Tell us what you think

Why do you want to see public services run for people not profit? Tell us your story here.

We'll use your comments to help make the case for public ownership - look out for your thoughts on our homepage!

Thanks for telling us what you think.

Photo used under Creative Commons licensing, thanks to anw.fr.

Comments

Chris Giles 2 months ago

It would appear that once medicines have left the pharmacy they cannot be recycled even if they are still safe in their blister packs, sealed inside their cardboard boxes! WHY?
50% of the TOTAL NHS budget is spent on pharmaceuticals. I wonder how much of that is just thrown onto the incinerator unopened?

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Joseph Frain 2 months ago

Energy companies standing charges are making money even if we don't use any
We owned it National gas & Electricity before Mrs Thatcher 'tell Sid' sale of the century,leading to public ownership being privatised for massive profits for themselves And Shareholders

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Lee McCallum 4 months ago

It is time.

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Lee McCallum 4 months ago

Hey everybody! We haven't long to go before library closes and we are all forced back into the trenches to answer to the daily societal bedlam. I am writing to ask you to stop chickening out of the pickets. What is the point of being unionized when the money just goes into the Treasury pot and Thames Water only to blacken the look and feel. We don't really have to do anything? Instead bring in a law which makes it perfectly safe to clean up the sewerage within a given (short) time frame to a specified level. Prison Chief Execs and Senior Managers if they fail to meet requirements and let them find their way once released. This would be on a Public Health Committee and on the grounds of public demand. If they can afford the huge effort to spend at least the same amount on cleaning up then why start in the first place. The government-commissioned review into the state requires the Conservatives’ Health and Social Care Act to act faster or “a calamity without international precedent” will take effect. The goal of the action is to inform MPs of the negative impacts and to therefore encourage them to ask the government to include the goal of ending outsourcing a wish-list or unfulfilled contracts as part of the government’s plan. Thank you very much for the comments and work you are sharing and look forward to real action where input must be reworked.

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Geraldine Pinchard 6 months ago

What is the point of fining the water companies, the money just goes into the Treasury pot and Thames Water don't have to do anything? Instead bring in a law which makes them have to clean up the sewerage within a given (short) time frame to a specified level or then fine or imprison Chief Execs and Senior Managers if they fail to meet requirements. This would be on Public Health grounds. If they can afford a huge fine they can be made to spend at least the same amount on cleaning up.

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John Branscombe 7 months ago

Water companies should be renationalised AFTER all necessary repairs to sewage systems is completed ,paid for by shareholders.

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David 8 months ago

I thought I would share my thoughts on the forthcoming general election, I HAD been a lifetime Labour voter, I decided this week I will be defacing my ballot paper by writing the reasons I don’t want to vote for any party.
As I’m sure The Canary knows these papers get collected and they do get noticed and even read, I know this because I worked for a local council so with that knowledge I want all parties to realise I am unhappy to condone any one party into government, they lie and until a law is passed to punish them for making false promises I will not vote.
We know who ever gets into government will raise our taxes, no party is going far enough to save our NHS, no party has really said it would reverse all privatisation, in fact the worst I have heard is from the Labour camp, it seems Wes Steeting is happy to put the NHS into more private profiteering hands, I do hate politicians like that.
My vote is for "NONE OF THE ABOVE" and it will my very first time ever I do not vote.
David a politically orphaned 59 year old.

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Adam Hiley 9 months ago

The Social Democratic Party is the only alternative to the uniparty LabCon

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Pat Brandwood 9 months ago

I was furious when public services were privatised. I could see that it was to offload commitments from the governor and that it would allow the private companies to make large profits for themselves and shareholders to the detriment of the public. I continue to be furious when I hear that my fears are confirmed. Private companies ( often Tory supporters) have profited enormously. Leaving the taxpaying public shortchanged.

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- Michael Still 9 months ago
  
  Totally agree with your comments.
  
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Ian 9 months ago

Our airports should be nationalised, we need to be in control of our national infrastructure and security, it shouldn’t be used as a cash cow to send billions of pounds abroad to foreign investors who want the airports run on minimum wage staff with little concern for the safety and security of the users.

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M. Lansbury 9 months ago

I've an inquiry regarding Labours alleged action of moving our rail system into public ownership.
They state the 'rolling stock' will NOT be part of the moving the rail system into public ownership.
Surely the rolling stock is a SIGNIFICANT and vital part of our rail system.
Why does Labour choose to keep rolling stock in the hands of greedy, profit motivated corporations?

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Average person on the street 10 months ago

If the politicians don't give us our water back, we should take it by force.

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Neville Paul Jones 10 months ago

What really gets me is that if we renationalise some private companies we might have to pay compensation. The way round this as I suggested some years ago regarding rail is to wait for the contracts to come up and cancel them. But it is still very galling that we would have to wait.
I need to take a full look on your website but I agree with you that water companies such as Thames Water having fallen foul of their contracts, could be renationalised immediately.
With public ownership we need to go further. Around 2009/10, Gordon Brown had a great opportunity to nationalise all of them not just the ones in trouble. Isn’t weird that those were taken over having made losses were sold back at a low price once they made profits again? I think the answer is to leave the independent “mutuals” like Nationwide etc alone but encourage or force cooperatives on the others.
The same could apply to the big high street retailers such as Next, M and S etc. Cooperatives are a great way to have a form of public ownership even socialism without full nationalisation and potential drawbacks. This is why I am not only a Labour Party member but a Cooperative Party member. This isn’t easy to achieve but we must find a way.
We do need to bring public utilities back into public ownership but we need to learn from the past so we avoid the disadvantages of having large public corporations which are unaccountable and alienate both the public and their workers. Of course, there is no perfect solution but having public utilities run as cooperatives with public stakeholders and some genuine industrial democracy is the way forward and 10 times better than what we have.
The same should apply to private companies run as cooperatives.
By the way, public ownership is good for the economy, take Sweden which has real workers rights and high trade union membership and of course a high proportion of public ownership. In 2010, following the crash, their economy was the same as ours. Now, they are one of the most prosperous countries on the planet. No to mention Norway who nationalised North Sea Oil. Thatcherism which we still suffer with was not only wrong it was polar opposite to what is good.

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Des 11 months ago

i have just sent this to my local councilor for Guildford Borough on the subject of medical care, council workers on payband 6 and above get FREE MEDICAL INSURANCE as a perk A perk that I do not want to pay for through my council tax. Please read on. How many other councils pay for FREE MEDICAL INSURANCE for tax payer funding.
Dear Councilor Morson,
It's some weeks since my last email to you enquiring about the benefit to Guildford borough council employees of FREE MEDICAL INSURANCE, a benefit I feel should be stopped, an inappropriate use of council tax payers money. I am enquiring about any knowledge, thoughts or observations you have on the subject thus far? Why should I, as a council taxpayer, pay for this benefit for employees? It does not benefit me. Do the employees in receipt of this benefit declare to HMRC, this benefit in kind? I understand the Free Medical Insurance is only available to pay band 6 and above this makes it discriminatory and another reason to discontinue the benefit. We are all covered by the NHS no additional cover should be required, it only serves to weaken the reason for the NHS to continue.
Rgds Des McGuinness,

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Angela Craft 11 months ago

Many pensions have invested in utilities. How do you propose ensuring they can re invest their money as profitably?

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- Kate 11 months ago
  
  Have a look at We Own It's webpage on energy which has a section further down about pensions. https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/energy
  
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Ian Sandeman 1 year ago

British Gas have chosen Fujitsu to provide their main software for billing etc. This should be stopped.

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Brian Wilson 1 year ago

Try taking action against a government department when they have behaved illegally. Why is it that it takes so long to receive justice when a supposedly accountable government body is involved? Politicians of all parties immediately act against private bodies because they have nothing to lose whereas public bodies are protected.
Land Registry takes ridiculous amoounts of time to register properties.
Those who died in the Sheffield Liverpool match received no justice.
Grenfell victims tried to complain before they died in a fire caused by goverment failures.
The list is endless. It takes decades to get compensation for haemophiliacs given contaminated blood.

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Liz Moylett 2 years ago

Our PPE stock management is outsourced to private firms by the government
Now, in 2023, The Public Accounts Committee is highly critical of the repeated governance and financial failings at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which was set up under Boris Johnson during the pandemic.
Our PPE stock management is outsourced to private firms by the government. In 2018 Movianto, a subsidiary of US health company won the £55 million contract. In 2020 ( during the pandemic ) the contract was taken over by French company EHDH holding group
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), which oversees UKHSA, lacks a strategy for reserves of PPE, vaccines and medicines despite its mandate to protect our health security.
The government owns the PPE stock, but outsources its management to private firms. What possible justification is there for this ?

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John Wilson 2 years ago

Though a British citizen I'm not allowed to sign your petition because I live abroad. I'm potentially allowed to own UK utility companies though, or be a shareholder of such.

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John B Harries-Coulman 2 years ago

Hi. I'm 89. I knew when Thatcher was in power. They had no legal right to sell our Utilities. . Government owns Nothing. We the People invested all our lives. In using our Utilities.
But it is difficult. To stop Capitalists stealing What is Not theirs.
We are not a Democracy. We are controlled by Capitalists. In all Political Parties.

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Michael Still 2 years ago

Totally agree with all these comments. Can we bring about change. It’s going to be hard work.

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Patricia Whitworth 2 years ago

I am sick to death of hearing about all the massive profits these private companies are making and the huge bonuses that are being given to the CEOs and shareholders. It is time everything that was publicly owned is once more publicly owned. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

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- Tracey 11 months ago
  
  We need a huge demonstration so people know you exist. I only found it by accident.. I've been thinking this stuff for ages. I expect millions of others have been too.. lets be strong and stand up. Afterall the poll tax protests worked.
  
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Hilary Barker 2 years ago

John Bosco you asked for ideas on how to get the labour party on board with deprivitisation of the NHS in their next manifesto. Use poll data to show how popular the ngs is with the vast majority if people. If there are votes to be ghad that will sway them. Use Gary from Gary's economics to make the economic and socially moral case for it. Hopefully he will make them take back the moral high ground when they rea.ise how popular it is

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- Pascale 2 years ago
  
  Thanks so much for sharing these ideas with us Hilary!!
  
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Cook 2 years ago

I think we should be aiming for a minimum water/energy in a property has to give per week. So people can least have one bath or one cooked meal a week. We have to be sensible and say it is a minimum an energy provider provide for someone regardless if they can afford it. If people go silly and say that is should be completely free the whole point will be lost in the argument.
A person would have to register their property for say 6 months at time for a minimum water/energy per week and then have to be re-evaluated every six months.
The point is help people not make Rich Labour Charlie arguments or quotes will living in 4 bedroom house, where lots of people will be divided.
A bare minimum for those that are struggling seems a sensible start, so they have some human comfort per week.
The energy providers would bare most of the costs,
We must say to them people before profits, less suffering before dividends

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Rauf 2 years ago

All the majority of people are interested in is immigration. As long as they (wrongly) believe the Tory lies (Johnson, Truss, Braverman), they will keep voting for them. The Tories want to privatise everything and turn the majority of us into Serfs. They don't care about this country or the common people. All they are interested in is how much money they can make. And ironically the most immigration ever has happened in the last twelve years of Tory rule.

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Sahar 2 years ago

In Luxemburg transportation is free; you just step onto the train without buying a ticket or using a travel card. They have a complex tax system and I wonder if it would be a good option for us to consider. I personally wouldn't mind paying a little bit of tax to use TfL for free all day every day.

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Alan 2 years ago

I'm so busy now that I've started to write my book, and today I write. "...It does not follow that owning does much good, if any, without control…" Now what I want to ask you, at We Own It, is, what do you think? I hope that you will not tell me that you have no need to control what you own? Because if you own; even just a stick, but then I and not you control that stick; so that I beat you hard; and more so with each day, with your own stick; then, please tell me what good you get, if any, from owning it. Oh, but that somewhat over-simplifies, you may say, but it does full justice to the realities of life, and work, for those, like nurses, who have to work for hospitals which you own. And so, the more I think of it, I cannot see why my book should leave out that line, which has to do with control, can you?

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Martin Bruce 2 years ago

UK Citizens have become slaves of the Globalists, rich investors who milk our country dry. £Billions flow overseas while the UK's £Trillion debt mountain grows. Thatcher started selling off the Family silver, and the Tories continued with the rot to line their own greedy pockets. Property and land is rented out by overseas investors who don't even live here, while our own Citizens cannot get a foot on the property ladder.

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Frances Bell 2 years ago

My lovely neighbours tell me, from their daily reading of the Daily Mail, that everything the Labour Party says is lies and that I am stupidly believing these lies and actually the government is doing a brilliant job and growing the economy means I will have double my old age pension any time soon. We must shoot down these lies

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Stuart Mulholland 2 years ago

I am sick to death witnessing over the last 40 years our governments not standing up for the citizen (not subject of the Crown) being ripped off by private vested interests instead. It is fascial that so much of our vital infrastructure is owned by foreign companies and governments. Our politicians seem incapable of agreeing a future vision for our nation! Why? Is it because they are part of the vested interests associated with the theft of the peoples assets - in other times this would be treason....off with thier heads!

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Mike Fuller 2 years ago

I am all for nationalising the utilities, including Bulb, but to suggest nationalising Bulb will lead to lower prices is wrong, unlike EDF (in France), Bulb is not and energy generator, they are an energy seller. Even in public hands they would still have to by leccy and gas on the open markets. Only by nationalising UK gas and energy production could prices be brought down.

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Blair Corral 2 years ago

I would also like to see public money being used to install solar panels on public and municipal property,as well as council and private houses.

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Adele Tinman 2 years ago

EDF - I moved into an over 55's flat, informed EDF and received no acknowledgement. I received bills in the name of previous tenant but none in my name, despite having written to inform EDF. Years ago, before electricity was privatized, there were meter readers; you moved into a new flat, informed the local electricity board and someone would be round to read the meter - simple. Our local electricity board in Walthamstow is now flats. Three years after I moved in, someone from EDF actually came round ! He quoted the name of the previous tenant of the flat...nothing he said indicated they knew the tenancy had changed hands. The bill I received was for £900. Having done some renegotiation, assisted by Clarion Housing, Landlords, the bill was quoted as £600. This I duly paid by instalments. EDF were supposed to fit a "smart meter" but it has never worked ! My flat is very small and very warm and I'm lucky not to feel the cold so quite how the original bill was £900 I'll never know!

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Bob Rien 2 years ago

How does the message get out there? Intelligent people are completely ignorant of the facts. Many don't believe public ownership is a "thing" anymore anywhere in the world. Also, a person whose sole goal is to make money is driven in a way that mere mortals who just want to do the right thing more often than not cannot match - 20 years in the City working for fund managers has show me that. The distribution of information is key here... look at the oil industry and climate change. How much does a TV advert cost?

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Pete Gorman 2 years ago

Why can't the tory government see that privatisation of previously nationally owned, essential services such as energy, transport, health services is not the answer. More people have suffered since all the family silver was sold off to profiteering foreign corporate investors. Short term profit for some, but big business gains the most in the end, all of this nations lifeblood has been sold off and sacrificed for the benefit of the already wealthy, with the less fortunate paying the price, the wealthy do not care because it doesn't affect them, apparently there was a better standard of living during the second World War than we are expected to endure today. How is this right? Why don't we get the priveleged 4% of this country, or the world, try to live in the real world and worry about how they are going to feed,keep warm, clothe, and protect their families, instead of worrying about who's got the biggest yacht or most successful football club!!! Capitalism doesn't work, unless you are an already exploitative, unscrupulous, selfish, uncaring, profiteering, tax avoiding, offshore registered corporation, we need a revolution to stand up to the greedy,'profit first, and bugger all matters' FAT CAT' B*****DS'

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Bob 2 years ago

I'm an Octopus customer. I like Octopus, they're a decent enough company, I raise an issue, they deal with it, but they seemed to struggle after "adopting" 250,000 customers a while back.
My bills were just not right. At first, they assured me they were, but eventually they had to concede that my "Smart" meter wasn't communicating properly. I benefited, in that I was being less than I owed, but imagine, had someone living on the financial edge been billed low, and been obliged to repay a shortfall? As it is, I've doubled my monthly payments this year and am about to raise the payment beyond that...
Really a good company, I like them, but I fear they haven't got the resources to handle another 250,000? customers, and...they need public money to do it?
Their billing is fairly opaque too. They take money from my positive balance at odd times, not simply monthly, and it makes my life difficult analyzing my costs per month. With BG, a company I hate with a vengeance at least that analysis was simple... And...I cannot separate out the cost of charging my electric car from the "general" electrical cost. I have to trust the car's data, displayed quite simply on the dash. Would be handy to have Octopus' data separated out for comparison...

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Rod Leach 3 years ago

I have been sent your campaign to renationalise public transport and whole heartedly agree.

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David Foxen 3 years ago

I've just read the piece by Cat Hobbs in the Guardian regarding current Labour policy towards public ownership and agree wholeheartedly with the comments. I now live in Austria where nearly all the public services are still owned by the State. Not even the Austrian Tories (OEVP) would contemplate privatising although they taken some small steps in that direction. I hope that is all it is.
At dinner the other night, I spoke with a friend who had just installed solar panels on his roof to generate electricity. He will shortly have power for nothing and hopes to sell any surplus to the grid. To my mind, this is a perfect example of what a 'green' utility owned by the State could help out with by providing grants and advice whilst helping to grow the green economy. Other householders could get together and supply houses in the area forming a self sufficient hub of power generation. Simples, right?
Keep up the good and important work.
D.

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Mr James Henry Brooks 3 years ago

Thank you Cat for your article in today's Guardian. Yes, the simple fact is that citizen's are currently being defrauded by the systematic abuse of deregulated capitalism. Capitalism has at heart the idea that one can invest in an enterprise, and that the value of one's shares might go up or down. Apart from the ethical issues raised by investing in fossil fuels or guns for example, the real problem in the case of privatisation has arisen from the extractive nature of dividends. In the case of UK water companies, i understand that the payment of dividends closely matches the cost of infrastructure needed to fix the appalling routine discharge of raw sewage into waterways.

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Mike 3 years ago

While I personally agree with a vast majority of arguments against privatisation of UK's public services while at the same time improving the level of efficiency of management of these and reducing the waste of public money, I also believe that only essential public services should remain public which includes infrastructure, health and education.
To go even further, most if not all already privatised public services should be reverted back to become public, including for example trains, communication infrastructure and care for people with learning disabilities.
Having said that, television including Channel 4 and BBC do not count as essential public services with the exception of parts of BBC responsible for education, culture (in educational sense) and information (BBC News) mission. Please do not push for these to remain public as we are talking about taxpayers money spent on entertainment programs at the benefit of people watching these but at the expense of everyone else.

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- Kate 3 years ago
  
  We believe that public services paid for by the public should not be sold. People have a different view on what is essential and what is not. Channel 4 does ground breaking work, doesn't cost the tax payer a penny and contributes to our economy.
  Best wishes Kate and the We Own It team.
  
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pauline colledge 3 years ago

I didn't send letter because this is Islington North,they know. Every time there is a gov reorg of the NHS eg. 2012 they are sneakily bringing it ever closer to a US model. I bet the money they profess to spend on NHS is also used to build and establish an ever increasing number of private facilities. Is this a losing battle.?. The Euroean model where the state runs non profit insurane scheme with built-in protections worth studying. Campaigning for this could achieve more and alarm a profiteering greedy govt. Campaigning for something rather than reacting and never catching up with gov's machinations.
I am partially sighted

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Steffy Cairns 3 years ago

There's no excuse for privatisation, as there's absolutley no fat left to be cut off from services such as the NHS. The privatisation movement is very covert. As far back as 2015, letters to our local social services were sent to ' the People Group ', but no - one could tell me who they were?
The ' levelling up agenda ' is farcical, when services are increasingly being put into private hands, so that the lowest paid workers receive even less. eg. Lab workers in private testing cos. compared to NHS. Have you seen what the Directors of CareUk receive in remuneration? It's sickening!

