a Krone
tool, but otherwise the job seemed to involve about the same amount of
time and very similar work. My fibre comes from the same pole as my
neighbours' copper cables (unless some of them are fibres too) and as
far as I know follows the same conduit under the streets from the same
exchange, maybe via the same street box.

As far as I'm concerned I'm happy with the improvement and would
recommend it to anybody, but we don't all have the same priorities.
I'm sure fibre will eventually replace copper everywhere, and we can
get rid of all rooftop aerials and satellite dishes, but it's not
realistic to expect it to be complete within my lifetime.

Rod.

In article <td1eps$1v3qk$1@dont-email.me>,
Owen Rees <orees@hotmail.com> wrote:

> The political error is partly in the competition dogma

I don't know of any mechanism that makes a service better on price
and quality than competition.

Small units working in competition with each other will be lean and
mean and effective because they have to be to survive.

If you want to make a service expensive and poor make it big, the
bigger the better and then make it a monopoly, guaranteed to make it
awful.

I've seen a story attributed to Tony Benn. I don't know if it really
is his work but it hits the nail square on the head for a very well
known example. No amount of money poured in will ever fix it.

"The NHS held a boat race against a Japanese crew and after Japan won
by a mile, a working party found the winners had 18 people rowing and
one steering while the NHS had 18 people steering and one rowing. So
the NHS spent £5million on consultants, forming a restructured crew
of 4 assistant steering managers; 3 deputy managers and a director of
steering services. The rower was given an incentive to row harder.
They held another race and lost by 2 miles. So the NHS fired the
rower for poor performance, sold the boat and used the proceeds to
pay a bonus to the director of steering services."

Bob.

On 11/08/2022 08:10, Roderick Stewart wrote:
> This appears to be what they're doing now, as my own recent experience
> changing from copper to fibre simply involved an Openreach engineer
> climbing the pole across the road and running a replacement fibre
> "cable" across to and into my house.

What proportion of homes are not fed from a pole?

My feed appears to come underground, down the drive. I doubt there is
any sort of duct. I have not noticed any BT manhole covers nearby.

On 11/08/2022 08:28, Bob Latham wrote:
> "The NHS held a boat race against a Japanese crew and after Japan won
> by a mile, a working party found the winners had 18 people rowing and
> one steering while the NHS had 18 people steering and one rowing. So
> the NHS spent £5million on consultants, forming a restructured crew
> of 4 assistant steering managers; 3 deputy managers and a director of
> steering services. The rower was given an incentive to row harder.
> They held another race and lost by 2 miles. So the NHS fired the
> rower for poor performance, sold the boat and used the proceeds to
> pay a bonus to the director of steering services."

Seems to show the advantage of "big", presumably "small" would mean 18
people in separate boats all rowing in competition.

On Thu, 11 Aug 2022 09:14:19 +0100, MB <MB@nospam.net> wrote:

>On 11/08/2022 08:10, Roderick Stewart wrote:
>> This appears to be what they're doing now, as my own recent experience
>> changing from copper to fibre simply involved an Openreach engineer
>> climbing the pole across the road and running a replacement fibre
>> "cable" across to and into my house.
>
>What proportion of homes are not fed from a pole?
>
>My feed appears to come underground, down the drive. I doubt there is
>any sort of duct. I have not noticed any BT manhole covers nearby.

I've no idea, but I don't think it's relevant. If they say fibre is
available where you live, then it's available, if you want it, and you
don't have to worry about the details. Pulling a fibre through an
underground duct to replace a copper cable would be much the same job
as pulling a replacement copper cable through the duct to replace a
faulty one. Repairing or upgrading bits of the phone network is
something they'll be doing from time to time anyway, and if some of it
is fibre, it won't make much difference to most of the work that the
installers actually do, so presumably that part of the process will
cost about the same.

Rod.