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Steven Corcoran 3 years ago

It's much worse
“Capital must protect itself in every possible way, both by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through process of law, the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of the government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers. These truths are well known among our principal men, who are now engaged in forming an imperialism to govern the world. By dividing the voter through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance. It is thus, by discrete action, we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.”
Montagu Norman – Governor of the Bank of England – addressing the United States Bankers’ Association, New York City, 1924
Scary

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Graham blake 3 years ago

Sexual health (GUM) clinics now operated by serco, tht et al . Profits out of nhs to serco mostly. This applies to east of england. Should be back to full nhs cover

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Eddie Dougall 3 years ago

You say "privatisation is not wrong per se", well it is when applied to strategic requirements of the UK nationally, or people individually, in terms of services/goods essential to life. I never imagined that water, energy, rail, housing (selling off of council houses), health care would ever be privatised, I thought the public would not stand for it. However offer shares at a low enough price, or houses at about half price or so, and thoughts of the future consequences were ignored. Very sad what people can be bribed to do.

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James Nicholson 3 years ago

A long overdue review of offshore tax havens should be undertaken to prevent the very wealthy domiciled in this country from paying their UK taxes. Clearly not an action for a Selfservative government, but for a meaningful polical opposition - if we have one.

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Devinder singh 3 years ago

All energy companies must be under UK government so that it should be make as cheaper and the profits should go the government not into the private hands.....thanks.

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Dermot Killingley 3 years ago

Government incompetence isn't an accident, it's part of Tory ideology. To maintain the fiction that the market yields the best outcomes, the government has to show itself to be both inefficient and lacking in benevolence.

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Lynn 3 years ago

It's time that the public had a say in energy suppliers and our water companies

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Patricia Simpson 3 years ago

My GP surgery has been taken over by a private company, you can’t get appointments (you can’t even get someone to answer the phone), everything is prioritised by money and services have been steadily reduced. Dental services have been decimated and our local hospital has been rendered impotent nearly leading to the death of my son. It’s time to halt the rot.

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- Eddie Dougall 3 years ago
  
  Same goes for 'Academy' schools, with US and other interests collecting together groups of them and giving megabucks to the new-style CEO who has absolute control of where the money goes that the schools get from government. Piecemeal
  privatisation.
  
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Geoff Clarkson 3 years ago

An animated fairy I have just made tale about how privatised water is polluting our rivers.
STINKY STORY https://vimeo.com/664337462

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Colin Bennett 3 years ago

I am fully in agreement about public services being run for the good of the country rather than for private profit.
I would, however, stipulate that they should be run independently of micro-management by any Government and not interfered with for political advantage.
Any Government should only be allowed to make general guidance as to the way the service is run.

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Sarah Dent 3 years ago

Private companies equate 'cost saving' with efficiency. Even if a service is ostensibly cheaper - eg hospital cleaners - it is not efficient to employ people on wages which are so low they need in-work benefits to top up their earnings. This is a ridiculous and if the cost of providing the benefits - administration and payments - were added to the cost of the service, I bet it would be seen to be what it is. An expensive and hugely inefficient way to divert taxpayers' money into the hands of corporate profiteers, and increase inequality.

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Maryan Hadley 3 years ago

These shysters would sell off their own children. Absolutely devoid of integrity.

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Adam Hiley 3 years ago

I implore my fellow Britons to wake up about this government and this Lame Prime Minister and remove them from office forget Labour Starmer will offer no alternative to this rogue Government the NHS deserves to be fully funded now We are over the worst of covid19 the NHS must never be run down by severe funding cuts by Labour or the Tories ever again Johnson has no respect for the British public he must go now

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Sue Longrigg 3 years ago

Thank you for the presentation today. It was clear and easy to follow. In principle I agree with nationalisation and socialism. I live in Wales where the only water supplier available in Welsh Water who claim to be a not for profit organisation however the prices are still high and we still have a big sewerage discharge problem. Obviously there is some kind of corruption going on and I think you would strengthen your case if you could point to this as one of the possible dangers of nationalisation and explain measures that could be put in place to root this out.

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Jacqueline Savill 3 years ago

I believe that the opposition parties in H of C should be campaigning now on saving certain services completely in the NHS from privatisation. This will bring the matter to public attention and make them realise there is a problem. (Even the most self centre journalists use them!)
I would start with campaigning on the specialist children and cancer hospitals, organ donation, blood donation, the ambulance service and antenatal and obstetric care. If people realised what was at stake they might be more responsive to listening.

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John Harries - Coulman 3 years ago

Hi. To be paying the same amount,. We must all be taxed. 1 percent of our earnings. NO OPT OUT BY THE WEALTHIEST.

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Laureen Sherry 3 years ago

The NHS should not be a marketplace. Health should be on the basis of need. There is already a two-tier system.

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Paul Flynn 3 years ago

I believe in public ownership for all utilities, buses, trains, NHS etc
My only proviso is that union power should be partially curtailed by law to prevent the excesses of the 70s

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Alan Digweed 3 years ago

Privatisation of the bus services was and is a myth. The Government, well tax payers spend millions each year on subsidizing the services in the form of fuel duty rebates (FDR). Council. already struggling with austerity subsidize oerators to run non commercial services. The big operators have no interest in providing a service but only in generating profit, profits which could belong in the public purse and not the shareholders

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maurice clive bisby 3 years ago

1. Wonderful that you exist.
2. Glad to discover you.
3. Disgusted with uk political corruption I joined the throng exiting Britain last year. I think that if you target British Expats in the EU, like me, you will gain further support.
We are still entitled to vote in UK national elections..... M

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Anon 3 years ago

I used to work for an NHS funded private service. It was disturbing, with many abusing their position for financial gain. The system gave financial reward for good service, reporting 'green' for mental health wards for women and children. The factor of finance lead to misreporting incidents and business-minded management. Mental health declined in staff and lead to closure by 'nhs england' only to continue with limited training and a change of ward type. Staff requested to leave for abuse were moved to other hospitals. Agency staff were reported to have using a false identity for DBS and passport ID. CAMHS Psychiatrists penalised for over-prescription of medication were transferred to lead other larger hospital wards.
I left indefinitely after googling the human rights of children, not able to participate in a system that would entail that doubt I have found this campaign, and now have somewhere to commit my anger.
We cannot let corporate crawlers take our NHS.

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Adam Fuller 3 years ago

Because I get the bus to my local swimming pool for much needed exercise I have to put profit into other peoples pockets. I'd like to do it more often but can't because the shareholders (who can afford all the exercise in the world) need more profit. The cost of getting into the swimming pool for one hour for myself is £4.60! It's only a 25 metre lane pool. How much of that is for the shareholders

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Pete 3 years ago

My son needed his ears syringing. Now apparently this is not available on NHS and had got to be done by a private clinic. Privatisation is on its way. Shame on you Boris. But I’m sure you cronies in the private sector will do nicely out of it. Greed Greed Greed.

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Maria Sophia Quine 3 years ago

I am an historian of public welfare and modern states. The ‘battle’ to build welfare-states which enshrine the rights of individuals to basic rights of security and protection in poverty, old-age, and sickness took centuries. In this country, the outcome was one of the greatest achievements of the modern period - a free and universal National Health Service delivering care to all, without regard to income. We are by stealth and secrecy losing our NHS as private companies colonise it for profit. To go further down the American path would be truly epic and disastrous for all.

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Heather Jane Fletcher 3 years ago

I was born in 1948, and as a very young child I was seriously ill, and needed hospital care. The NHS saved my life. Many of my family worked in the NHS, as I did for more than 35 years.
Having a health service that is free and non-discriminating is a basic HUMAN RIGHT, and whilst I have no objection to people seeking private medical care if they wish, it would be devastating if the NHS was privatised by profiteers.

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Ms Frances Potter 3 years ago

I was in hospital with a broken hip at Christmas 2020. It was awful, Covid was rampant, after 2 days visitors were banned. We were alone with the staff... Everyone from the tea ladies upwards were worked to the bone. There was little time for nurses to socialise and because the staff were stretched to breaking point, patients were sometimes ignored for longer than was comfortable. Wearing masks made communications difficult, particularly for the seriously ill, elderly, deaf or demented. Jobs have been split up so that some of the people who make the frequent temp, blood pressure, sugar etc tests, have no authority and were so busy keeping track of their tasks, that they have no time to find someone with authority and pass on any patients requests or queries. These tests are the very important monitoring of patient progress or decline. And I was shocked to find out these important people were being paid below the living wage!
Many staff were off sick with Covid, the nurses said most of them had had it already, and were still experiencing side effects such as loss of sense of smell many weeks after, and exhaustion. I was unable to have physio in the usual room set aside for it, as the hospital was so full that that room had very poorly people in it. Gradually Covid came closer and closer as each ward in turn got the infection. I was discharged in a hurry. not soon enough it turned out to prevent me bringing Covid home and giving it to my partner and youngest son and his wife. Some weeks later I found out that a lovely lady i had made friends with, also a broken hip patient, 91 BUT with all her marbles, also got Covid. After 2 weeks they sent her home. She lived alone. There was no adequate care package available. She died.
I haven't even mentioned the torn bed curtains, the lack of spare pillows, the atmosphere of panic and fear amongst the staff...
Lack of funding over years of neglect has led to a shortage of nursing staff, staff becoming victims of the pandemic due to lack of PPE, the toilets needing serious upgrading and modernisation...

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Tony 3 years ago

I fully agree with a lot on here but I disagree about the BBC they are a hidden tax. We have to pay for it if we want to or not and the fat cats running it have no desire to help the public, just get rich themselves all taking out what they can get hold of. If the wages and expenditure was properly managed then there would be plenty of money in there and OAP's over 75 would still be able to have a free licence so get that right and I will support this if not then let it disappear.

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DR G A RICHMOND 3 years ago

I am a retired GP having worked all my life in the NHS. General Practice was perfect, with patients and doctor getting to know each other. Many night calls were resolved over the phone, as the doctor was often familiar to the caller and aware of their problems. All that was needed was friendly reassurance and an agreement to see that the next day at the surgery if that were needed. The ambulance programmes on TV show how important the personal touch can be and how easily many problems are solved by face to face contact. The idea of diluting the role of general practice is abhorrent. Replacing the role of general practice by an army of paid telephone advisors is absurd. G.P's PROVIDE A FRIENDLY PERSONAL SERVICE THAT CANNOT BE REPLACED by a commercial army of computer algorithms.

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William Coleman 3 years ago

I do not know how it was allowed to get to this state . We do not want our much valued NHS to be a cash cow for bussiness' to profit from people's unfortunate illness. I have recently taken my bank account from Virginia Money due to their expansionist plans . No private companies should be allowed on this board.just patients or the likes

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AnnM 3 years ago

It is becoming increasingly evident that wealth and privilege gets too many people more than they deserve. This is at the expense of the country, its people and society. Inequality is increasing and it is the poorest and most disadvantaged that always suffer the most as a result. All our public services are underfunded and no longer merit their name! We waste potential in our youth, with a drastically underfunded education system for the majority of students and do not reward or respect those that serve us the most, like care workers, doctors and nurses in the NHS and teachers.
I used to be proud to live in this country.
Now I despair.I have to constantly fight for funding for disabled members of my family against a DWP with no heart, humanity or honesty. Everything is a battle. A lifetime of constant fighting for diagnosis, support and understanding and again respect. Social workers are overwhelmed. The mental health services are on their knees. We all deserve a decent quality of life wharever our circumstances.

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Neil Dawson 3 years ago

Private companies should not be allowed to sit on decision making committees or boards as they have a self interest and will work for that self interest. It is very important that the users of these services should be represented!

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Mel Dickson 3 years ago

I Demand that private companies should not be allowed to sit on NHS decision-making bodies because they care more about profits than they do about making sure people are well cared for.
And, I demand that patients and the public should be given a seat on key decision-making committees and boards because patient voices are important for designing services that work for everyone.

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John Woffinden 3 years ago

The NHS is for the patients not for companies making profits

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ken kirk 3 years ago

Privatisation of the NHS has been a disaster. Thanks to Lansley's 2012 H&SC Act private companies have been able to cherry pick the services they want and leave the unprofitable ones to the publicly run NHS. In running privatised services it's clear that profit has been their prime objective, but the service they offer has been a catastrophe. Check out https://www.nhsforsale.info/contract-failure/50-examples-of-nhs-outsourcing-failures/

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Fred Groves 3 years ago

Profit has no place in the NHS. We demand equality of treatment regardless of wealth and the patients who after all pay for the service deserve a say in the decisions. Certainly organisations who will potentially profit from those decisions should be excluded. We should never take for granted what a treasure we have in the NHS and guard it against anyone who wants to destroy it.

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Ronald Ferguson 3 years ago

~The NHS was introduced following world war 2 as ordinary men and women who had served through it demanded a better society, not just one run for the rich and powerful. It therefore belongs to the people of this country and not to the government to be sold off to their friends and ilk. The government's job is to run it efficiently, not for profit. Health is a basic human need. Ill health is often related to poverty, poor housing, stress, lack of opportunity, the need to be heard and have some control over how our lives are lived. This is dependent on how we organise society. Health is the responsibility of all of us and should therefore be free and available to all, whatever your income or status. It should never be run for profit..

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Alan Wood 3 years ago

Our health service is deteriorating fast. It seems that this government is hell bent on privatising Our National Health Service by stealth and graduating steps. This will not benefit the NHS user but make profits for large companies. Enough is enough and accordingly:-
I do not wish that PRIVATE COMPANIES SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO SIT ON NHS
DECISION-MAKING BODIES because they care more about profits than they do
about making sure people are well cared for.
I also wish that PATIENTS AND THE PUBLIC SHOULD BE GIVEN A SEAT ON KEY
DECISION-MAKING COMMITTEES AND BOARDS because patient voices are important
for designing services that work for everyone.

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richard beswick 3 years ago

The NHS is one of the few public services that the Tories have not yet managed to take out of our hands and pass to the avaricious private sector, often to the benefit of their associates and to the great detriment of the voting public. So far all the privatized operations have been most unsuccessful, no investment and only resulting in the public paying more for a reduced and inferior service.
It would be one of the greatest tragedies if these self serving Tories are allowed to ruin the little we have left. THEY MUST BE STOPPED, otherwise hello to the failed United States model, God help us all.

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Dale 3 years ago

I have now ereached an age where my body is starting to break down. Aches and pains I can tolerate, but when they can be fixed with a quick op that I don't even have to stay overnight for, I get angry that I have to wait half a lifetime to get it. Depite being in serious pain every day and relying on high powered painkillers, that are only supposed to be a short term temporary solution, I have had no reply from the hospital scheduling after over 4 weeks of waiting and that's just to find out when the appointment to have the op is. Chances are, when I do get the letter telling me when the appointment is, I'll be waiting another year or two in seriouos pain before I get the actual op done.
NHS is seriously screwed up right now and it has nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with gross underfunding, privatisation, along with overpopulation by mass immigration as well as asylum seekers taking all the primary appointment slots when they have not paid a penny toward it. I have paid my NI stamp since I started working in the 70's, now I need the service I paid so much for, I expect to get it. If I wanted to go private, I would have taken out BUPA insurance.

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Pat Ruaune 3 years ago

At age 81 I cannot tolerate what is happening under this government. My daughter, a psychiatric nurse is really depressed by the underfunding in her area of the NHS. She predicts a great deal more pu lic danger as well as to "her" very sick patients who are gradually being recategorised as responsible when they are very ill. She had to browband an ENT hospital doctor during a "telephone appointment" with my husband, who could not hear anything and was in agony with a serious ear infection, to gain a hospital appointment. This resulted in emergency treatment. I have many more examples.

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Hohn 4 years ago

Private Health Insurance creates levels of Society by wealth. Meaning only the rich can survive. It will be the end of the British way of life.

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- richard beswick 3 years ago
  
  Regrettably that has already occurred and been cemented by the idiotic people who gave this self serving and incompetent Tory the mandate to ruin us.
  
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Oliver Swingler 4 years ago

Do you have an up-to-date list of Tory Ministers (and MPs) with links to private healthcare companies and funding banks - or perhaps pen portraits (like the memes Rachael Swindon did) which can be widely publicised?

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Lorraine Leigh 4 years ago

Not only the NHS, but the government is trying to privatise Channel 4 now…. Yet they are self-funding….this authoritarian, abhorrent and controlling government is treating us as if they are the Chinese government and we Britons are from Hong-Kong…. No true freedoms…. Also down with the one-sided GB News. Andrew Neil? I never thought he’d disgrace himself so…..

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Adam Hiley 4 years ago

If we want decent public services, military and freedoms then get rid of this abomination of a government it's compliant opposition parties and lame stream media there is no way Johnson should remain in office a day longer he's a embarrassment to Britain and I personally would feel safer without him Hancock gove Patel and Sage around

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karen bennett 4 years ago

Typical of this government when will they realise they are are public servants.We do NOT want our NHS privatised Leave g.p practices alone they are NOT for sale

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Julie Brandwood 4 years ago

The sale of GP surgeries will be a gateway to make profit from a public service. Why would a private company be interested in the surgeries. Too many public services are being put out to tender to businesses that only want to make a profit and will be difficult to make their services answerable to the public that use them. It is difficult to find an NHS dentist will the same happen to GP's. Many will leave .Will they end up renting a room/chair which seems to be the practise in Dentistry. I rarely see the same dentist and often feel that I am being sold products or extra services that I will have to pay for, this could slowly happen with Doctors. They maybe forced to use only certain medication and services eg eye clinic owned by a subsidiary of that company which happens at the opticians. Gradually we have lost control of public services which we own .We need to take back control so that they can meet the needs of the communities they serve.

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Jill Jones-Leach 4 years ago

Surely it is illegal to sell off assets owned by the UK tax payer?
A legal challenge is essential, not only for the NHS but all other state owned assets for which we pay our contributions - no more franchises running our services with no monitoring by commissioners and all making a profit!

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Anne Wareing 4 years ago

I am a former nurse, (third generation)trained on the wards as an apprentice from 1960-63,because, like others, it was all I ever wanted to do. Ted Heath took Matrons out of hospitals in 1973, replacing them with businessmen who went to foreign countries to 'find out how it was done.' I went back in 1978, and watched it go private after Mrs Thatcher decided in 1982 in a memo that she wanted to Quote,"bring an end to the NHS once and for all" Unquote. The elderly were denied pain relief for cancer, denied a full night's sleep (we were told to get them out of bed every two hours to commode them)and generally neglected. Nurse training was removed from hospitals to universities, to facilitate privatisation!!! Politicians now tell us the lie that nursing is more technical, (it's the machines!)because it's cheaper than traing apprentices!! Now, the elderly are routinely put into incontinence pads other patients are told to go to the toilet in the bed, and are dying of starvation,because many of these graduates want to go into management, not to care for the sick.We were told that scientists found that at 65 degrees fahrenheight, viruses and bacteria stayed static, so we didn't get the antibiotic resistant bugs that are making people ill in hospitals now. We treated our patients as though they were our families,unlike a great maany patients now,and I have had experience of hospitals in the 90's onwards as both nurse and patient and I am horrified and totally disgusted because the NHS no longer exists as it did when the REAL Labour party set it up the year I was 6 years old, 1948. Succesive governments have not, and do not CARE!!

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Chris J 4 years ago

While I support the move to public ownership of public facilities and services I have to ask about the effect this may have on Pension provision in the private sector.
Almost all pensions today are "defined contribution" types based on savings and the performance of the underlying investments. The ability of these pension funds to grow and to subsequently fund the regular pension payments, for which they were set up, is largely dependent upon the dividends paid to these funds as shareholders.
In taking a large number of such dividend-rich utilities into public ownership would we, in the UK, therefore, see a reduction in the revenue base of these funds which would result in them not being able to meet their pension commitments?
Further, does this mean potential changes to the government-provided State Pension and its funding? I just feel that we need to consider and accommodate any "knock-on" effects of the policy being proposed.

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Chris J 4 years ago

One of the reasons that Private companies were called in (as I recall) to run things like buses and railways was that the profit incentive in these companies was meant to focus minds on economical running. Public ownership was criticised as being wasteful and with only limited access to loans/Capital to develop the services and infrastructure (the alternative, government borrowing, was constrained).
Now we see that in effect private companies are just as bad, just in different ways (not prioritising the consuming public and stashing cash for shareholders).
So we need to move to a system where the services run for the benefit of the public are not providing excess profit and are run such that profits made are either returned to the public or ploughed back into improving the services.
Who will oversee these new public run services? Who will decide what is an acceptable level of "profit" and how it is used? I ask because it seems clear to me that we cannot allow the new proposed publicly run services to fall into lazy or corrupt practices as may have previously created the appetite for privatisation last time?
Further what would need to be done to lift the capital limits which so constrained (we were told) previous iterations of British Rail etc?

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Art D C 4 years ago

Born in 1942, I've had time to assess pros & cons of UK's contrasting political ideologies. It is 'bleeding obvious' that essential services for running a civilised country to an acceptable standard of life for all citizens, must be efficiently managed to uphold the highest standards to benefit the populace. Capitalism is obviously the lesser evil engine of progress but many Capitalists impede achievement of a better, fairer world for all Life on Earth. Petty capitalists should be allowed to profit moderately and their employees should be paid a fair proportion of profits in comparison with salaries to managers & dividends to shareholders. Public services should recompense workers & the population via the Treasury. Capitalists cannot be allowed to leverage unlimited profits while workers need top-ups from tax-revenues. Since ancient times, philosophers have urged self-improvement by selfless concern for others. We all must improve but a few need to improve more than many others. Nationalising all essential services will be the bedrock of a happier society but to succeed, needs thorough re-jigging of the economy. Sucking huge profit from the public's purse is despicable.

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Jeremy 4 years ago

Stop with the alarmist miss information gp surgery's have never been owend by the public or the nhs so the sale of gp surgery's is NOT SELLING the nhs labour's private Finance initiative brought in under blair and then continued by the tory Liberal coalition then the tiry government is the selling of nhs buldings and property the awarding of contracts to companies such as capita to manage hospital's is also selling the nhs but selling an already private business such as a gp surgery is not

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- Alice 4 years ago
  
  Hi Jeremy,
  This is a useful read for understanding GP's relationship to the NHS. They have always worked under contract for the NHS (as very small scale contractors, meaning they could be run by a GP embedded in the local community) , but it is since 2003 that they have been opened up to large businesses: https://www.nhsforsale.info/sector/gps/
  'At Medics' is a company which, although founded by a group of 6 GPs, has been taking over struggling GP surgeries for years now and turning the GPs that work in those surgeries to employees. They have accumulated 49 GP practices in the process. Most GPs are just people who open a single practice in their community or a group of GPs responsible for a few practices. At Medics itself has now been taken over by Centene, which means the 49 practices it controlled are now controlled by Centene and the hundreds of staff they had (including GPs, nurses, etc) are now Centene employees. Here's a useful article: https://labourhub.org.uk/2021/02/23/centene-gets-a-foothold-in-gp-surgeries-across-london/
  Centene is one of the fastest growing companies in the US and its CEO, Michael Neidorff, was the “highest paid health executive with a salary above $26m.”
  I hope this explains why we are opposed to this as embedding dangerous privatisation.
  Best wishes,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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ken jones 4 years ago

Re privatisation of health cenres, here in Somers Town, North London, a large tower block of luxury flats is being built for ownership only, flying in the face of desperately needed social housing. This will bring a large number of wealthy people into a predominately working class area.No details have been given as to the level of private care Centene will be 'allowed' to offer clients at the expense of its less well off, ie operating a two tier service, one for the wealthier the other for the less well off, in the same area?

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Trevor Bending 4 years ago

Could you please make it clear that ‘Share’ on your website now means Facebook

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- Alice 4 years ago
  
  Thanks for taking action Trevor- we'll aim to make sure that there are a range of ways that our actions can be shared (Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and email).
  Best wishes,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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Shirley Draheim-Jackson 4 years ago

Unfortunately Serco is not the only firm that is making money from the NHS. Recently I needed Physiotherapy and was given the option of 6 NHS practices. Unfortunately, 2 of then were not NHS but the private firm Ascenti. With not knowing that Ascenti was a private firm, I made an appointment there because it was my nearest practice. All I got from them was a telephone call, when this caller told me that I had Arthritus and said that was the end of my physiotherapy. I was in disbelief and told him so. It goes back to a sport accident I had last September, which is still giving me problems. I haven't told the doctor about it yet, I will be doing so after an E-Ray which is due this Thursday 18th February.

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Maria Watkins 4 years ago

The link to the Matt Hancock and the NHS petition isn't working.
Please fix it. I really want to sign.

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- Alice 4 years ago
  
  Thanks for letting us know! The link here should be up and running: https://weownit.org.uk/act-now/stop-matt-hancocks-private-takeover-nhs
  Let us know if you're still having difficulties signing.
  Thanks so much for adding your voice to our call for a fully public NHS!
  Best wishes,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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Derek Masey 4 years ago

In the USA the major reason for vast numbers of bankruptcies is medical bills. People who cannot afford medical attention, many elderly, suffer years of agony prior to death. Would Mr Hancock consider that situation as a triumph of his parliamentary career?

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Gloria Zentler-Munro 4 years ago

Let us go back to the reason WHYWAS THE NHSset up.
To provide health and welfare to the population.
Privatisation is not interested in providing care for the nation but making a profit for their company and shareholders.
I have worked in the USA health care system and could not believe how the poor are not treated.
Please please we must not allow any further privatisation in our Health Care System

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Jan Palmer 4 years ago

Just filled in the NHSE consultation.
More "integration" of the NHS. The proposed changes look even more worrying than the Trade deal.

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Tim Finch 4 years ago

I have never been a staunch supporter of any particular political party. In my view they all have their good points and bad ones.
For the most part, public services have not, in my opinion, benefitted from the so-called efficiencies of privatisation.
To benefit from privatisation, services require effective competition between providers in a free / open market. Most public services do not “fit” a free market economy.
The only way to control pricing in a privatised public service is to have a regulatory governing body accountable to the people. This type of process does not work particularly well because the private companies and the people / regulatory bodies have different motives.
The public companies effectively have localised monopolies. They have no incentive to maintain low prices while providing top class service. The threat of having the service transferred to a different provider is only ever carried out when the service has become a disaster.
The regulatory bodies struggle to control price of the services because they don’t have a full-scale overview of the nature of those services / the business model.
To have such an overview would require members of each body to be part of the service company’s management team or board of directors but be paid out of public funds. This might ensure they had sufficient data to make informed decisions that reconciled the interests of the business providers with those of the consumers, but they wouldn’t necessarily have sufficient power within the organisation to get them implemented. Their powers would still be limited to the threat of cancelling service contracts. So the systems and services would not improve because they would be uncertain as to whether transfer of the service to a different provider would improve anything.
No private company can operate efficiently as a monopoly service provider. The industry will always remain a safe haven of jobs for the boys, or girls, in the gift of the public employee(s) who offer contract bids and decide on the outcomes.

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Geoffrey Alan Richmond 4 years ago

The NHS set up for the Nation by Labour, must be supported and protected by us all. Our P.M. needed it urgently when he found himself with the COVID virus. Now the NHS is setting up a system to 'MASS VACCINATE' our population against this dangerous virus. Every minute of every day the NHS is operational and available whenever any of us may need it. It must NOT be hived off and shredded piece meal into smaller units for the financial gain of a commercial enterprise. The NHS is a jewel belonging to us all and it must remain free and available to us all in our moment of need, for we never know when this moment may come.

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david tandey 4 years ago

We live under a political and Financial system called Capitalism or The Profit System which is based on the greed for ever greater profits and the exploitation of the working masses, a system based on Greed and it would be much better if we had a system based on Human Need but how can we change it? Only the working masses can change it but most don't want to change it , they like it just the way it is. We actually live in an......I'm alright Jack Society and those who benefit do not want change so were stuck with the GREED SYSTEM.

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Jeff Cooper 4 years ago

The most destructive force known to Britain - the Tory Party! They have, over the years, destroyed (by putting them into private hands) industry and mining, railways and buses, utilities (water, gas and electricity), the justice system, care homes, Royal Mail, etc. Their next target is without doubt the NHS (parts of it have already been privatised). They are hypocritical liars who will do anything to feather their own grasping need to make money for themselves.

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- Adam Hiley 4 years ago
  
  Agreed but the red Tory party led by Blair continued Thatcherism and again it's led by Keir starmer
  
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- david tandey 4 years ago
  
  well Jeff you have perfectly described the Tories for what they are......THE DESTROYERS OF OUR COUNTRY AND OUR lIVES.
  
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Christopher Powell 4 years ago

I've just sent the email to Mark Harper and Steve Baker of the Covid Recovery Group. I got automatic responses from both of them saying the correct protocol is for constituents to contact their own MPs. These two MPs will get thousands of junk emails from people who are not constituents and hopefully one or two from people who are. Surely it would be better if we all sent the letter to our own MPs and asked them to forward it.
My MP is Alexander Stafford. He's a Conservative. I don't know if he's a member of the Covid Recovery Group. I often email him & he always replies (by ordinary mail).
So I went back to the website & tried to resend the letter to him. It didn't work.

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- Amelia 4 years ago
  
  Hi there,
  Thanks for your message and for taking action!
  We decided to use the constituency email addresses for Mark Harper MP and Steve Baker MP in this action as they do not currently have alternative, ministerial email addresses. We should have explained this in our earlier communications - apologies for this.
  Sorry that the automatic response you received saying that MPs only respond to their constituents is off-putting.
  However, their teams will have received your email along with thousands of others and will know that people across the country are calling for safe, publicly-led, locally-run test and trace now to keep our communities safe.
  Hopefully this helps to explain the action a bit more but please let us know if you have any further questions at all.
  Thank you so much for being part of the campaign - it's great to have your support!
  Best wishes,
  Amelia and the We Own It team.
  
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Judith Longmire 4 years ago

If our precious health service is opened up to US pharmaceutical companies, we will end up with a US style of health service where you have to be able to afford a lifetime of expensive private insurance in order to be able to use it.

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Jill Sutcliffe 4 years ago

The NHS saved my life when when my brother-in-law and I had to be in hospitals for the best part of a year aged 3, or my uncle whose cancer on his kieny was spotted on the slightest of evidnece and then there's the family - 2 GPs, various medical friends and a consultant who only ever worked in the NHS for the whole of their careers. What bothers me is the time coming when there won't be people left who remember what it was like without the NHS - whether or not you had money to get the doctor....

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Christine Gibson 4 years ago

We need to look after all our people's health. The only way is for an NHS which is funded through public money and owned by us all. How dare you try to rob us of something so vital to a civilised existence.

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Mark 4 years ago

All public services should be protected from profiteers by been included in a new constitution for the uk

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Mark 4 years ago

All public services should be protected from profiteers by been included in a new constitution for the uk

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Andreas Christofides 4 years ago

Hello there, I am really very angry at this at this extreme far right wing fascist racist lying homophobic government and they are scum of the earth. For God sake they need to be got rid off. What Boris Johnson and his bunch lairs and scum of the earth is absolutely disgusting nasty and vile to make a profit out someone sickness or disability, and no public service should have been privatised, but the marjority was done under that fucking bitch and witch Margrette Thatcher. We need change and we need now if i wasn't suffering with many health issues i would be at the House of Lords and Parliment shouting at this fucking lying homophobic extreme far right wing fascist racist bunch and i would stay there until all have them fuckers have gone. This is why i want the whole nation that what a decent society to demostrate on the streets throughout the UK and have a voice that we as a nation we are not going to be bullied into silence which is what these fuckers who are making lots of money out of the sick elderly and the disabled to keep their rich buddies happy.

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susan savidge 4 years ago

I dont have face book and would like to sign the petition so please include me in this.

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- Amelia 4 years ago
  
  Hi there, you can sign our petitions by clicking on the 'Act now' section of our website. You do not need Facebook to sign, just an email address. Hope that helps and thank you for your support!
  
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John Archibald 4 years ago

FFS: Someone gives us the weapons and take out bojo&co and every other politician who is against real democracy.
We can still have queenie and all the political parties – just so long as we the Public have overall control of all things we deem as being essential.
You privateers can do what you do best – run small business, sweetie shops and talk total F crap.
Watch out though as under Public control there will be law and order!
PS:
Don’t forget the Sun controls the climate and;
BR had the best railway the world has ever seen
CEGB the cheapest and most reliable electricity – burning Coal
British Gas the cheapest most reliable gas
British Steel the cheapest and best steel
Etc
Etc
Etc.
It was you greedy privateer F’s who destroyed it!

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Libby Kemp 4 years ago

Please could you always refer to Test and Trace as Deloitte's Test and Serco's Trace. It is really important the public realise they run these services, not the NHS. It's not a great catch phrase but with constant use?

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Roland Gilmore 4 years ago

Test and trace is not a panacea. UK government measures are only about slowing the growth in numbers admitted to hospital where, after years of cut backs, we have one of the lowest intensive care facility rates in the developed world. This is NOT about treating people to prevent them from needing admission to hospital. Countries that are treating people early have significantly lower hospital admissions and much lower case fatality rates (73.9% lower). The number of peer reviewed studies demonstrating the positive effectiveness of early intervention with hydroxychloroquine is growing. Studies that show negative or no improvement are all flawed by giving excessively high doses and by giving it to people who are at an advanced stage of the disease (e.g. the UK Prevent trial) i.e. too late. https://c19study.com/ As more and more people are becoming aware of the truths about this man made virus, they are fast losing their trust in UK scientists, politicians and our pathetic, unquestioning, main stream media. Civil disobedience will come next which is why the PM talked about military intervention. You cannot pretend that "we will beat this virus". The only correct and acceptable policy is to protect the vulnerable, rapid introduction of national supplementation with Vitamin D, Vitamin C and zinc then treat symptomatic people EARLY and leave people to get on with their lives. This action would reduce susceptibility to influenza too.

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Carlton 4 years ago

As someone who has worked for 40 years in the public and outsourced sector I feel better placed to comment than any of the people on WEOWNIT. The private sector is more agile and innovative than any public sector I have been involved in. The public sector never take responsibility for contracts that THEY draft, THEY AWARD and THEY manage. Unfortunately also some in the public sector want the private sector to fail and knowly will let contracts so that there is a likelihood that that will happen. The rail sector is a prime example where companies bid contracts based on the Government's own projections for passenger numbers. That said I have also seen many public sector services well run and well managed. Both can sit side by side.

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Jon Hill 4 years ago

Hi,
We have just launched an online newspper, West England Bylines, and would like to share some of your content on our site.
Please have a look at www.westenglandbylines.co.uk and let me know if you're up for this.
We are a serious responsible newspaper challenging the government's running of our country especially covid and the NHS.
We are also happy for you to feature any of our articles.

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THARAHA KAMALANATHAN 5 years ago

protect our communities and our health services from the privatiser FOREVER.

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Tara dalton 5 years ago

I received a covid19 test geeked out for Royal Mail to picked it up was confirmed between 7/4 the next day done the test three weeks later it’s still sitting on my kitchen side then tried to get another test as haven’t been feeling to well and it won’t let me So I’m not happy as done the test and nobody collected even thow I have it confirmed of pickup

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Hilary Saunders 5 years ago

How can MPs represent the interests of their constituents, if they vote NOT to have the right to scrutinise trade deals? Perhaps it would be worth compiling a list of all the MPs who voted against the scrutiny amendment, so that We Own It supporters can let their MP and social media and local media know what they think about this.

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Michèle 5 years ago

Is it worth pushing HMG to increase sick pay so poorly paid workers (many of them in the care sector) can afford to stay off work when they have Covid. This would help us all control the virus. If we can splash cash on meals vouchers we can pay decent sick pay.

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Ros Wain 5 years ago

This is madness and our lives depend on it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/02/uk-set-to-award-covid-19-testing-contracts-worth-5bn-to-private-bidders
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-testing-lighthouse-labs-nhs-deaths-delay-a9589381.html
The government’s job is to protect its citizens. There are public health experts and facilities with years of experience of test, trace and isolate already within the system who ensure that results get quickly to those who need to take action. How much better for us all to give them £5bn to expand. Not give it to private companies, whose failures already seem to have cost us lives, to start from scratch. It is simply more evidence of privatisation by the back door, the result of which is fragmentation of the NHS which is endangering citizens not protecting them.

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- Michael Young 5 years ago
  
  Exactly ...
  
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yvonne mustapha 5 years ago

l qualified as a ( Mature ) Dental Hygienist from Kings College Dental Hospital, London, then worked at this hospital in The High Risk Dept for one year,which l loved, until the funding ran out. l then made my way into the world of Private / NHS Dentistry. My eyes were sharply opened as to the poor cross infection control in many if not most Dental practices, The emerging Large Corporate Dental practice, were the worst.
l was surprised / dismayed at not only the un-supervised inadequate running of these places , with lack of lnstruements, each surgery having to quietly borrow from each other, at times seeing the stressed or( lazy ) nurse only having time to just spraying and wiping with a paper wipe the used borrowed lnstrument
l bought and only used my own lnstruments, this being the only way to have enough good sterile instruments for my patients.
Often requests to borrow them being made from other Dentists /nurses who either did not have the correct one needed,or just only a few old scalers
However like most Dental Practices, the Reception usually with a tidy clean front and a reassuring friendly receptionist was reassuring.
l can count on my hand only 3 Dental Practices that l would go for Dental Treatment.The third one being only Private, and expensive but with very good High Cross Infection Control , or at least it was when l worked there a few years ago

l am thinking of writing a book on my experience of working as a Dental Hygienist. what l and the many other Dental Hygienists consider scams, cross infection problems and difficult unpleasant Dentist, Hopefully before any other Dental Hygienist gets one published

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Graham Hillman 5 years ago

Water Utilities: The Scottish Government have now made Covid 19 testing as Mandatory at Water Treatment plants. They can because they own the Utility. The English Water Utilities are Private and ate they doing the same testing as part of Track & Trace. Ask that question and see what answer you get gh

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Alex Bellamy 5 years ago

Want to donate but your Paypal donation button is kaput!

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Roger Lallemant 5 years ago

I would hope you are aware of what I say, but if not, I think it is a very revealing example of government disingenuousness. In Lansley's 2012 NHS bill, there was a clause that said 'private work should not exceed core NHS work', or words to that effect. It was phrased in legalese, as it always is, to confuse the issue for the layman. However, when interpreted, it meant that private work should not exceed 49%. In 2012 private work was 4%. I think that single clause says it all, deliberately hidden in legal jargon.