In article <td2dtf$24gji$2@dont-email.me>,
MB <MB@nospam.net> wrote:
> On 11/08/2022 08:28, Bob Latham wrote:

> > "The NHS held a boat race against a Japanese crew and after Japan
> > won by a mile, a working party found the winners had 18 people
> > rowing and one steering while the NHS had 18 people steering and
> > one rowing. So the NHS spent £5million on consultants, forming a
> > restructured crew of 4 assistant steering managers; 3 deputy
> > managers and a director of steering services. The rower was given
> > an incentive to row harder. They held another race and lost by 2
> > miles. So the NHS fired the rower for poor performance, sold the
> > boat and used the proceeds to pay a bonus to the director of
> > steering services."

> Seems to show the advantage of "big", presumably "small" would mean
> 18 people in separate boats all rowing in competition.

Err no. The need to be competitive in order to survive would prevent
the self indulgent idiocy.

Bob.

In article <5a155db77cbob@sick-of-spam.invalid>, Bob Latham
<bob@sick-of-spam.invalid> wrote:

> At time, way back in the 80s I'm sure the intention was to draw people
> towards a more capitalist view and away from socialism, literally making
> them capitalists.

....for at least a few days before they sold on the Shares. :-)

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
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Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article <908d87d4-fcea-ac9f-7e05-fe2a008ff694@outlook.com>, Robin
<rbw@outlook.com> wrote:

> ISTM what you want can be described more simply: HMG can (a) demand all
> NS gas is supplied to the UK and (b) pay whatever price it wants, not
> what the gas would fetch on the open market.

> You might need to go further of course to take powers to force companies
> to extract the gas rather than leave it underground until they can get
> a better price. Enforcement of that could be fun.

The point is that the above can be done. The 'licenses' are from The Crown
/ UK Gov. And in times of 'National Emergency' that can pass laws/rules by
a form of Decree.

The advantage is that we get the gas at a price that;

A) *Still* gives the companies a profit similar to what they were happy to
work with pre-Ukraine.

B) We get the gas a price that won't cripple the UK oand/or leave large
numbers of people in essentially wartime conditions of freezing
penury/debt.

> I wonder what you think about the legal challenges to be expected under
> Article 1 of Protocol 1 EHRC. And - probably more important - the risk
> of retaliatory action: e.g. if HMG is (it could be argued) confiscating
> gas from US and Norwegian companies we might find it a tad harder to
> keep on getting gas from the US and Norway.

LOL! :-) Govement has a habit of wanting to ignore such things for its own
political reasons. But even discarding that, the situation we face really
*is* going to be an Emergency. If you don't know that yet, you've not been
paying attention.

The 'World Price' would still detemine what we bought on the open world
market. Given that wrt Ukraine/Putin we, the US, and Norway are together on
that *cause of this problem* I suspect something can be agreed. But in the
end the UK Government is elected by and responsible to the UK population.
If they can use that to 'justify' Brexit, they can for this as well.

I appreciate that the muppet and the spiv competing to take over from the
clown as our PM may not grasp this yet. But people will get their noses
rubbed in it soon if they allow things to drift as they seem to assume. For
the State to hand out tax breaks or 'gifts' woun't cover it, and may simply
generate *worse* problems later on!

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
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Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article <5a1562d321bob@sick-of-spam.invalid>, Bob Latham
<bob@sick-of-spam.invalid> wrote:

> > NONE of the above are the ones making huge profits on the back of
> > "World Price". Some may well be in difficulty because of this.

> So it seems you admit competition between companies to supply our energy
> is a good thing and works to keep prices as low as possible. I thought
> socialists wanted such things nationalised.

Your view of 'soclalists' is perhaps rather narrow. Reality is more
complicated.

A genuine *competitive* market is fine in many situations. The problem is
that this is often systematically misused and then hidden from scrutiny.
All too often the 'free market' is neither. And in sume situations
the 'free market' isn't the solution to a problem.

And something as vital as energy for heating, cooking, etc, it also has to
be regulated. Just as we regulate for safety, etc, in cars, say.

So we get problems like the large gas storage facility operated for
strategic reasons was shut down just a few years ago. This could store a
lot of gas to keep the country going and hedge against price fluctuations
and supply problems. The companies didn't want to keep it as it was a
'cost'. So Government allowed it to be taken out of service.