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Mrs Julia Ramsay 5 years ago

Just appalled of news that Serco has been awarded another contract.
It’s like giving failing Grayling another job he won’t complete in a timely or satisfactory manner.

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John Francis Moss 5 years ago

Private is immoral & poor service.
Public is fair & good service.
Some folk might not agree with this.
Generally though, public is best.
In a vote public would win.

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Kev hutchinson 5 years ago

Serco found 18000 staff in just two weeks to set up track and trace and delivering this service for less money than the civil service would do , check facts , you are fake news !

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  Hi Kev,
  Despite being in control of the system for mere months, Serco has already proven itself inadequate.
  The head of the track and trace scheme has said that the contact tracing system won’t be fully operational until September or October. The Serco CEO himself doesn't seem convinced it will work either. The Guardian revealed yesterday that he wrote in an email: “If it succeeds … it will go a long way in cementing the position of the private sector companies in the public sector".
  As of June 3, Serco's tracers had contacted just 1,749 people, of the 4,456 confirmed Covid-19 cases that had been reported to the scheme.
  Staff working on the track and trace scheme have described themselves sitting idle, without contact from their supervisors, with one claiming they worked for 38 hours without making a single phone call, instead spending the time watching Netflix.
  All of our sources are linked in the text beneath the petition here: https://weownit.org.uk/save-lives-scrap-serco-now
  Our campaign is supported by public health experts, including Allyson Pollock, Clinical Professor of Public Health and director of the Newcastle University Centre for Excellence in Regulatory Science, John Ashton, former director of public health, David McCoy, professor of global public health and director of the Centre for Public Health at Queen Mary University of London - and by 9 different healthcare campaigns and organisations.
  Best wishes,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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David Bailey 5 years ago

I am sorry and somewhat disappointed that I was unable to join the training session on how to persuade my MP to protect the NHS. The first was a technical issue on my part. The second was I was not allowed to unmute. The host wouldn't allow it for some strange reason.

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  Hi David,
  We're sorry to hear that you weren't able to join the training session. Because we have such a high number of attendees for these sessions, we automatically mute all participants in the call, and then unmute people when they indicate they want to speak during appropriate moments. We have to do this or we would have many people talking over each other!
  If you want to get in touch with us about contacting your MP, please send an email to info@weownit.org.uk and we'd be more than happy to help!
  Thank you for being part of our movement for people, not profit- and for defending out NHS!
  Best wishes,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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Tom in NW London 5 years ago

We can't wait in the (forlorn) hope of a Socialist government, so I would like all the workers in the NHS and other public services to TAKE THEM OVER; beginning with an all-out strike and then seizing control.

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Jenifer Devlin 5 years ago

I wrote to my MP asking for a meeting on zoom, which he has agreed to, but he doesn't want anyone else on the call and has asked that the others contact him individually for meetings. How would you advise that I respond?

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  HI there,
  That's brilliant- thank you for taking action and arranging a meeting with your MP! If you could send a quick email to info@weownit.org.uk, we'll be in touch about following up.
  Best wishes,
  Alice
  
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Ben Harrop 5 years ago

Hello. I am currently working on a farm and unfortunately unable to attend the webinar training session. Will the materials or recordings of the webinars be available online for self study?

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  Hi Ben-
  Thanks for getting in touch about the trainings! We can to email you resources to read through as you're unable to make a session- could you email info@weownit.org.uk, and I can send them your way?
  Thank you for standing up to defend our NHS!
  -Alice
  
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Peter Draper 5 years ago

I agree completely state ownership is best. But it is lack in quality of British managers leadership that always causes national ownership to fail. A clear example of this is our motor industry. The pnly way this is going to work properly and efficiently is for British workers to have either German or Japanese management. It works, think Nissan, Toyota, Rolls Royce, Mini.

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Raymond Blackhurst 5 years ago

I often receive emails from We Own It or other outside agents who must work closely with your organisation and today I received an email inviting me to an event to persuade my MP George Howarth (Labour) for Knowsley in Merseyside to Protect the NHS from trade agreements with other countries such as the USA
Sadly I am caring for a disabled lady and I haven’t been very well myself with mental health problems as I get very depressed and I won’t be able to take part
The NHS is an organisation close to my heart as I have needed treatment a number of times in my life and I have signed petitions and sent emails on this subject at the behest of other web based organisations such as Change.com
Yours
Raymond Blackhurst

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  Dear Raymond,
  Thank you for taking action for the NHS and being part of our campaign to protect our public services and reverse privatisation!
  Just to clarify, the event will be an online meeting and not in person during lockdown. We totally understand that you are not able to attend, and your support for the campaign means a lot.
  Take care, and best wishes-
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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Adam Hiley 5 years ago

https://www.newchartistmovement.org.uk We all need to start resisting this authoritarian Government and now from this lockdown to potentially selling the NHS off to Trump in a any trade deal this Government along with Labour & the Lib Dems need getting rid of https://www.getborisout.com

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Don Clarke 5 years ago

* Question 1: Pay differentials will be a major barrier to recovery post-pandemic. We have seen how important the lowest paid amongst us have been during this crisis. Clapping them every Thursday is embarrassing whilst pay differentials remain as they are, and I don't see how we can just go back to what was the status quo. Not everyone can be paid as much as the CEO currently, but the CEO can be paid less, and the lowest paid can be paid more. How do we seriously address the plain injustice of pay diffrentials, post-pandemic? Perhaps organisations in public ownership will be far more able to limit damaging differentials than private sector firms?
* Question 2: We've seen what happens when true Socialists get close to power: the media and the establishment close ranks and control communications to the people, unjustly and falsely discrediting Socialist leaders, and Socialist ideas like public ownership. How can we ensure the debate revolves around policy and ideas, and not falsehoods perpetrated by the media and unscrupulous opposition politicians, and ensure that the media presents a balanced picture to the nation?
* Question 3: Historically, globally, there was a balance of power between the nobility, the clergy, and the merchants. Government by the people, in time, became a fourth power. Today, we find the oligarch merchants have risen in power beyond what is healthy for the great mass of the people. Is recovery from this pandemic the great opportunity for us to redress the balance globally, in favour of government by the people, and in favour of people-oriented ideas like public ownership?

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Alan Bond 5 years ago

The latest 'Panorama' programme from the BBC reveals that this government has lied and lied again about PPE for our health care people. This is quite apart from the tardy response to a threat that was clear as early as January of this year. In addition, they have been attacking the BBC from every quarter since they came to power ten years ago and here we have the BBC allowing the tories to use the service as a propaganda tool to peddle the lies about their response to the pandemic. The BBC should be refusing to carry out their wishes and tell them to clear off and get one of their cronies in the commercial TV sector to screen their lies and disinformation. I just bet they would all say NO. We have the biggest death rate from Covid-19 of any European Country but the clearest contrast is with New Zealand where the government reacted swiftly and deaths from Covid-19 there have been minimal. Even our part privatised NHS is doing a magnificent job despite the odds being stacked against them by a callous and uncaring government. It proves beyond doubt that private enterprise cannot be relied on to keep us safe in times such as these and we need to start rolling back the frontiers that have allowed to greedy to leech off the rest of us.

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Jules 5 years ago

Many of the assertions against private companies and "profit" are demonstrably not true.
In fact "not for profit" can be counterproductive.
Without a profit motive, companies are often wasteful.
Even within private companies, individuals and departments can be wasteful - if they deal with "not their own money".
Government departments and Agencies are amongst the worst.
Only when there is close scrutiny by elected Reps - and who understand business and numbers - does the public sector stop wasting money.
None of this denies that there are "bad" private companies.
They need scrutiny too - and competition - to keep them "honest".
But problems occur mostly when a sector becomes dominated by a handful of providers.
So called "economies of scale" get overtaken by monopolistic practices and lack of customer care ....
.... much like most of the monopolistic pubic sector.

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  Privatisation of public services has been proven to waste a huge amount of taxpayer money. It’s the public's taxes and bills that get wasted on shareholder profits, extra admin costs, and higher interest rates on borrowed money.
  Here's a breakdown of the amount of money wasted each week across different sectors:
  Rail - £1 billion a year or £19 million a week
  Buses - £506 million a year or £9.7 million a week
  Water - £2.3 billion a year or £44 million a week
  Energy - £3.2 billion a year or £61 million a week
  NHS - £6.65 billion a year or £128 million a week
  For the sources and more info, read our blog here: https://weownit.org.uk/blog/waste-privatisation-we-cant-afford.
  We don't believe in bringing back nationalisations of the past- we believe in public ownership fit for the future. You may be interested in reading our proposal for how public services should be run so that they are accountable to the public who use them, and workers who run them: https://weownit.org.uk/when-we-own-it.
  Best wishes,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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Hugh Daniels 5 years ago

The urgent and serious pandemic situation demonstrates clearly the problems with dividing up between public and private services, not least than when the NHS has been so severely depleted of services, staff and beds, especially high dependency ones, the private medicine companies are not available to support the NHS, and they generally avoid getting involved in complex cases, or set urgent need as a priority. They also take away trained staff from the NHS. I could say more too about the need for bus and rail services returning to being public, in the light of the disastrous current services and constantly rising prices and mismanagement.

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Sean 5 years ago

The public does not own the BBC.
This campaign is a lie.

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  Hi Sean,
  Since the BBC is our public broadcaster and is publicly funded, it should be in public control. The rest of the mainstream media is owned and controlled by a handful of billionaires.
  We are proposing these reforms so that we can feel that we OWN it:
  - Right now the government appoints BBC board members. We need an independent board with a citizens panel to give us a voice, make the BBC more diverse in staff and content, cap excessive pay - and have a stronger role for regional journalism.
  I hope that this clarifies why we are running this campaign!
  Best wishes,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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Brian Horn 5 years ago

I'm more than happy, if you feel you 'Own it' to pay for it. It's called freedom of choice. Just don't expect to include the rest of the population, many of whom who no longer see a 'special' role for The BBC.
If I want to watch any live programming on any channel I have to fund the BBC. If I don't pay, even when I choose not to watch the BBC, I am liable to prosecution, how is that fair ?
I don't pay and only stream programming I want to watch. I was brought up watching BBC but now I would never go back.
To me and a growing number, the BBC's funding is an anachronism, it should stand on it's merits or die.

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- Alice 5 years ago
  
  Hi Brian,
  Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the BBC with us. What we want is for everyone to feel that they OWN the BBC- to feel represented, and that it is the democratic, publicly owned institution that it was set up to be! We believe that the breadth and quality of the programming that a public broadcaster can produce goes far beyond what a profit motivated company can produce. For example, children's programming is incredibly important and shapes the development of millions- we can't let that become click bait, produced in the interest of making money.
  We need a proper process to make sure the BBC has fair, sustainable funding, while protecting vulnerable groups. Just like the NHS, the BBC needs to work for everyone no matter where they live or what their background is. The government should stop funding cuts and pay for over 75s, as they used to, along with low income groups.
  I hope that this explains why we are running this campaign!
  Kind regards,
  Alice and the We Own It team
  
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Stephen Lawlor 5 years ago

It is utterly dismaying to see the hard right attempt to destroy the world’s greatest institution, the BBC. Where else can we hear such a unique mix of culture, history, music, news & so on across radio and TV? Certainly not on the likes of Netflix, that’s for sure.
Just this week I discovered a beautiful radio series by John Shuttleworth, one episode featuring the late Chas Hodges. Where on earth would such a perfect show be found if the BBC didn’t exist?
God bless you, BBC. I’ve loved you and listened to you since childhood and may you always exist, strong and proud - the very best of Great Britain. No other country offers anything remotely as good, and no Tory tea party is going to take this diamond away from the people of Britain and the world.

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David Bache 5 years ago

The BBC is one of the world's leading media and news companies. Its respected the world over. Its output promotes all that is best about the UK. The Conservative Government, with its free market beliefs, should value the BBC as a hugely successful marketing company for UK PLC. Instead the Government appears to think that the BBC should become just another commercial broadcaster.
Any change to the BBC's funding should start with a fundamental definition of what the BBC should be. The funding should then be put in place to support this goal. What we seem to have is a bottom up reform of the funding, with no idea of the final goal. The Government's approach is incoherent.

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- Keith Jackson 5 years ago
  
  The BBC has passed its sell-by date. It is biased towards the British people and only tell us on the news what it wants us to know, and not what is really happening in our country. I have over 600 channels on my TV which costs me over £100 a month. I never watch the BBC channels, I saw most of their films years ago so why should I be forced to pay for a license. The wages they pay are obscene and they are now advertising for non-white people to take jobs offered, this to me is being racist towards the British people. The sooner the BBC is put out to grass, the better
  
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Lynn Evans 5 years ago

I hope if railways are taken back into public ownership, we dont re-privatise when they're rebuilt, and giving them to the privatisers on a golden platter to suck dry and wreck again, making mugs of us public!

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Lynn Evans 5 years ago

I hope if railways are taken back into public ownership, we dont re-privatise when they're rebuilt, and giving them to the privatisers on a golden platter to suck dry and wreck again, making mugs of us public!

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Richard Dennis 5 years ago

Tired of our national and local assets being stripped off to cowboys and workers and the public having to pay the price through worse services and lost jobs.
One county council has invested a sizable amount of it's pension fund with one cowboy and is facing problems in trying to get it out.
You do not hear much about this on the BBC,so thanks THE GUARDIAN.

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Austrian Peter 5 years ago

I have spent the last six years analysing the global financial system and I have written a book about the results; named: The Financial Jigsaw, it is due to be published in Q1 2020. In advance of publication I am offering a free PDF copy of my manuscript upon request to: peter@underco.co.uk.
You may review my updates at https://www.gofundme.com/f/fnahvp-free-book and my book has been serialised at The Burning Platform website over the last 80 weeks, and which is coming to an end soon:
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/12/07/the-financial-jigsaw-issue-no-81/
I am convinced that our current neoliberal system is due to spectacularly fail soon and that a New Economy will emerge. Only by re-engineering our failed systems will people yet again regain control of capital and return wealth into the hands of the producers and workers. Our small group here in Somerset, UK is active in promoting our 6 Demands for reform: http://harrogateagenda.org.uk/

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greg holmes 5 years ago

I have seen the advance of neo liberalism over the las 30 years (I am 69) it began with Maggie, and really took off under the war criminal (in my opinion) Blair.Remenber liberals are not necessarily libertarians, to steal the NHS bit by bit is what is happening. Water companies owned by foreign interests, huh. We are told we cannot afford these things on the public purse, we bailed out the banks, socialism for the banks, capitalism for the rest of us. Mark Blyth (economist) watch him off YOU Tube, he details the whole corrupt saga, and is very entertaining.

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Ant 5 years ago

Virgin Care's suing of the government because of the NHS should be responded by a public boycott of Branson businesses.
When the students protested in 2009/10 over tuition fees when they sited if the tax own by large corporations (starbucks,vodaphone etc) was actually collected there would be no need for any fees. The students would have had a great more traction if the students union called to a boycott of Vodaphone until tax was paid, then no starbucks and so on. People have great power, but only in number. That is why our culture has reduced much of the population to individuals with smart phone (tracking,listening,filming spying device). This has been done in part by divide and rule, constant confusion and distraction

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Ant 5 years ago

A government is a tool that can be used to build services and other businesses with public money. Then when the business/service is successful and a necessity any profitable areas can be extracted and virtually given away to the powerful friends of government. Because of this they should be under a microscope of transparency so the public's interest can be protected from exploitation. Instead we live in a world where power hides behind redaction, avocation or lies, lies and damn lies. Meanwhile they want access to everybody's data because they know it leads to and they desire absolute control. This in turn leads to absolute power and absolute secrecy for the powerful. Handy when the absolute corruption inevitably follows.
Any person in position of power responsible for signing off or engineering the giving away of any public asset, more over the jewel that is the NHS, should be publicly exposed and grilled.

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Marium Nafisa 5 years ago

I am going to share my heath care experience in USA
Two months ago I fell down in my drive way in Michigan where I now live and sustained multiple fractures. I was taken to the accident and emergency in an ambulance. I pay blue cross and blue shield my health insurance company a premium of $1000 every month with a deductible of $8000. I had to be admitted for surgery and hospitalization. I was asked by the insurance company why I could not be treated in alternate facility and if I could be cared for at home. I had two surgery and was immobilized on both my legs and hand. I had excruciating pain causing my blood pressure to go up to 200/100. The insurance was insistent that this be managed at home. I had not got pre authorization for surgery or hospitalization. The insurance is refusing to pay for 12 day stay in hospital.
Would this have happened in NHS ? I worked for 23 years as a nurse and miss it very much
Please use my case to inform what usa style of health care is like.
If you like I will post my letter here for all to see what is the true face of American health care.
Please share it with wider audience and I will be more than happy to talk to any one about my experience. Let me know how we can use this information to save our NHS.
sorry I could not post my picture.

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Jane Simons 5 years ago

Work for the NHS and very proud to do so. Our daughter has received life saving NHS care. Many family members/friends have had NHS treatment /care,and cannot imagine Britain without it. It has to stay.

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Colin Sutton 5 years ago

The NHS belongs to the British public . We have paid for it with our National Insurance contributions and Income Tax .It is not government property to sell off to the highest bidder. The NHS is in trouble because our taxes are not being used to support it . Home aid should take priority over foreign aid .Our .7% GDP foreign aid "gift" of £14.5 billion should never happen.Why should we donate 4 times more GDP than the USA.If we paid .18% like the USA we would have over £11 billion to help get our country back on its feet.

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Richard Dennis 5 years ago

National and local assets being sold off cheaply and this has meant for example the school meals service has been decimated and prices of electricity,gas and phones etc have gone up to benefit the shareholders.As well as this,how many bankruptcies have we seen as regards Carillion and Southern Cross and the decline of employment rights for workers?
It is time for local and national government to take over these services again.

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Jillian Head 5 years ago

Seems like every public facility that has gone into private hands has now got problems and is costing the public both in terms of money and poorer facilities. The money being taken out of public services to enrich the few is obscene.

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itude 5 years ago

Why privatising Home Care (help) services simply doesn't work.
I had the privilege of working in the "old system" in which all "home helps" were employed by and managed by Social Services.
Fantastic system, I used to go out and assess people for that and various other services, if I felt they needed it, quick report, took it next door to the home care managers and it was done !.
Any problems, next door again, not that there were many problems.
If there were staff shortages, the home care managers would just "borrow" some from the manager from the neighbouring area, they all worked in the same room !
Only time that ever failed, the home care manager said " right lets go and do it ourselves then" and we did, you never said no to Audrey :)
Then it got in the main privatised, what a mess.The first time I ever used on of the private companies, they sent a pregnant 17 year old girl to do a night watch on an elderly lady whose daughter was exhausted by the process of doing it all herself.
It ended up with her looking after both.
Any problems with private homecare and I had to go to the private homecare liaison person, they then went to the private companies "complaints officer" and so on and on, more than often my concerns just got "lost" in this system.
There are so many more problems and I could go on about Residential Care next, but just one final point, privatisation is inherently flawed in this area.
Contracts were for 4 years, and then put out to tender again.
Any company tendering cannot possibly employ the number of people needed to fulfill that contract, until they know they have it !
Obviously, how can they pay people when they don't know if they get the contract or not.
Each time there is a change it is a total mess, and it takes a very long time to work it out, a couple of years is not unusual.
Of course this is made a lot worse by the competitive nature of this process. A company who may have finally got to some level of competence is hardly likely to "give" all its best workers to another company who have just "pinched" their contract..are they ?
So the silly cycle starts all over again.
It has turned a superb service into an absolute mess, I could go on, but I retired a few years ago, I just couldn't stand it, and that's without even mentioning that my decision making was taken away to some "Funding Panel", who never ever got to see a client of mine.
Oh no, they said no, but I had to tell people that, even though I recommended the services for them
Best not go into the quality of my "replacements" eh :)
Suffice it to say that they could be paid about half of what I was paid, and if they knew no different system, well what could they say ?

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John Harris 6 years ago

Southern Water have been found out and recently heavily fined for years of covering up/lying about not processing water properly etc.. here in Adur and Worthing in Sussex. A big new development called New Monks Farm has been passed for planning on a Flood plain. Southern Water, knowing the problems we have locally with rising water blocking sewage from what is old sewage system (which has needed upgrading even before all this new extra use comes online). Southern Water also passed with no new sewage system in spite of it having to cope with a development of 650 houses, a major IKEA store and new Brighton & Hove Albion FC training and sports facilities for men & women. All of these will be attached to our ancient sewage system with no upgrading. I don't trust Southern Water to have done all the necessary checks given their past record. We need a re-assessment by an independent authority before the work on this enormous development goes ahead. I would trust a water company in Public ownership to have the well-being of the local community in mind when making a decision which will take 8 - 10 years to complete but this private company has form. I just don't trust them. Of course, the background to all this is Climate Change. In the long term, it looks as if rising sea levels will at some point affect this area.

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Andrew Bisacre 6 years ago

Certainly feel that busses etc. should be back under public ownership.
Its vital after that to ensure that they are operated profitably, there is no reason why they cant be.

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Graham Day 6 years ago

Totally agree a whole range of services and industries should be brought back into the public ownership domain. However, how can we give the concept an identity and protection from predatory finance? Here's how: thesovereigneconomy.home.blog An idea to protect, and an identity for the whole of the pubic owned economy.

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Roger Philpott 6 years ago

The ideology of speculation and short-term profit rather than investment and long term sustainability has taken precedence with many of our politicians for the last 30 years and inevitably the house of cards continues to collapse, the latest example being the predictable fate of the privatised probation services. 'We Own It' has been part of that success and we now need to take the initiative further while the present government is in chaos. Many of us will have seen our banks and post offices closed, my town has lost it's one bank and our local shop has a post office where the staff serve at both and do their best but have very limited training in Post Office work (I speak as an ex Crown Office Postal Officer who spent weeks on a training course and under supervision before qualifying in the 1970s). I would now like to see more co-ordination between organizations supporting public services and specifically into investing in research into combining Post Office services with Banking including any other services which might make this more economically sustainable.
There must be many organizations and pressure groups which would like to see public services restored rather than privatized for the short-term benefit of itinerant executives and speculators. I commend the pressure group 'Tax Watch' set up last year by Julian Richer of 'Richer Sounds;' Julian has written a number of books on ethical capitalism and has shown that this works in practice. Readers may have noticed that he has been in the news recently for gradually transferring his ownership of the business to his staff. If everyone paid their share of tax then our public services and NHS would not be under the pressures they are - hardly rocket science! 'Tax Watch' is just one example of a pressure group we should link up with.

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Terry Morgan 6 years ago

Hi. just before Labour get into power and nationalises the national grid, how about setting up a petition to abolish meter standing charges.
In my own case - last year standing charge on gas & electric was 26/27p a day! This year British Gas has put this up to 36.07/35.66p a day!
My last quarterly gas bill was £49.15p (vat £2.34p) gas usage £16.15, standing charge £30.66 - in other words I paid twice as much for a meter
charge, (which are virtually maintenance free) ! Or, in other words British Gas is stealing people's money! Like everyone else I don't mind paying
for gas use bit it is an outrageous scandal for this company to be getting away with this !

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Jennifer Thompson 6 years ago

After being discharged from hospital with an open wound, I needed District Nurses for six weeks and I. That time had different nurses nearly every day, who had little knowledge of my condition and if this had improved or not. When I enquired why there were so many I was told that because the service was private and covered a large area then it was more cost effective to allocate nurses randomly without any thought for cobtinuity

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Keith Gray 6 years ago

I want all our services in the public sector. I am very pro public sector. Our NHS was set up free at the point of use. This Tory Government wants to privatise it and slowly but surely they are. We need all public services funded by public money. Privitisation is a wzy of making financial gain for themselves whilst the services deteriorate to unacceptable levels. Public Ownership is an essential part of society and we must fight to keep the ones in public sector and fight to bring back into public ownership. Enough is enough. We will fight and will win.

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Dennis Tuckerman 6 years ago

I support all of your proposals, especially bringing Utility Services back to Public Ownership I.e. re-nationalisation.
One MORE THING - I’m a very active socialist signing numerous petitions. However you (and many others) are guilty of making use of Social Media (such as Facebook) to widen your audience and impact. I’ve never had or wanted a FaceBook Account because of the way

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- Biba Maya 6 years ago
  
  Hello Dennis,
  Thank you for your comments. I completely understand that not everyone uses social media and so will not see our campaigns on these platforms. We make a conscious effort to be very active via email and use this as our main medium for communicating with supporters. We understand why people choose not to use social media and want for internet monopolies to be owned by the public, please have a look at our webpage on it: https://weownit.org.uk/public-ownership/internet-monopolies
  It is a key way for us to engage with supporters though and without being active on these mediums we risk losing a massive chunk of supporters who engage with us from different demographics. We hope you understand this.
  Many thanks,
  Biba
  Campaign Support
  
  Reply
John Archibald 6 years ago

Re. The Rail Review: terms of reference
Purpose
1. The government’s vision is for the UK to have a world-class railway, working as part of the
wider transport network and delivering new opportunities across the nation...
In 1954 under the leadership of noble and selfless politicians, who lived under the indifference of social deprivation and fought in the horrors of a real war, championed social redress and democracy for all. Their vision for our erstwhile Great Britain, gave us the best railway in the World and British Railways got us to work on time, cheaply in a coherent transport strategy with plentiful opportunities for all its citizens.
A year later, Macmillan, Marple’s and Beaching’s selfish self interests and anti-social ideology, was to replace trains and trams with cars, busses and lorries – the horrors of which blight our roads and cities with death and incoherency in most aspects of society’s needs, with opportunities and rewards for the privileged few.
Had our political voting system enabled true democracy, BR would still be the World leader and our country would still be manufacturing and exporting trains, railways, cars, busses trams ships planes, etc. across the world.
But without democracy and the public having a voice in proportion to our needs, Keith Williams report will be superfluous to what our corrupt, undemocratically elected politicians dictate.
Far more onerous for the general public, is that under the dictate of the UN, said politicians will adopt their policies of World Governance for the benefit of the few, at the expense and elimination of the many.

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Suzanne Scoble 6 years ago

I remember pre79 when nothing was privatised and you never heard of redundancy. It felt things were rock solid and enough staff to keep things going smoothly.
Now private companies have cut staff and put profit before people and that is the big change. Also it has not made it competitive (energy for example) but what does make me really angry is the CEO 's salaries and perks. I really believe that is where the increases go when we have to pay an increase.(energy)
I think that their packages are obscene. Also the money goes to the shareholders.
Also employees have not got the secruity in there jobs anymore.
I have been against it from the start.

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John Archibald 6 years ago

Re Rail fare rationalisation BBC Breakfast Monday 18 February 2019
No sooner had the ink dried than more no funny jokes ushered forth c/o Robert Nisbet regional director for the Rail Delivery Group.
Nisbet’s previous jokes - as a fifth of Northern Rail services were delayed or cancelled and commuters tempers nationwide were at breaking point – was that Britain has the most efficient railways in Europe!
Nisbet kept the laughs rolling saying that European nations including France, Spain and Italy could ‘only dream’ of having our kind of performance and punctuality records, because of the public-private partnership.
This morning’s jokes were about rationalising fairs and it talking 3 to 5 years to roll it out, thus pre-ordaining the Governments Rail Review – which is clearly set in stone now i.e. No Public Partnership!
Which is no different to the Governments joke of telling employers to consult with employees to try and stop redundancies, and allowing them to issue their last pay packets after the meeting.
In the case of our Railways (and the rest of our public services and essential utilities), the sad truth is that under proper Public Participation i.e. Co ownership. Management and having a proportional say for the strategic needs of the country. British Railways (BR) could lead the World again.
And others would indeed only dream of having our kind of performance, punctuality and low fares, because of our fine morals and grand ideals.
J Archibald

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John Archibald 6 years ago

Re Banks should work for people not profit?
Absolutely, but before we can even dream about co-owning and running our essential public services and utilities, etc. The Public either follows Natalie Bennetts call; and we demand Proportional Representation to have true democracy. Or, the public takes matters into their own hands; and emulates a Fidel Castro style overthrow of the government – who’s volunteering?
Face reality folks, as apart from Guy Fawkes the last time the people fought back, Thatcher had the police batter their skulls-in and the army on call to help - Churchill used that threat at Tonypandy.
Yes, we needed Churchill to take on a tyrant, and we need that resolve again. As our inept politicians have left us a laughing stock and made us a sitting duck. As witnessed by our Royal Navy sending a dinghy to “shadow” a Russian Aircraft carrier through the English Channel - as they laughed - drinking vodka, undermining our resolve and NATO alliance to help a dictator! it’s a joke, but not a funny joke!
The current debacle of Brexit is another not funny joke of the endemic power our politicians have and their arrogance to perpetuate a political system that is undemocratic, corrupt and inept!
So, we defo need democracy, as their biggest draconian threat is even worse. The Hadley centre, created by Thatcher, was used to replace coal with uranium and strip all power from the unions and miners! But the on-going horrors of Fukushima, the threat of Nuclear annihilation and the rapid demise of our Natural Gas shows what being arrogant, corrupt, inept and stupid really means.
What’s not-on though, is their cruelty to keep undermining our children’s hopes to have a decent job and better life! As as N° 11 turns the recessions on and off, Thatcher and her corrupt followers at N° 10 (Blair et al) morphed Hadley with The University of East Anglia to form the IPCC. And use their corrupt HadCRUT data to threaten the world populations with the consequences of them causing AGW and scaring our children! Surly the repugnant truth of how corrupt our politicians really are!

As truth is, they’ve corrupted this science! As ever since Pangea broke-up to form the current land poles and ocean thermohaline systems, the ice cores prove CO2 is uncorrelated to temperature and lags in and out-off each 100 Ky ice age cycle - triggered by the suns heat variances and orbital cycles. And in-between the short interglacial’s, the Earth’s heat balance is regulated with water vapour to form the greenhouse effect, with 0.004% of CO2 from intrinsic sources! The biggest joke of all!
That’s why the we need democracy: To combat air pollution and have more trains, trams integrated transport, especially in built up areas. And utilise fossil fuels (cleanly and efficiently) to keep all people in affordable electricity and foster more wealth and work for all who are able to work and bolster our Social care for those who are sick, infirmed, or unable to work.

In this respect the agenda our corrupt politicians have is about them keeping power and them deciding who will survive and prosper in their cushy New World Order. History, shows the tenable link to those who turned their back on Christianity and disposed of their fellow men women and children, in circumstances not that dissimilar to what’s being meted out now. This is why we must have the resolve to fight for what our forefathers died for, as they fought tyranny for us To Own It.

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Liam Murphy 6 years ago

It is important not to be dogmatic. 'We' have more ways of 'owning' assets than just public ownership. We have public, private, common and club goods and new technologies enable other (combined) categories. I think ytou should make it plain that your campaign includes particularly, common ownership and cooperative ownership (ie not public) as options. It would then be easier for me and many others to support you in your endeavours, which I would very much like to do.

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Gillian Dalley 6 years ago

I am trying to stimulate people on the left to think more carefully about social care. Politicians seem only to be concerned with funding arrangements - i.e. demanding more public money to be put into social care in order to improve NHS efficiency (discharging people from hospital on time). They fail to acknowledge that this is simply putting public money into a private service.
We need to understand that social care is:
• a chaotic privatised service which is unplanned in relation both to likely demand in terms of future numbers, location and needs of clients and appropriate workforce size and skills to meet this demand;
• dependent on the whim of providers – made up of individual small-business operators, a small number of charitable providers, and a range of large operators (with large numbers of beds) often owned by speculative hedge funds which are only interested in profit margins;
• staffed by an under-qualified, largely non-professional, poorly-paid workforce in contrast to the highly-skilled professional NHS workforce with which it is expected to co-operate;
• means-tested – that is, anyone with assets over £23,250 has to pay wholly for their care (the remainder being funded by their local authority against a very rigorous test of their care needs, which too often excludes a large proportion of those, who by most lay definitions, need it);
• based on a funding stream (via the local authority settlement) entirely different from that of the NHS (directly Treasury-funded);
and
• that it is therefore impossible for the NHS and social care to merge coherently – widely recognised in theory as the only workable option – in any way that would bring high quality care to those who need it in a timely, effective and affordable way.
We should therefore be campaigning for a rejection of the current system of social care provision in its entirety which should be replaced, over time, by a National Care Service, the structure and scope of which is in public ownership, funded through general taxation, free at the point of use, and meeting the highest standards of care as determined by the most up-to-date and evidence-based research, with a workforce trained in accordance with these research findings and employed by the National Care Service itself.

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tom carver 6 years ago

hallo,
i think water, gas, electric, trains, post should all be nationalised as well as police, fire, ambulance.
If they were inefficient, lumbering incompetents then whatever it was that made them so should be removed to allow them to work efficiently for the citizens and not sell the utilities so they make money once for the government and thereafter for shareholders only.....
As for police, fire, ambulance, by what stretch of the imagination are these 'local'??? witness the lack of co-operation between different county forces and inability to communicate because of the use of different systems... madness!
cheers, tom

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John Archibald 6 years ago

Ref Rail Rage 2019 Breakfast ITV 2/1/19
Like the IPCC/UN political agenda of trying to Brainwash, bamboozle and scare the gullible public to believe CO2 drives the climate hence give credence to implement Agenda 21 and cull the masses - so the ruling classes can take over the Earth. It's also far too easy to pick apart Chris Grayling's fascist agenda and savage his totalitarian NWO politics designed to make the poor train passengers pay more for expanding Bransons Souters et al bank balances as well. Indeed one could easily run away withe the idea to become shareholders and adopt a "if we cant beat them join them attitude". Alas however our bent slithering two faced politicians have us over a barrel! And as Natalie Bennett said to us at PO 2.0 "until we get PR" and get rid of our bent politicians, we can't do JS. So here's a happy new year to all who like myself hope that the public WAKES UP to the reality of WTF is really going on and takes control.

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Tony Kime 6 years ago

A firm called Newcross Healthcare Solutions (bad enough using such a cynical acronym) is making millions of pounds and paying its director similar annual bonuses. Why can't the real NHS be doing the same work whilst not having to make a profit? This company is paying crazily low wages so that a handful of shareholders can make money out of other folks' misfortunes.

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H 6 years ago

Other European countries are at different stages of privatisation (or even bringing things back in-house). It is essential to connect with campaigns (local and national) in other European countries. We can learn a lot from each other!

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Alan Hampson 6 years ago

From everything I've seen happening to strategic national services over the last thirty years, "private" means "pirate".

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John 6 years ago

I am particularly concerned about the creeping privatisation of the NHS even though I live in Scotland. After Brexit I worry that the price of an American (USA) trade deal may mean that the NHS would be opened up to privatisation by commercial healthcare firms from the USA. There is no doubt that these firms would lead to a destruction of the founding ethos of the NHS that it be free at the point of delivery and that treatment be based on the clinical need not the ability to pay. The USA spends about double the UK per capita but anybody who has been sick there knows how hard it is to get appropriate healthcare. This is due to a large slice of the funding being siphoned of to fuel the profits of these firms. Commercial healthcare leads to bad medicine with unnecessary treatment being given on the basis of their ability to pay. I could write about the unnecessary tonsilectomies in the USA and many other examples of the way that commercial medicine corrupts healthcare.

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Roy Orbinson 6 years ago

The world is a business. Corporates are taking over, money and greed is everywhere and means everything to the elites. Enough is never enough,self interest and making profit is their goal while society and the poor suffer for it. The capitalist system is not broken it was designed that way it’s working perfectly for them. It’s time to make huge changes to stop corporates controlling our future.

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Phil Gorner 6 years ago

The NHS literally saved my life and continues to support me. I cannot believe that a morally wrong privatised health service would have been willing to spend thousands on a common or garden patient, financially, as me. Services are just that. It is morally repugnant and, frankly, evil that a few monied interests should make life or death decisions dependent on personal profit. Much the same argument, though not quite as emotive or perhaps extreme, could be extended to other threatened services...

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colin brown 6 years ago

RE NHS I am having to suffer with re-occuring skin cancer it is disfiguring but not the fatal kind. My recent experience at my local Hospital was a proper eye opener. I saw the consultant surgeon,who said I would have a 6 month wait for surgery, but if I went private he could see me in a matter of weeks. This is against everything I STAND FOR,SO POLITELY DECLINED HIS REQUEST. However how many of THE FEW jump in front of THE MANY without any thought.

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Glynne Williams 6 years ago

The scandal of local councils selling off what does not belong to them has to be stopped. Councils have a very skewed view of what they're actually in office for. They do not seem to understand that they do not actually own anything; they hold public assets in trust for future generations. It is more than time that the creeping privatisation and take-over of public assets is stopped in its tracks. That includes by the way the use of public space for private, money-making ventures, resulting in the exclusion of council tax payers from areas of public parks. It also includes the attempted development on public spaces. We are currently fighting the removal of the last vestiges of the old Selborne Park in Walthamstow - a shopping mall took a huge chunk of it, and now the mall owners want to take even more for more retail space and tower blocks.

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Chris Hemmings 6 years ago

After today, what of "deprivatising" as the generic term?

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John Archibald 6 years ago

Re Water Privatization et al
Like all our other essential utilities and strategic services the General Public should be given the right to own, run, manage and foster these for the betterment of society and future generations. Historical and current evidence proves that the private sector mavericks spivs and our corrupt and inept politicians, are only making the divide in society worse i.e. make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Moreover, as Britain muddles its way in a changing World devoid of its Pink Empire and its politicians who have indeed lost their way, one cannot hide from the fact that a large proportion of them support the ideology of a NWO: Where the UN corrupts the true climate change science, builds its FEMA camps and has Agenda 21 ready to solve the problem of decent from the ranks. Therefore, given the extreme nature of whats really happening the General Public needs to take control.

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- P Simon 6 years ago
  
  Hi, you make some good points. I think it is wrong that the council houses were allowed to be sold off, also, wrong to sell water, gas, leccy, trains.
  I am one of those people who wants to leave the country though so i hope i get the chance before the global pandemic, world war 3.5 and the other bullcrap happens.
  
  Reply
John Archibald 6 years ago

Re Water Privatization et al
Like all our other essential utilities and strategic services the General Public should be given the right to own, run, manage and foster these for the betterment of society and future generations. Historical and current evidence proves that the private sector mavericks spivs and corrupt and inept politicians, are only making the divide in society worse i.e. make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Moreover, as Britain muddles its way in a changing World devoid of its Pink Empire and its politicians who have indeed lost their way, one cannot hide from the fact that a large proportion of them support the ideology of a NWO: Where the UN corrupts the true science, builds its FEMA camps and has Agenda 21 ready to solve the problem of decent from the ranks. Therefore, given the extreme nature of whats really happening the General Public needs to take control.