It would now have been quite useful.

This examples that a 'free market' generally isn't 'free' but focusses on
the shareholder dividends, not the customers. Companies also tend to
'flock' rather than compete as it is 'safer' from their POV. So it also
often isn't 'free' or really competitive, either.

Government tends to be made up from politicians who go along with the gag.
In exchange for nice consultancies, free advisors, directorships, and jobs
after they leave Westminster. Regulatory capture or blindness or
powelessness duly infects.

So, rather than a "four legs good, two legs bad" view, it makes sense to
have a mix of social and market approaches to how things are done. Under
proper *scrutiny* and well as rules that are enforced to ensure things are
done in a way we benefit from as a population, not simply be used as
sources for wealth extraction.

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_Guide/intro/electron.htm
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Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On 06/08/2022 09:54, MB wrote:
> On 06/08/2022 09:20, Brian Gaff wrote:
>> I see all sorts of messing about where bbc shows saving lives at sea,
>> which
>> seems to be made by a commercial company, but the other channels
>> increasingly show bbc things, some mainly repeats.
>>   So surely we have a kind of right to say to bbc, make your own
>> stuff even
>> if it does not fill all your schedules up? Don't sell off cheap your
>> things
>> to the commercial channels.
>>   It just seems that nobody would notice now if bbc started to carry
>> adverts.
>
> A previous government instructed the BBC to contract out much
> programme production, it is perhaps debatable whether this resulted in
> an improvement in programme quality or any savings in costs but many
> people seem to have got wealthy through it including at one time
> retired staff who were paid to carry on making the same programmes
> that they did as BBC employees.
>
>
It's 2022 not 1982 FFS. There is not a 'state broadcaster' in the free
world that doesn't farm out significant amounts of its programme
production and other services.

The UK has a huge base of quality freelancers, production companies, and
facility houses  that the BBC, and those vulgar commercial johnnies all use.

Editorial and quality control of those production companies still rests
100% with the commissioning broadcaster. If you think something is of
poor quality, it's the commissioning staff of the BBC (or whoever) you
should point the finger at.

On 11/08/2022 08:28, Bob Latham wrote:
> Small units working in competition with each other will be lean and
> mean and effective because they have to be to survive.

That may be true of hairdressers, but for other sorts of business,
economies of scale make a difference. Also, for businesses were
advantage is gained by technology advances, rather than by efficient
operation of established procedures, it can be extremely wasteful, with
everyone trying to re-invent the same wheel, and you can have a
situation where no one business can afford to take on the R&D risk, on
its own.

On 11/08/2022 08:10, Roderick Stewart wrote:
> it wouldn't matter when you decided to do it, not everyone
> would want it straight away,

The reason there was an uproar about the move to digital telephony
recently was because there were plans to force an end to analogue
telephony, except within the home, by 2025.

In other utility areas, consumers have been forced to change technology
over short periods, involving lots of technicians visiting homes. I'm
thinking of the change from town gas to natural gas, and looking towards
the change from natural gas to hydrogen, for those for which heat pumps
are not a good solution.

On 11/08/2022 10:56, David Woolley wrote:
> The reason there was an uproar about the move to digital telephony
> recently was because there were plans to force an end to analogue
> telephony, except within the home, by 2025.
>
> In other utility areas, consumers have been forced to change technology
> over short periods, involving lots of technicians visiting homes. I'm
> thinking of the change from town gas to natural gas, and looking towards
> the change from natural gas to hydrogen, for those for which heat pumps
> are not a good solution.

Perhaps a better analogy was the rush to install cable TV and broadband
with dodgy contractors (usually Irish in white vans) digging up
pavements and roads then doing very poor quality patches to the surface
afterwards.

They should have been carefully supervised but the companies just wanted
to increase their number of customers as quickly as possible and
councils did not have the resources. There was pressure from the
government to cable the country so they were not going to get involved.