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Pat Marie 6 years ago

Is there any way to find out exactly how much has been paid in dividends to shareholders during all the years and for all the companies that have been privatised? If this can be published it would show how much privatisation has cost this country.

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marion buckle 6 years ago

Is'nt it funny how nationalised properties i.e water and electricity etc, never made money when it was nationalised yet has made money when it became privately owned.With the correct people running these services money could be made for the country.

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John Kane 6 years ago

Water, Gas, Electricity etc should never have been sold off. Get it back

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Barry Ewart 6 years ago

I would like democratic public ownership to be the opposite of the old 'nationalisations' - which it could be argued were top down, distant, too bureaucratic and usually had the same bosses in control with the community and staff having little say. So perhaps the regional boards could be elected by the community they serve OMOV and a percentage of board places are set for staff/trade unionist reps which equally should be elected by staff/trade union members OMOV. Each board should rotate the venues of meetings which should be open to members of the public and these should be listening exercises where the community can offer ideas to be explored. Yes we need to end the waste from leaks, help the poor re water bills, and the interesting ideas about having water fountains in town/village/city centres/pubs plus in offering free hot and cold water to the homeless but where possible I would also like to see more areas owned publicly by a water authority to be opened up to the public. Their should be an annual meting of the board and again the public/customers could submit their ideas although in practice we would all be customer/owners. Let loads of ideas flow!

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George W Fogg 6 years ago

Privatisation of public services was, and, remains a con trick. When people bought shares in services they already owned. Imagine someone knocking on your door offering to sell you your own car. People who bought shares should be ashamed of their stupidity and greed

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Jon Preston 6 years ago

Buses. No mention of electric buses.
This is a key part missing on the buses strategy and that is the use of bus stations, public buildings and multi-storey car parks, owned by councils to provide the solar pv needed to charge electic buses. Charging buses up on cheap overnight electricity for wind and selling much of the solar pv back during peak demand should be a net positive to facilitate a transition to electric transport. ( The use of solar pv in the daytime reduces the exorbitant subsidy paid to gas fired power stations).
Charging council, or other public service owned electric vehicles further reduces the need for individual ownership of cars. (80% of which are on some sort of lease hire / hire purchase model)
That should go a little way to helping councils develop local ownership.
Charge points at bus stations, schools, colleges, hospitals, council buildings and near multistorey car parks would permit husge savings on fuel and reduce air pollution. (How much do the NHS services pay for taxi services to and from hospital?)
The UK government has been taken to the courts three times on their failure to address air pollution. Providing electric buses to take over the school run would help reduce the exposure of children to air pollution.
Staggering school runs for example at 8:30 and 9:00 would ensure more impact could be made on air pollution with fewer buses at least initially.
Air pollution aggravates asthma and causes poor lung development.
In older people air pollution increases the risk of cardio-vascular problems such as hearth attacks and strokes and raises the risk of asthma attacks.
The failure to deal with air pollution is not only a climate and health problem it is also an occupational health problem. In other words it should be very much in the interest of the unions to raise these issues.

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John Archibald Bristol 7 years ago

My article for Publicly Owned Railways
There’s a mountain of reasons why privatisation can’t work and why the Government admitted in 1865 that Nationalisation was an option to homogenise the disorderly rail systems. But having worked for BR, SAR and the NRZ as a Traction and Rolling Stock Engineer and having witnessed rail travel here in the late 50’s when it was cheaper and faster than bus car or truck. And in times of ticket sales exceeding seating capacity, the station pilot would simply shunt on two or more coaches to accommodate this demand on the 8:30 (to wherever) and a standby locomotive would double head the train away at 8:30 – and all this was done with no computers or other digital coms! Had BR been given a free reign and the politicians supported our State Run Railway, we would have gold plated rails and executive class travel for all on TGV style trains and propped up the NHS to boot with the revenues BR had!

It’s a similar situation in Germany and France btw, although the general public in these countries are now being taken for a ride too! But sadly for us the die was cast in 1955 with the modernisation policy the corrupt Tory Government devised. Its aim was simple: increase road use and disseminate rail! Why? Because oil and Natural Gas was coming on tap and society was being emancipated form totalitarian rule to; perceived democracy freedom and a better life.

So much so that in the blink of an eye our railway system was more than halved and given to Souter Branson et al for free by their buddy Tory B. Thus Public Ownership and operational control is not only pragmatic, it’s the only option we have to restore common sense for the benefit of the many and to give our children the railway we paid for.

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Jim McNeill 7 years ago

Hi...I was wondering if one could buy 'we own it' or 'nationalisation' stickers through yourselves ~ or if you know of other suppliers?
Cheers

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- Biba 7 years ago
  
  Hello Jim,
  Thank you for your message. Great to hear you want some stickers. We don't actually have any at the moment i'm afraid, but we are working on opening a shop online soon which you will be able to get these sorts of resources from as well as t-shirts.
  Keep up to date with our email newsletter and we will make sure to give you all the information on there when the shop is ready.
  Best wishes,
  Biba from the We Own It team
  
  Reply
John Archibald 7 years ago

The choice is simple; Either keep believing the state propaganda and swallow the crap meted out by our undemocratically elected politicians and their system of corrupt governance; watching our public utilities get worse, become more unaffordable and let our children become poorer. As they will saddle generations for thousands of years to pay for the waste, poisoning, or the fallout from the mass destruction of nuclear fission, in a World stripped of oil, gas, coal and wood. Our stand up, unite and take Public Control of our strategic services and give our children a sustainable World to inherit!
So, count me in to help run our strategic utilities! But I’d suggest we do it on a pro rata basis, i.e. relative to earnings/taxation/ability. I’d lay odds on that within a year the greedy anti socialists will come running in their droves to join us as they desert the mirage of a their God “Dream”! As that’s all it is - unless one’s born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth, or they steel it from the poor, infirmed and the many who are frightened to fight back, albeit for good reason – they won’t divvy out their bullets and WMD’s are a No No too!

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John B Harries-Coulman 7 years ago

We are a Socialist country. That means we are people of interlinked communities. We are families and friends that help and support each other. What we do together has nothing to do with the American dream of monetary gain. We pool our resources and put them to the use of all. Big business or private companies, are built on the ideal of gain and profit by subscription.
The NHS, is about health, from birth to death. Its funding is from taxation and investment, and from public donations. It is not a business, it is more than that. It is unique and British and Ubique in our society of British values. Capitalist politicians have tainted and destroyed it by their meddling,.

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John B Harries -Coulman 7 years ago

Hi. It is important that the NHS, is public, because it belongs to everyone in the UK. It is there, not to be interfered with, to make money, by zelots and capitalists. It is a Social Service, not a money bandwagon.

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Tricia Duncan 7 years ago

Privatisation has seen the worsening of public services and since the Tory government cuts it has become even worse because a profit must be made. Time to take them back, provide a good service and give employees decent wages and employment rights.

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NHSfighter 7 years ago

https://www.ipevents.net/healthinvestorawards/ The Presidents' Ball for those looking to privatise the NHS. This year multiple organisations will be protesting outside this event with news agencies covering the protest

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DEZ 7 years ago

Transfers to private ownership are generally sold to public authorities as being a more cost effective and efficient way of running services. To reinforce the so called benefits the procurement usually show a cost saving on existing costs which eventually secures the total disruption of shutting down the well tried existing services to prevent reinstatement and then the poor and substandard services start. This disaster decision inevitably culminating in not having enough profit to pay for fat cat useless directors and of course the shareholders cut and the inevitable walk away or worse begging letter under blackmail circumstances of walking away leaving the usual mess to clear up. This is where the NHS is heading under Hunts so called privatised leadership and should be stopped before to late......but greed of course will win through

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Martin Rudland 7 years ago

Please note & publicise 2 important effects of the H&SC Act2012.
One is that it TAKES AWAY THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY for the public's health,
and the other one is that it requires the NHS TO PUT EVERY CONTRACT OUT TO TENDER !
The former enables PRIVATISATION to occur. AND the outcome of that is that some of the money that the NHS would use for clinical work then goes to Private Company Executives and Shareholders, ie the NHS funding is not what we are led to understand.
For example consider an NHS annual budget of £120 billion that is 50% privatised and that the private ‘health’ companies divert 40% of the contract to Executives/Shareholders. The Nett Effect is that £24 billion of NHS annual budget does not go into clinical work! We can then say that the REAL NHS (clinical) annual budget is only £96 billion NOT £120 billion. £96 billion compares very poorly with THE ANNUAL HEALTH BUDGET of equivalent countries !
The latter, ie our NHS tendering for work previously automatically done in-house, has been calculated as causing an admin cost of anything from £4.7bn to £9.7bn. That money is lost from the NHS clinical budget!
No wonder the NHS has problems, apart from top management which seems incompetent & overpaid AND in place to aid the government’s undermining of OUR NHS .

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Jack H 7 years ago

Nationalised industries are run not for the benefit of consumers of those services but for the benefit of the inevitably highly unionised work forces that end up in charge due to the pressure on the government in power. Train tickets are expensive but mass transport systems are and subsidies to the trains in the UK are the lowest in Europe i.e those who use a service pay for most of it, shock horror.
People talk of nationalisation putting power back in the hands of 'the people' and by this they mean the unions and the government, with the latter ending up running it for the benefit of the former and not the consumer. People forget how shit and unsafe train services were under BR, just like how they quite often forget how the NHS regularly scores bottom of the table in Commonwealth Fund on comparative health outcomes- http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/files/publications/fund-report/2017/jul/schneider_mirror_mirror_2017.pdf, page 5, exhibit 2.

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Robert Upton 7 years ago

People or profit this government is about profit enough said

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Jon Westoby 7 years ago

I've never thought privatisation was a sensible idea. It subscribes to the dumbest of dogmas. But I would value seeing a costed way back. Handing natural monopolies to the private sector has denuded public authorities of expertise and capital investment, making privatisation very much a one way street - an urgent reason to do no more of it.
And one more comment. It's easy to see what has to be done; remember - people have to do it. When I look at our current crop of politicians, I struggle to discover anyone above mediocre. Not a statesman in sight. Do we really want the people who are making such a Horlicks of Brexit (or their adversaries) to render our services completely FUBAR?

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Veronica-Mae Soar 7 years ago

Some one needs to explain to me. We own it ? public ownership ? What does that mean in practice? If we all had shares or it was a co-operative I could understand it. But public ownership just seems to mean that government of the day is in charge. And if they suddenly find they don't have the cash for this or that they could close it down and where would we be ? I would not trust the government to organise a bun fight in a bakery How can we expect them to organise hundreds and hundreds of public services and not lose money hand over fist - or seriously lower standards ?

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Tony Barrable 7 years ago

This is as simple as saying, do you want your services, which you pay for, working for you and the intetest of the many? or being ripped off by private companies in the interest of profit?

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Paul Martin 7 years ago

Just watched Renegade on RT about the railways, wish you every success in your quest for justice.

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Ron Branton 7 years ago

Chris Grayling - Like most current MPs this guy has no clue whatsoever what he is doing, I have grand kids with more intelligence than this. One of the richest men in the world who spends a fortune trying to find God in space, and this silly little individual wants to bail him out?? I really wonder what planet some of these people come from. The point is our governing system is totally broken and needs a complete re-think. We squander 12 billion a year on global aid ( which is ring fenced ) and we are in such a mess. No words to explain it.

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Bob 7 years ago

I know it's hard to think back all those years to Beaching closing the majority of Railway Stations and Lines, but, is this why we're going through this now, because some toffee nosed privateer is wanting to cash in on our monies again. The smile on Branson's face is obvious to me, he's making it big business. I'm sorry to say, but, I have a virgin media email address and it kills me to have it. He cashed in on our area because we can't receive a decent digital or terrestrial signal for media. So in a way my contact with 'WE OWN IT' is his own doing.. I love it! Stop the money grabber, Please!!

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John 7 years ago

I think it is scandalous that we allow private enterprise to take over or railways which we have developed and built over many years. These private companies make many promises only to break them and leave us funding the bill. Bring the railways back into public hands where we have control and benefit fully.

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david homer 7 years ago

I work for RM and the atmosphere amongst the workforce is toxic.Privatisation has destroyed a brilliant public service.It started with the cut price sell off where the spivs and speculators made millions overnight and continues with the selling off of all the valuable property assets to line the pockets of the wealthy.
The workload imposed on staff now would test an athlete, terms and conditions are under severe attack and the service quality has reduced significantly, Xmas mail failing for the first time in my memory this year.
The few shares we were given in an attempt to pacify us are nothing compared to the loss of job satisfaction and worsening working conditions.
From the first to the most recent the effects of privatisation are the same and I can't think of one which wouldn't be better back in the public sector.
All power to your campaign
D Homer

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david homer 7 years ago

I work for RM and the atmosphere amongst the workforce is toxic.Privatisation has destroyed a brilliant public service.It started with the cut price sell off where the spivs and speculators made millions overnight and continues with the selling off of all the valuable property assets to line the pockets of the wealthy.
The workload imposed on staff now would test an athlete, terms and conditions are under severe attack and the service quality has reduced significantly, Xmas mail failing for the first time in my memory this year.
The few shares we were given in an attempt to pacify us are nothing compared to the loss of job satisfaction and worsening working conditions.
From the first to the most recent the effects of privatisation are the same and I can't think of one which wouldn't be better back in the public sector.
All power to your campaign
D Homer

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david smith 7 years ago

No one suggests to the Swiss that chopping railways into fragments and selling them to foreign owners will improve them. I wonder why not?

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David Monckton 7 years ago

The whole essence of the We Own It Campaign is something I've been telling friends, colleagues and family Members about for years. Before I even knew about We Own It! It's so positive to find out that an intelligently run organisation exists that intelligently and objectively opposes the running of vital public services for private shareholders and directors personal gain. I have said for years that you cannot expect decent re-investment and higher standards of service when profit making is the sole interest of those who have shares in the service, and this has proven to be true time and time again. I have worked for the NHS for nearly twenty years and seen our estates and facilities services, occupational health department and procurement services all fall into the hands of privately run and owned companies with the assurance that they will be more efficiently run and better service provided. My experience is that they have always cost the NHS more money and Services are not as good to put it mildly. We had a patient couch in one of our clinics fail recently. When we used our own estates department of NHS employees this would have been remedied almost immediately, now we use Avensis this couch took over 3 months to fix, reducing our patient contacts by a third in our 3 chair clinic and was only eventually fixed after tens of phone calls to chase the job up. No apology was received from said company either.

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Bridget Green 7 years ago

Thank you for an amazing speech last night at the Labour Rally in West Bromwich. It was so great to see a young woman with so much passion and talking complete sense. I just hope we can make the changes

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John Spicer 7 years ago

Hi I have followed your work for nearly 2 years, I am a great believer in nationalized industries. As a 70 year old I can remember when this country was properly run, for the good of the people., NOT FOR THE GOOD OF THE DIRTY CAPITALIST WITH THERE SNOUTS IN THE TROUGH. Thatcherism was a crime against the people of this country as was membership of EEC and later the EU. All Industries in the Public domain in in 11950 should be returned their without payment.

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Robert Gaukroger 7 years ago

I came across your post about Mike Dwan, the man who was reported to have amassed a personal wealth of over £75 Million from PFI and the many schemes sucking funds from what should be spent on state schools directly, I have come across Mr Dwan around 2007/8 he is a controlling man with the only thought on his mind of what’s in it for him.
I made a grave error and sent my children to the prep school in Windermere before Mr Dwan moved from Manchester to Windermere. He brought his children to the prep school while I was working free of charge to design and delivery the pod classroom project at the prep school to get some publicity for the architectural project , I donated one pod classroom to the school: My regret is I didn’t donate that pod to a state school and not Windermere school, I spent nearly a year offering my services free to get the project off the ground. A few months after the project was due to complete Mr Dwan had wormed his way onto the board of Governors within months of him arriving at the school. He soon had arranged a meeting with myself to inform me he was now in control of the project I designed. Behold within weeks he had his own contractors installing the foundations sucking out funds from the project. I completed the project just; by sticking to my guns and holding Mr Dwan over a barrel with the building Certificate as I had applied for the permission in my name, he had no choice but to allow me to complete the project. Needless to say 2 weeks after the project completed Mr Dwan and his followers made sure my children wouldn’t be able stay at the school as we had purchased items including furniture out of my own pocket and he wouldn’t approved the repayment and we couldn’t afford to stay. The school project featured on Grand designs. My children went on to get a good state school education. I fully intend to recover my time spent on Windermere School project and recover the donated pod building.
Robert Gaukroger

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Robert Hall 7 years ago

Access to legal help is denied in civil cases because the fees are punitive: £300 plus an hour. Public ownership options:- 1)Legal aid for those below an income level of,say £80,000, should be provided by lawyers, funded from their charges to rich clients. 2) Punitive taxes on legal fees over an affordable amount, say £50 per hour, would drive down the costs. 3). Like care, legal advice and help should be funded from taxation and fees controlled by the state. There would be no opting-out provision

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Keith 7 years ago

Well done, Cat. The Climb Down on NHS professionals,
and We Own It's part in it, is being celebrated all over the
internet.
Keith

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- David Warren 7 years ago
  
  Really pleased to have found your campaign and I wish you every success. Having supported someone who had home and then residential care over a ten year period I have witnessed at first hand the failings in the Adult Social Care set up. The care workers are exploited and the elderly vulnerable people are not getting the support they need. The only ones doing well out of the system are the overpaid bureaucrats in local authorities and the private care companies. Adult Social Care needs to be publicly funded and run as it was back in the time before privatisation.
  
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Jeanne Jackson 7 years ago

Governments need to understand the public have less and less me,me,me thinking....I recently found out there are over 200 MP's in parliament and more in the House of Lords with their fingers in private/big pharma pies.

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Phil 7 years ago

I listened to the Radio 4 interview; the interviewer was provocative in suggesting you want to punish shareholders and I think you kept your cool really nicely.I thought my personal example might be worth recounting. It represents beautifully the issue of carefully analysing what the utilities may be handing back to the Government if your cause succeeds. In fact it raises the spectre that the shareholders may WANT to hand the utilities back because they have a major debt issue on the horizon. Certainly in my personal case; here's how it goes...
I am fortunate to live on a smallholding alongside a public reservoir in Cornwall. That reservoir was built in 1941 for the local town (Falmouth) water supply.It was built by compulsory purchase of farmland and the terms of the purchase included an obligation to erect and maintain a stockproof perimeter fence where no natural boundary existed.That obligation was on the Town Council and "its successors in title". Forever!(in perpetuity).
I have lived here 25+years. Originally South West Water employed a resident warden for this and 2 neighbouring reservoirs. He lived in a cottage owned by the company at the edge of the reservoir.Our fence - like literally tens-if not hundreds- of miles of fencing around South West reservoirs is concrete posts with chainlink fence strung tight between. He used to mow and strim and tighten up 3 times a year.With privatisation approximately 20 years ago he retired(maybe offered /enforced redundancy -I do not know). His cottage was auctioned off to a private buyer. Interestingly a levy was added to all of our water bills in the South West for "public recreation provision". This was managed by the creation of South West Lakes CHARITABLE Trust whose remit I now know also included maintainence of the Estates. The Trust is funded by South West Water and employs many volunteers. I do not claim to understand the flow of money but what I do know is that either the Trust or South West Water came and planted trees all around the reservoir approx 15 years ago. A huge EU subsidy was claimed. And that was the last we ever saw of anybody!
I continued to manage my pastureland on my side of the fence but finally 2 years ago the blackthorn growth on the public side started to pull the fence off its top straining wire. My fields were no longer stockproof. I was bounced around between South West Lakes Trust and a contractor who it transpires is a private self- employed person working to a budget handed down by South West Lakes Trust. He came within a whisker of putting in a fence with scaffold poles hammered into the ground stating he could not get concrete posts. In fairness waht he meant was he could't get them within the constraints of the budget handed down by the S W Lakes Trust.In frustration ( a member of the public walking their dog kindly came up one day to say one of our stock was grazing under the top strainer wire- 2 feet in my field 2 feet on the reservoir land-) I demanded to speak to a lawyer at South West Water.Basically I felt I was being messed around.She rang me back within an hour and had checked her legal details and said that the obligation was on her company to maintain a 5 foot high stockproof stone hedge.Still nothing was done but she authorised payment of the cost of my repairing the hole- 35 pounds for a man with a chainsaw . I supplied some wire free of charge.
I eventually sought legal advice. My solicitor checked our Deeds at the bank and said it was clear; the obligation was for the Water Authority and their successors in title to do as the lawyer had suggested. I spoke to the Chief Exec S W Lakes Trust.He sent his Estates manager who said they couldn't afford concrete posts and chainlink let alone a hugely expensive stone hedge. I pointed out that they had saved 20 years of maintenence costs and this was a chicken coming home to roost.I said the chainlink fence had been fine and if it had been maintained would still be.I would accept a new concrete posts/ chainlink fence.
And that is what is soon to be erected.
This scenario will be repeated across many miles of reservoir fencing. It is a huge capital expense looming on the horizon.Especially if - subsequent to the Brexit process- farmers are encouraged to restock their fields.Let's hope that it is taken into account literally by anybody valuing the Water companies in the event of a Government buyback.
All the best

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kidron marx 7 years ago

public services include public housing, decimated by thatcher's so called right-to-buy, and the evil assured short hold tenancy that allows landlords to evict on 28 day notice. the right to buy should either apply equally in the private sector, or be scrapped. Blair promised its capital receipts would be returned to LAs for housebuilding. PFI projects are the hugest rip-off of which Grenfell is an example, along with countless others, where for example hospital trusts are crippled by 30 year repayment contracts for defective buildings and infrastructure. This is Thatcher's Britain - it is pure evil

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Rose 7 years ago

I fully support having an NHS without private enterprise taking our money as profit. This includes GP practices. There is no point in talk ing to my MP because she is a tory and does not care about the NHS.

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Iain Hoy 7 years ago

I have always been a firm believer that the sale of public services as a bad idea. Engineered by the banks to reduce money going back into the public purse. Which meant the government has to generate more debt by borrowing to shore up the shortfall. Plus, also reaping the benefits of large amounts in share dividends. What better to sell off than services the public cannot do without on a daily basis. It is pretty much bringing America to it's knees, and it will do exactly the same here if nothing is addressed.
People may be interested in the article in The Independent by John McDonell MP on privatisation. It shows just how self serving and poorly managed public services have been run since being privatised. I was going to post a link but the filter would not allow me to.

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chris walton 7 years ago

As a dialysis patient I am a regular NHS user. My dialysis unit is run by a private firm who are paid a negotiated amount by the NHS. There is a Patient Board of which I am a member, I realise profit has to be made and I am there to ensure quality of service is also maintained for patients, give and take so to speak. I have to admit that this works, the quality of care is better than one would get in an NHS owned and run unit and there is a saving to be made too.
I feel that whatever is sold off there should be a patient representative board to keep costs down and also dividends too and to ensure quality of care is exceptional.

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Robin Fielder 7 years ago

When a Tory tried to canvas me at the recent election, I told him "I grew up with the formation of the Welfare State, and was really proud of it as a boy, but ever since then "You Lot" have systematically tried to dismantle it..." He went off with his tail between his legs.
Sadly, North East Derbyshire was one of the handful of Labour seats that went Tory for the first time for decades. Mainly because the UKIP vote went Tory.

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Joy Morby 8 years ago

I'm so chuffed you started we own it! I have watched our public services being given away at a terrfying rate for over 30 years. We have been taken for a ride by both major parties in that time. Blair really disappointed me. Thanks for being there.

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Dan Spence 8 years ago

Regarding the sale of NHS professionals. I am an employee of NHS professionals and when my team were left with no choice but to sign up to NHS professionals for our overtime we were promised that this was not a private entity but was a part of the NHS and would remain so. This government are selling it off as it has potential to make money for the highest bidder. The profits (if there are any) should be reinvested into the NHS not line the pockets of stakeholders.

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david lewis 8 years ago

please expose the criminal act of the goverment selling OUR plasma supplies to usa republican mitt romney for 230million who then sold it on to a chinese company for 830million, this has got to be exposed,it is our donated blood

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Robin Moss 8 years ago

Happy to support, very much agree - Robin Moss, Labour candidate NE Somerset UK GE 2017

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Anthea 8 years ago

It's great people like you exist! It's important to show there's an alternative to privatisation. We've been so brainwashed into thinking privatisation equated with efficiency and good management, but a fresh look at public ownership is now I feel what's needed. Public services should definitely be run for people, not for profit.
We need to give public ownership a strong new positive image, showing that these days things CAN be done better & more efficiently for the benefit of people. We must overcome the view that public ownership is an outdated, tried & failed, backwards step...

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Dr.R.L.Symonds 8 years ago

Here is a quote from my friend Dr. David Playfair who lives in Canada, regarding his post office:
"There are two reasons why I send paper packages. Firstly, it gives me an opportunity to chat to our village's lady postmaster about what the British post-office did when e-mails reduced the number of letters. Savings bank loans, driving licenses, passports etc etc. She sighs. 'If only our post office would do that - but then the commercial interests would oppose.' Maybe she'll pass the thought on to her Union . . ."

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Ian 8 years ago

The Shareholders are the real winners in all the rail franchises as they will never lose. MPs and their friends are the shareholders and making a lovely risk free income. Yes, I would like to see the railways in public hands but not as it was in the old BR days. The local authorities should be running the rail companies in their areas

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Colin Bissell 8 years ago

I lived, in 1938/39 in a terrace of just 18 houses. During the 18 months to the start of WW2, three old people at that time in their 50s and 60s, died without being able to afford a doctor. None had reached pensionable age, 65, so did not receive the 10/- (50p) pension; all were working until the time of illness.
Although only aged 5 and 6 I never have forgotten parents and neighbours in discussing each case were appalled that their spouses had not said anything. Had they done whiprounds would have been held to raise money for treatment.
The profit before treatment of privatization could, probably would bring back death through poverty.

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Steve Turner 8 years ago

I'm 67, much the same age as the NHS. Since I left school in the mid 60's, I've seen governments of every stripe (and demonstrated against most of them! ) We thought Thatcher was bad but compared to this lot, I'm not so sure now.

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Pete Alty 8 years ago

I've witnessed privatisation of public services since it all began in the 1980s with BT, water, energy and bus deregulation. It didn't make sense then and it still doesn't now: service has declined, particularly for the less wealthy; pay and conditions for workers have deteriorated; and valuable public assets have been handed over on the cheap to private individuals, companies and outsourcing agencies whose values do not correspond with those needed to successfully provide all of society's members with the services they need. Short-term financial gain cannot and does not sustain long-term service provision, organisation and development. The current government is fundamentally opposed to state provision of public services, putting the NHS in grave danger, so this makes the work of "We Own It" absolutely vital.

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Norman Anderson 8 years ago

I would just like a proper public bus service in our village please
We can't get to a local village market which is about 3 miles away.
We can't get to the doctor's surgery in the next village and that is about 1 & 1/2 miles away.
We can't get to a chemist shop/pharmacy in the next village about 2 miles away
We can't get to a Post Office because that's in the next village about 1 & 1/2 miles away.
Our village shops are :-
one kebab shop
one tea shop
2 closed down shops
Forgive me for not getting too excited about bans on new bus companies.
Norm

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Karen Roscoe 8 years ago

In Sheffield, the council has contracted Amey to chop down a huge number of trees. The reasons for almost all the "killings" just don't stand up in any way......bumpy pavements (it's actually companies like Amey & utilities that dig holes and poorly repair afterwards that cause most problems), can't afford to look after the trees (but can afford huge teams to chop them down!) etc etc. Sheffield was one of greenest cities in Europe, trees save us from effects of pollution etc but one small area of Sheffield lost 160 trees.....ONE HUNDRED & SIXTY! Read it and weep because they're just keeping on doing it and we can't stop them. THEY ARE OUR TREES.
This was what I put in my survey & I was heartened to receive an email from Weownit commenting on the matter. We have STAG in Sheffield....a group who are trying to stop this senseless destruction but people are getting arrested for peacefully protesting. It's all just WRONG.

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J. P. 8 years ago

Non-profit-driven services mean that quality products and delivery are the no.1 priority. This equates to services for the public and not for greedy CEOs and shareholders.

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Susan Hannis 8 years ago

Privatisation not only takes profits from public services, so away from the public purse, but when it performs badly who picks up the tab? The public!

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Chris Heale 8 years ago

Privatisation is morally dubious for many essential services. As soon as profit is prioritised over people in (for example) healthcare and education, we see a race to the bottom; competing companies drive costs down in the name of efficiency, and all they ultimately concern themselves with is the bottom line. The provision of the service becomes the by-product, and if it works for the people then that's because of a happy coincidence rather than it being a primary objective.

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George 8 years ago

Public services help everyone - not just the well-off.

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Dave Eagle 8 years ago

I don't believe that anyone pays taxes wanting some of that money to go into the pockets of shareholders in the private sector. Efficiency is good, but privatisation is not the only way for an enterprise to be run efficiently.

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Anthony Thorley 8 years ago

Public services are meant to ensure that every one has a roof over their head, food to sustain them, and access to medical services for a life that has quality and hope. To put a price on that and moreover to expect to profit is to demean humanity.

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Adrian Finney 8 years ago

Keep it up!

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Helen Tierney 8 years ago

I feel very strongly that public services MUST remain public & not be sold off to the private sector.

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John 8 years ago

Fares on privatised bus companies continue to soar to increase profits. They should be treated as part of the national infrastructure and be a public service.

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Julie Boston 8 years ago

I value We Own It for supporting action.

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Tim Westwood 8 years ago

I just think making money out of public services, particularly health, is wrong, unjust and inhumane.

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Chris Hawes 8 years ago

I believe public services should be for the public good and any profit or loss should go to the government.

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Chris Hawes 8 years ago

I believe public services should be for the public good and any profit or loss should go to the government.

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Nik Sutton 8 years ago

It is driven by ideology not economics.

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Rose 8 years ago

I hate the way private companies put profit first. I believe that public ownership means that public needs are the most important consideration.

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Shirley Salter 8 years ago

I think this country should be back in the hands of the people, not profiteers.

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Irene 8 years ago

You're all doing a grand job ... onwards and upwards

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Laraine Ward 8 years ago

With Privatisation prices go through the roof and services becomes shoddy and non-existent. Just look at the trains, buses, NHS, post office and energy suppliers.

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Simon James 8 years ago

It is a vital roll you are taking on to ensure that we have services left for our children

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Jon Lisle-Summers 8 years ago

Privatisation results in inconsistent provision. The private sector pulls out, often at short notice, from insufficiently profitable contracts.

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Rex Hora 8 years ago

We are increasingly being governed by companies, not elected governments. This is a denial of democracy.

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Paul Robison 8 years ago

With the signing and imminent ratification of CETA, the Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement, between the EU and Canada, privatisation will become more widespread and taking anything back into public ownership will be breaking the deal. Not enough people are aware of the storm brewing with CETA. We need thousands of people to contact their MEPs across the country and demand they vote no when it comes before the European Parliament on Valentine's Day 2017. Maybe your supporters could make a huge difference in this vote.

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Alastair Stone 8 years ago

It will be a long, hard struggle to reverse the damage already done, but it will be worth it. Thank you for running this campaign, it is sorely needed.

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Howard Wingfield 8 years ago

Thanks. Keep up the good work!

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Sally James 8 years ago

I've been corresponding with the CEO of our local bus company for over a year to try to get a more sensible service for my daughter from school. It's really made me think about who privatised services are really for, and has made me absolutely passionate about stopping the government from banning councils from setting up their own companies.
I'm also really worried about how the NHS is being dismantled and privatised bit by bit through the back door. I work for a company that uses Sodexo for catering and cleaning, which I know also supplies the same services to hospitals. I can tell you from experience that their services aren't cheap, and I can't believe it is more economical to outsource such services in hospitals to companies who are operating for a profit. This, of course, is the tip of the iceberg in the NHS!

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Stephen Redfern 8 years ago

Just keep up the good work.

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Jo Allen 8 years ago

I just feel that things that people need - from transport to care services and everything in-between - should be owned by the people and run for the people.

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Geof 8 years ago

I have seen both private and public bodies running eg: British rail. There were problems but it was run for the people and any profits either put back or used by the government. The privatization of OUR NHS is being done with the utmost stealth by underfunding to make an excuse for privatization. All this has to stop!

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Mike Yeadon 8 years ago

For me it is a moral issue. ALL utilities should be run for the benefit of all the people in the country.

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Amelia 8 years ago

We need these services and therefore we must own them!

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David Grey 8 years ago

Public services can and should be run at a fair profit, not at a loss, but that profit should be ploughed back into improving the service, not to line shareholders pockets.

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Graham Smith 8 years ago

Privatisation is an irrational choice in public services. Please keep going!

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Joan Innes 8 years ago

I resent the fact that people make money out of providing for our basic needs and those needs of our society.

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Ruth Facey 8 years ago

I am so grateful for the stand you have been making as so many of the areas under threat are already marginalised in the minds of the policy makers. Trees, parks and open spaces only have our voices to speak out. Public transport is sometimes the only choice for those with limited incomes and so slips off the radar. And as for Land Registry/Ordinance Survey etc...!!! But together we can be powerful in defending things that should mark our country as a decent civilised place that values these quiet but valuable assets. Rock on We Own It!!!

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Al Wilson 8 years ago

Keep up the good work.

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Wendy McCormack 8 years ago

I think that private companies are businesses and not natural service providers. It is in their interests to put their profits and shareholders first which therefore means their customers do not come first.

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John Raithby 8 years ago

I feel very strongly that anything society believes essential, should be run on a not-for-profit basis & as a service.

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Emma Randle-Caprez 8 years ago

I don't want to go back to a time when we have to pay to visit Hyde Park and it's wrong to make prisons or social care services a business. Keep up your great work and thank you for doing it.

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Nanette Gregory 8 years ago

A public service should be exactly that. Any profits should be put back into the community to improve facilities.

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Carol Russell 8 years ago

The companies or organisations who take over public services are in it to make a profit, lets make no mistake about it, and this is wrong and creates more problems than it solves.

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Yvonne 8 years ago

Privatisation of public services has just meant profit for a few and bad services for the public.

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Nicholas Humby 8 years ago

Privatisation is not in the public interest and fragments public services and often involves taxpayer subsidies to companies

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Den Carter 8 years ago

We lose at every stage - and we own it! It is theft and piracy and is morally and socially wrong and it has to be reversed.

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Shirley Carter 8 years ago

I would like to live in a caring society, where people are more important than profit, but I feel we are going the opposite way, encouraged by successive governments.

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Trumpkin the dwarf 8 years ago

I think you should be going for private schools as well as academies because the most well off children get much more spent on their education. In our local area most children have a choice of 1 school (their catchment school) whereas those with money have a choice of their local school plus four others. The top state schools do better at A level than the top private schools and state educated pupils do better at university. But private school children get the best jobs due to the old boy network and having more resources on their education. Thus there is a loss of talent in the top jobs and a completely divided country which has led to Brexit. We need the children of the best off families to be responsible and send their children to local schools so they are not seen as unreachable elite. Private school supporters argue that people should be able to spend the money they have earned as they wish. However they have only earned the money because they have been paid more than necessary if they have enough money to spare for private education. Our taxes, food bills, utility bills, sky tv, bbc licence are all more expensive because we are in fact paying for some people's children to have an education which negatively affects the life chances of most children in this country. To be able to afford the fees there will be pressure on people to do dodgy deals, vote for governments that cut taxes and stay with abusive partners.

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Anna Zimmerman 8 years ago

This is the organisation that the UK - and the whole world, by extension - desperately needs; one to counter the unfortunate myth of the greater 'efficiency' of the private sector, and the need for high-quality, fully-accountable public services. I mention the whole world because this facile and dangerous cancer has spread out from the US and UK and damaged the lives of ordinary people everywhere.
I believe that the pendulum of anti-public sector rhetoric is slowly starting to swing back, and We Own It has a vital role to play in that.

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David Hard 8 years ago

It is great to see the emergence of an all-in-one campaign group.
The NHS is politically controlled and it has become fragmented to such an extent that members of the public and their children are now more at risk than ever of dying unnecessarily.
The land upon which NHS hospitals are standing are publicly owned and should not be eyed-up as gifts to developers because we own it.
Far too many ordinary members of the public are now seriously ill and they need an NHS that is not facing extinction.
www.a-new-shape.co.uk
2j3sr

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Natalie Murphy (Clowd Nien) 9 years ago

Recently I went on a trip across many countries from Sydney, Australia, Manila, Hong Kong, Beijing, Busan, Nagasaki, Osaka, Honolulu, San Fransisco, San Diego and even some of the Caribbean islands one things was common, cheap publicly owned transport systems. Not only that, many had tram systems, and San Fransisco had older trams from across the world including Blackpool. Several had tram, streetcar and trollybuses, hybrid buses and two of them had all electric road vehicles. San Diego's system was partly run by First and Stagecoach and also TDG had the biggest part of the share. Yet prices were lower than the UK. Everywhere I went I could all day tickets for a really reasonable price, Honolulu was $2.50 and travel for 6 hours on any bus, and the same kind of price structure in San Fransisco too. All the public transport systems were clean and efficient, the Hong Kong tube system was sardine tin rides though, always packed yet the trains were run like clockwork and appeared to be endless. Sydney's urban and underground trains were double deck and very smart, and China had bullet trains running at nearly 200 Mph and cost a mere £10 from Tianjin to Beijing. The craziness of the UK's privatisation policy allowing the companies who own the bus and train operations have made billions, and those companies have been able to spread across the world with the profits they make here supplying cheap public transport to other countries. Maybe 'We Own It' might like to use that in their campaigning.

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Marion Garner-Patel 9 years ago

The privatisation of amenities has proved disastrous. it serves not the ordinary citizen but the elite and rich. it also means that the power for change is more difficult as one has to deal with loads of small private companies instead of the public ones for change. Water and energy are examples. They do not improve services. Electric sub stations are now neglected with falling fences. I could continue. It is all about a wrong ideology and as someone has pointed out, NO majority mandate.

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Trevor Sykes 9 years ago

Privatisation in & of itself is not necessarily wrong but the way in which it has been enforced in a compliant U.K. is completely against the interests of anyone who has to rely on such services. It is vital that some voice is given to those who have been robbed by successive oligarchies masquerading as democratic governments.

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Peter Collins 9 years ago

It is pushing people power to the forefront of governing bodies so they feel less powerful and less likely to "go-it-alone" to suit their own personal preferences, rather than acting for the people of this country

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Colette Smith 9 years ago

Simply relieved someone is finally doing something about privatisation!

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Ann Quinn 9 years ago

You are making people think.

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Patrick Hulme 9 years ago

Helps to counteract, the pro-corporate media. Public service has been demonised, but in reality privatisation has led to less efficient more fragmented services.