In article <td2doq$24gji$1@dont-email.me>,
MB <MB@nospam.net> wrote:
> On 11/08/2022 08:10, Roderick Stewart wrote:
> > This appears to be what they're doing now, as my own recent experience
> > changing from copper to fibre simply involved an Openreach engineer
> > climbing the pole across the road and running a replacement fibre
> > "cable" across to and into my house.

> What proportion of homes are not fed from a pole?

> My feed appears to come underground, down the drive. I doubt there is
> any sort of duct. I have not noticed any BT manhole covers nearby.

I'm fed from a pole, but a lot of work had to be carried out, behind the
scenes, to get the fibre onto the pole. It wasn't just runing a fibre
across the road to my house. I understand that our local (village)
telephone exchange isn't involved, there's just an underground connection
to a trunk cable somewhere.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England - sent from my RISC OS 4té
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

In article <5a15b5f5bbnoise@audiomisc.co.uk>,
Jim Lesurf <noise@audiomisc.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <5a1562d321bob@sick-of-spam.invalid>, Bob Latham
> <bob@sick-of-spam.invalid> wrote:

> > > NONE of the above are the ones making huge profits on the back of
> > > "World Price". Some may well be in difficulty because of this.

> > So it seems you admit competition between companies to supply our
> > energy is a good thing and works to keep prices as low as
> > possible. I thought socialists wanted such things nationalised.

> Your view of 'soclalists' is perhaps rather narrow. Reality is more
> complicated.

I'm not perfect.

> A genuine *competitive* market is fine in many situations. The
> problem is that this is often systematically misused and then
> hidden from scrutiny. All too often the 'free market' is neither.
> And in sume situations the 'free market' isn't the solution to a
> problem.

> And something as vital as energy for heating, cooking, etc, it also
> has to be regulated. Just as we regulate for safety, etc, in cars,
> say.

I don't disagree there.

> So we get problems like the large gas storage facility operated for
> strategic reasons was shut down just a few years ago. This could
> store a lot of gas to keep the country going and hedge against
> price fluctuations and supply problems. The companies didn't want
> to keep it as it was a 'cost'. So Government allowed it to be taken
> out of service.

> It would now have been quite useful.

I agree. Our current energy crisis is less to do with world events
and more to do with a succession of governments kicking the can down
the road and not making sure we have our own secure energy supply.
Yes, by all means burn the devil's gas from Russia but be well
prepared for that to suddenly go sour. Add to that mix the utter
stupidity of the pointless net-zero farce and we have a crisis.

There's a video doing the rounds at the moment of Nick Clegg in 2010
saying it was no use going nuclear as this wouldn't provide power
until 2021. That didn't age well.

> This examples that a 'free market' generally isn't 'free' but
> focusses on the shareholder dividends, not the customers. Companies
> also tend to 'flock' rather than compete as it is 'safer' from
> their POV. So it also often isn't 'free' or really competitive,
> either.

That's the problem isn't it, there isn't competition to hold them to
account. It's far from easy to see how to add the competition but
that's the core. Companies concentrate not on customer service to
keep their customers but on profit because the public can't buy a
better and or cheaper service from someone else.

That's why we get hose pipe bans because the service doesn't matter,
only profits do. So leaks don't get properly fixed and de-salination
plants sit idle.

> Government tends to be made up from politicians who go along with
> the gag. In exchange for nice consultancies, free advisors,
> directorships, and jobs after they leave Westminster. Regulatory
> capture or blindness or powelessness duly infects.

> So, rather than a "four legs good, two legs bad" view, it makes
> sense to have a mix of social and market approaches to how things
> are done. Under proper *scrutiny* and well as rules that are
> enforced to ensure things are done in a way we benefit from as a
> population, not simply be used as sources for wealth extraction.

But I can't think of even one public body that isn't costly and
highly inefficient, perhaps you can.

Bob.

On 11/08/2022 08:28, Bob Latham wrote:
>
> In article <td1eps$1v3qk$1@dont-email.me>,
> Owen Rees <orees@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The political error is partly in the competition dogma
>
> I don't know of any mechanism that makes a service better on price
> and quality than competition.

Like all political dogmas, as another has already pointed out, there are
situations where competition doesn't improve things. The story
discussed linked above shows one, but, typically, you just restate the
dogma, rather than learn the lesson from its misapplication.

> Small units working in competition with each other will be lean and
> mean and effective because they have to be to survive.
>
> If you want to make a service expensive and poor make it big, the
> bigger the better and then make it a monopoly, guaranteed to make it
> awful.

See above.

> I've seen a story attributed to Tony Benn. I don't know if it really
> is his work but it hits the nail square on the head for a very well
> known example. No amount of money poured in will ever fix it.
>
> "The NHS held a boat race against a Japanese crew and after Japan won
> by a mile, a working party found the winners had 18 people rowing and
> one steering while the NHS had 18 people steering and one rowing. So
> the NHS spent £5million on consultants, forming a restructured crew
> of 4 assistant steering managers; 3 deputy managers and a director of
> steering services. The rower was given an incentive to row harder.
> They held another race and lost by 2 miles. So the NHS fired the
> rower for poor performance, sold the boat and used the proceeds to
> pay a bonus to the director of steering services."

ISTM that you are rather missing the point of that story!

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Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
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In article <5a15b4b9b5noise@audiomisc.co.uk>,
Jim Lesurf <noise@audiomisc.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <5a155db77cbob@sick-of-spam.invalid>, Bob Latham
> <bob@sick-of-spam.invalid> wrote:

> > At time, way back in the 80s I'm sure the intention was to draw
> > people towards a more capitalist view and away from socialism,
> > literally making them capitalists.

> ...for at least a few days before they sold on the Shares. :-)

All I can say on that is that most of my colleagues from those days
have not sold them and indeed love to talk about the current value.

Bob.

In article <td2jg4$250nv$1@dont-email.me>,
David Woolley <david@ex.djwhome.demon.invalid> wrote:
> On 11/08/2022 08:28, Bob Latham wrote:
> > Small units working in competition with each other will be lean and
> > mean and effective because they have to be to survive.

> That may be true of hairdressers, but for other sorts of business,
> economies of scale make a difference. Also, for businesses were
> advantage is gained by technology advances, rather than by
> efficient operation of established procedures, it can be extremely
> wasteful, with everyone trying to re-invent the same wheel, and
> you can have a situation where no one business can afford to take
> on the R&D risk, on its own.

Oh yes there is truth in that too. The problem is, that without the
incentive of 'must keep customers happy to survive' things will go
south. As a "group" grows it becomes more wasteful and indulgent in
the knowledge it is safe. It will inevitably become management top
heavy and things get hidden in the shear complexity.

Soon it's out of control and if there is a religious connotation,
then anyone who tries to tackle the problem will get attacked by the
media and therefore no-one does and it gets worse and worse and I
give you the NHS.

Bob.

On 11/08/2022 11:52, Bob Latham wrote:
>
> Soon it's out of control and if there is a religious connotation,
> then anyone who tries to tackle the problem will get attacked by the
> media and therefore no-one does and it gets worse and worse and I
> give you the NHS.

I have a brother who recently, sadly but inevitably, died of AML, and a
nephew with a life-threatening heart condition. Both them and their
families were/are full of praise for the NHS and their treatment.
However, I, like Jim, have seen examples of poor NHS care, for example
my GP when I was living south of the border, although currently north of
it I have the best that I've ever had. I have another nephew who used
to be a senior nurse in charge of his local A&E unit, and he once said
to me that his biggest problem was getting the doctors and senior
clinicians to wash their hands in between attending patients. The truth
is that the NHS varies a great deal in its quality of care. However,
the big problem of the moment it that it is overburdened - we have an
ageing population, a chronic shortage of front-line staff, a pandemic
that is still smouldering on, and a backlog of treatment pre-dating even
the pandemic which of course massively increased during the pandemic itself.

Political dogma is not going to solve such problems, no matter how
fervently you believe in it.

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Fake news kills!

I may be contacted via the contact address given on my website:
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