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Gerhard Lohmann-Bond 9 years ago

You keep me up-to-date with important developments

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david pike 9 years ago

Time for Energy Democracy and Ownership! - There is a way of making this happen now, of giving ownership of the energy to the people of the UK. It is our future – it is our energy, and at Ourenergy we are passionate about making is possible for everyone to own it!
Our energy is a new gas and electricity supplier that gives back 75% of the profits to the customers in the form of a yearly rebate.
We also give ownership to customers, in the first instance through domecracy and influence – you are encouraged to get involved in decision making and be part of the board. We also want to transfer ownership to customers – Ourenergy is a supplier that is built for you and influenced by you. We only see ourselves as stewards of your energy. It is your company. You will own a share of it!
Honesty and transparency in big businesses and in the energy sector are sorely lacking. We are an open organisation that will ‘bare it all’, including financial information and salaries
Our mission is to move the power, dominance and control away from the big six suppliers and put power in your hands – nothing short of a social revolution!
www.ourenergy.com

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David MacMaster 9 years ago

The selling of publicly owned assets whether in the form of publicly owned land, natural resources or services, at low prices and without taking into account the net effect on the national economy of undermining public infrastructure, for short term, limited, temporary financial gains to the treasury, for private profit of private enterprise, is not only an affront to the greater good but is also a form of corruption from which those in government, both national and local, and their business associates, may profit from personally. This is unacceptable.

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J Wilson 9 years ago

You need to tell the People & the Government that these are Human Rights issues, which the UK has been party to since 1945 through its membership of the UN. However, despite that, and a UK Labour Government having 'Ratified' The International Bill of Human Rights in 1976, no successive UK Government has ever fully complied with it. #TIBOHR now and support the 2 campaigns to demand these Rights once and for all time.
As for State vs Private ownership.
The UN has also said in 1962 in its General Assembly Resolution 1803 (XVII)that "Recalling its resolutions 523 (VI) of 12 January 1952 and 626 (VII) of 21 December 1952. Bearing in mind its resolution 1314 (XIII) of 12 December 1958, by which it established the Commission on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources " and later "Bearing in mind its resolution 1515 (XV) of 15 December 1960, in which it recommended that the sovereign right of every State to dispose of its wealth and its natural resources should be respected," that it declared in Article 1 of this resolution that:-
"1. The right of peoples and nations to permanent sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources must be exercised in the interest of their national development and of the well-being of the people of the State concerned."
So when and how have the people ever been truly consulted about the sell off of anything that their taxes have acquired or invested in, as the UN has also said in other documents that taxation is part of a Nations resources? And of course our 'Natural Resources' have been sold off willy-nilly to private individuals and Companies for decades without any thought for "the well being of the people" or respect for all of our Human Rights.
We don't even have Equality before the Courts in the UK, so how can they claim to comply with inalienable and inviolable human rights themselves, or be fit to judge when the State has complied with them in everything it has done too? Real people should form a Jury and set 'Legal Precedent', not the lackeys of the State.

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Robina Bruno 9 years ago

You keep the democratic deficit and moral bankruptcy of this government in the spotlight, keeping the questions over the legitimacy of free market capitalism alive.

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Russell Dunkeld 9 years ago

None of the political parties have the courage to even discuss this principle. We, the people, will have to show them unmistakably what we want. That is surely what democracy ought to be about. We Own It offers an opportunity to demonstrate this clearly

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Alan Milne 9 years ago

I like We Own It because it gives ordinary old pensioners like me a voice which politicians and business leaders ignore at their peril

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Chris Cumberpatch 9 years ago

The current political system, stitched up by the party machines, leaves no room for people to make their voices heard - particularly if one lives in a 'one-party state' as I do (Sheffield). Organisations like We Own It give us a voice

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Alistair McKenzie 9 years ago

You reflect what the vast majority of people believe.

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Nicola Wellington 9 years ago

I like your determination in the face of the Tory obsession with profit and devaluing of local government and public transport.

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Andrew McTaggart 9 years ago

You have the energy to campaign for fair and just causes

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Julie Beverly 9 years ago

With the kind of government we have today (and a 5 year fixed term) and a very biased media it is really important that there should be opportunities for the public to make their views known.

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John Mulcahy 9 years ago

You are fighting for the ordinary person on the street who do not have a voice.

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Julia Daly 9 years ago

You bring to my attention things that might not make the news, or flash once and are never mentioned again, and also provide access to more global issues as well as the local items that should concern us all.

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Jim Dingnan 9 years ago

We Own It is the only organisation I know that campaigns single-mindedly on this one very important issue, so it is able to concentrate its fire-power without diluting it across a range of campaigns.

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Jenni Jackson 9 years ago

It's good to have a pressure group dedicated to the maintenance of public services

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David Holmes 9 years ago

The name We Own It says it all. Since the late forties the taxpayer invested huge amounts of money buying the railways and putting them back on a good footing, along come foreign firms charge us more than they charge in their own country per mile, and invest the profits to improve their transport system. Bonkers

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David Kirby 9 years ago

I like We Own It, because it draws attention to what the neoliberal revolution is trying to take away from us, and it invites discussion as to what it means to 'own' an enterprise. In my view, shareholders do not really 'own' corporations, in the sense that they do not and cannot make themselves responsible for what the enterprise does, which is obviously particularly important in public service: they are really thieves and parasites, and making profits out of other peoples' basic needs whilst also exploiting a workforce and robbing them of control over their work really is disgusting and yes, definitely a moral issue. The staff should control their workplace and be fully accountable to users and to funders.

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Tom Nisbet 9 years ago

We Own It are promoting a subject in the interests of the country as a whole and not the interests of a powerful profit driven group.

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Michael Burnett 9 years ago

We Own It is a sensible organisation which puts across a view which, ironically, is supported across the political divide since a majority of all voters do not want the country sold out to the Bransons and Sercos of this world

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David Henshaw 9 years ago

A nice clear campaign, without any obvious political agenda

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Simon Holdsworth 9 years ago

You give a voice to all similar thinkers who need to join up to be heard

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Tom Kenny 9 years ago

Great mission! I really like the website - especially the evidence section, and the public opinion infographic. I also think the campaigns are interesting, especially the top trumps

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John Hallett 9 years ago

Because public services are what they say - they should be accountable to the public.Since they are run for the benefit us all; the taxes which fund then come from us all. We are all shareholders.
There should not be secrecy about the accounts and financial decisions.
The quality of a nations life is seen in the treatment of its poorest members.

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Julie Harrison 9 years ago

You are doing a job that no-one else seems to be doing - the subject of public ownership simply disappeared thanks to Blair.

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Andrew Ward 9 years ago

We Own It provides a good platform and voice for the many people who believe in this cause; serves as a good reminder to both media and politicians that a lot of us DO care about things more than profits for shareholders.

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Frank Sowerby 9 years ago

I am in complete support of your aims and objectives. Someone needs to speak out and alert the public to what this Government is doing particularly to the NHS

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- David Hard 8 years ago
  
  The Tories are in the process of destroying the NHS. All of us will need the service someday.
  
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Sally Smith 9 years ago

I like your approach-ability and clear language. I tell people about the campaign whenever possible. It's amazing how even people in social care don't see what the problem is with privatisation. This campaign is forever!

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Ian Thom 9 years ago

You are fighting injustice, whether it be because we built these services and now have lost them and their benefits or because corporations now have the ability to squeeze us for profit.
They were built by the people for the people and nobody else should have control, as far as i am concerned the gov't has committed a crime under common law.

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Pete 9 years ago

You support a very important part of any successful society and community - the protection and promotion of good public services.

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Andrew Morley 9 years ago

I don't believe public services should be run for profit, Putting profit first means quality goes down, We need more say over our services, Once we privatise services, it's hard to get them back, We all paid to set up these services for the public benefit not for private enterprise to profit, so selling them is a dereliction of public trust

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Ed Marks 9 years ago

We need campaigning groups such as this to challenge the governments plans which always seem to go against the public interest and attack the most vulnerable in society

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G. Housley 9 years ago

It's not just a worthy enterprise it's common sense. We need to act against an arrogant government that thinks getting about a quarter of the votes at a general election gives them a mandate to do what they want

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Christine Pickersgill 9 years ago

We own it is representative. Public authorities can offer a very good quality service but, currently that is at a much higher rate than private companies. Part of this reason is that public authorities have to pay overtime rates and officers wages are inflated. The only option in times of budget cuts is therefore tendering out services but those private services are impersonal and profit driven using workers who are low paid and unable to speak up. We Own It needs to be arguing for public authorities to find a third out of this quagmire so their services can be cheaper if not as cheap as private enterprise.

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Vincent 9 years ago

You campaign on a vital issue that is otherwise lost in the long round of single issue campaigns and little fights

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Darren Woodiwiss 9 years ago

You seem to be the only non partisan voice making this argument, the Greens are but they are political

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Jimmy Barrie 9 years ago

This should be the future for Britain , for the common tax paying Brit , not the crooked self centred out for what they can get MP'S . Keep them BRITISH . SAVE THE FAMILY SILVER

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Dave Wilson 9 years ago

I like We Own It's agenda to return public services and utilities to public ownership. These services should never have been sold off, and certainly not for the undervalued pittances they have been.

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John Milne 9 years ago

I draw your attention to the petition launched by Scottish Labour to keep the ferries serving the Western Isles of Scotland in public hands (scottishlabour.org.uk).
See also Brian Wilson's article in The Scotsman (28 November) Time for SNP to U-turn on ferries scotsman.com

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Grace 10 years ago

This government was elected by 24% of those eligible to vote, by 37% of those who did vote. That means that 63% of those who voted tried to get someone else in. Yet they think that they have a mandate to do whatever they want. They must be able to hear the protests, the cries to keep corporatocracy at bay, and yet we constantly hear of how they are hastening us down that slippery slope. There will be no coming back, if they have their way. We will be sold out to the highest bidder, and paying the prices for huge fat-cat salaries for greedy executives. The old ethic where business is about providing jobs, paying decent wages, and enhancing society for the people is long gone. They line their own pockets by keeping the poor poor. They cut jobs and cut corners, throw people on the scrap-heap and call it progress. The government sells off public assets, and negotiates trade agreements that will further drive us into a corporate nightmare, without hearing the public outcry. This is no longer Democracy. It is Megalomockracy.

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Lesley Walton 10 years ago

I am SO ANGRY! This bunch of crooks lied and lied and lied and lied in order to get elected and that is the ONLY reason they are in power. Their persistent lies convinced people that 'better the devil you know' and the 'economy is safe in our hands' What a sick joke! What they are proposing to do with regards to Royal Mail and RBS etc is nothing short of criminal - they are basically 'stealing' our money.
Rant over, now to a practical suggestion. Whilst probably most of the big companies, mainly the ones that award themselves obscene bonuses even - are perfectly satisfied (and relieved I expect) that the Tories are in power, I suspect that there may be some who might actually agree with our stance. Not too sure how you would find these out but it would certainly give us vital clout. And maybe if we can also identify some Tories who dont support these sell offs, especially at knock down prices.

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Paul Dilon 10 years ago

I am sure there has been some good public to private acquisitions but the way Europe's economy has gone for the last 10 years and with current social inequalities and climate change to think privatization is a fix it all, is not looking at the bigger picture. It maybe a cause of a many of our current problems.
When a politician talks of sustainability they should consider how unregulated profit gains affect this so called desire for sustainability. Setting time periods on contracts to Private contractors runs counter to the concept of long term sustainability. Politicians before blowing the trumpet for privatization should consider how has privatization affected unemployment rates, the national debt, employment laws, inflation and the disparities in property ownership of it's citizens.
The other problem with privatization is it´s ability to change the definition of those necessary elements for life into a monetary system. You thought water rates are bad, when water and air are traded on the stock market you know you have a serious problem waiting ahead of you.
Actually the more evident our resources diminish and the onslaught of climate change approaches it is understandable for some commentators to see privatization as a greed explosion before the great collapse. To assert change a fundamental revaluation of community, citizenship and government must be made that establishes a none monetary system that is self sustainable for the basic needs of the people and their environment. The private sector could have all the rest.

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Maureen Stanley 10 years ago

I support all that you stand for and have participated in your campaigns. I wonder though why there is not a campaign against "Right to Buy". Thatcher started this in the hope of more people voting Tory. The scheme has decimated our stock of social housing so that some people can make a large profit while others live in cramped conditions with no hope of a suitable home. I cannot believe that there is not more fuss about extending this right to tenants of housing associations.

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Ceri 10 years ago

Why do you think Canadians will not tolerate a private health service? They are sitting on the border and they see the nightmare of such a society. You get the wrong health insurance sold by some private scam company and you get ill then they don't validate it and you go bankrupt-just one example I came across among many form living there for sic years. We have to WAKE up we must STOP this privatization because if they get away with it we will have NOTHING left that made this country great after the war.

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Carole Jones 10 years ago

I am so utterly dismayed by the East Coast sell-off. Travelling from London to Edinburgh yesterday I had my first taste of the coming service: seats had been replace by basic commuter train seats with no headrest, fixed arms, and no pull down tables for the passenger behind to use. Having a tea was a precarious and dangerous business without that! Apparently these seats had come from some Northern line; other seats in the carriage were from First - they carried the logo, even though all the seats had been upholstered in the new bright red Virgin colour. Is this a move to a tiered payment system for different seats? Or is this a cheap bargain-bucket process of starting up the new service? Whichever, it is a depressing, demoralizing and disheartening beginning, already destroying standards and treating passengers with contempt. This was a perfectly stable and efficient service. I'm so angry I'm already planning alternative modes of travel for the future.

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plinkyplonk 10 years ago

I am so dismayed the the East Coast line has been sold off. Why? Everyone was happy with it and the Exchequer was making money from it.

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James McCarthy 10 years ago

Public services are more likely to be open and transparent than profit-driven ones. They are committed to the long term and the wider good; they can be flexible, imaginative and responsive; and they can be made to be accountable in ways that are often impossible in the private sector. There is a community of interest between staff and customer which is not present when a private body is given a public role.

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- plinkyplonk 10 years ago
  
  Where does one start? I live in a borough that practically invented outsourcing. That word masks "privatisation" so a lot of people don't twig. No-body knows who does what any longer. Our CT collection seems to involve firms at either end of the country as well as a department still at our (remote for the majority of people) council offices. The leader of the council when he thought up outsourcing everything is now the MP for the area.
  
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Robbie Wilson 10 years ago

Our public services should be in the hands of those who have their best interests at heart, not those who seek to syphon off taxpayers' money and impoverish the provision of these crucial services.

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George Allon 10 years ago

Hi. Thank you for a copy of your report which was presented a balanced view. The direct management of East Coast Rail has demonstrated that a public owned railway can operate efficiently and achieve high customer satisfaction feedback whilst making a considerable return on investment. With profits going back into the organisation to improve and enhance services their is a win win situation for the customers, the organisation and the customer. Outsourcing services usually involves the prime contractor or contract holder creaming off a management charge first and then using what is left to subcontract out the actual services. Rail franchising seems to do exactly the same by using the existing workforce to deliver the services whilst focusing on grinding down costs by reducing staff, asking subcontractors to deliver services for prices that barely cover their costs and selectively reducing levels of service. The whole situation does not make any logical sense other than to satisfy a Conservative Government's historic commitment to supporting it's financial backers and the elite group of wealthy selfish shareholders who retain the bulk of our countries wealth.

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Leslie Allan 10 years ago

Privatisation equals profit, pure and simple! Frequently this also means cutting corners, leading to a poorer, not better, service. I am appalled at this government's proposals for the health service, - privatisation by stealth! And take the railways. A glaring example of the government's hatred of anything in public hands is the East Coast Main Line. I am a frequent user of East Coast Trains, in my experience it is an efficient, clean and well run service, with pleasant and helpful staff. And it makes a very good profit! A profit which goes into the government's and, hence, our pockets. But the government says it must be privatised! Why? There is no good or valid reason for such action. It is sheer political dogma!

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Sharon Sisson 10 years ago

Public services belong to the public and should not be given to the private sector to exploit for profit. Privatisation is pushing up costs and lowering the services, we are very close to losing our NHS we must stop this before it is too late.

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Bethany Tye 10 years ago

The private sector runs services on the smallest possible budget, pays low wages and delivers poor quality for its users - although it has the money to provide a high standard of service, profit is more important. Public-run services pay fair wages, are run efficiently and offer good service quality to users, as profit isn't the overall aim - although many do make a healthy surplus, e.g. Directly Operated Railways ran the east coast mainline between 2009-2014 and made £16 million, whilst improving passenger satisfaction. Who could find fault with that? For some reason, its being reprivatized!

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Marian Wingrove 10 years ago

Public services can only be delivered more cheaply by the private sector if they cut wages and standards of service. In particular privatisation in the health and care sectors is to be deplored.

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Judith Hodgson 10 years ago

Services such as rail, transport, water, health services, education and energy supply are natural monopolies and should be owned by the public. The private sector will not and cannot provide the strategic services we need. We have seen private companies cynically milking every penny from us the public, failing to invest as we we need them to, loading their companies with debt so they are unable to invest appropriately, siting their head offices in tax havens so that they avoid paying their fair share of tax. The ultimate irony is we see foreign governments running our railways and energy sectors which makes a mockery of the oft repeated utterly wrong mantra that private is better. Worse still it seems that private companies are very happy to take the profits and milk the system, indulging in rent seeking behaviour but when the going gets tough they seek to socialise the losses, leaving the tax layer to pick up the bill when the going gets tough. These private companies are totally amoral and have no commitment to the Britain's well being and the common good.

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Erebus 10 years ago

Public sevices should belong to the public, and not allow shareholders to cream off money so those very services are denied vital money. All money generated through public services should remain within the service, so as to enhance that service, not lie behind brass plaques in the Cayman Islands.

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jack johnson 10 years ago

We Own It have produced'Beter in public hands'which explains why we need a Public Service Users Bill.
For me this blows out of the water the Thatcherite myth that public is bad and private is good.
Companies win contracts by cutting costs like workers pay and conditions,staff,the public service itself,
plus increased costs to users.All so they can make a profit for shareholders.
Labour must adopt and pursue the Public Service Users Bill or be condemned as Thatcherite still.

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Simon Holdsworth 10 years ago

We now have the ridiculous scenario where our public utilities (water / trains / electric etc) are owned by foreign companies. Our government pays money to them. These companies then use that money to reduce their profits in the UK (and reduce the tax take for the UK government) to prop up their companies in the home countries. Rather than paying them money just buy shares in those companies and take dividends or use their power to influence prices / salaries / dividend payments forcing them to keep the money in the UK. Simples.

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Malcolm Wallace 10 years ago

The financial case, along with improved efficiency of railway public ownership, has been accepted by a majority of the public. The real difficulty is that Labour's recent Forum came out in support of retaining the franchise model which most people consider a disaster. This has been reiterated by the Shadow Minister for the railways and is virtually certain to be reflected in Labour's Manifesto. The real challenge is how can we get Labour to have a clear policy of public ownership especially if it embraces a greater share of local and worker democracy?

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Robert Ormerod 10 years ago

I always remember Tony Benn explaining privatisation saying that it was just about the rich and powerful wanting to make profits. I work for local government which is currently being deliberately underfunded and cut back using the so called deficit as the excuse, in order to facilitate privatisation.
As with all privatisations the costs increase and the service suffers in order to pay the bosses and the shareholders.

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brenda storey 10 years ago

All this gov thinks about is privatisation public services ie rail nhs are all better in public hands without the need for messing around with them .if its not broke don't fix it and don't privatise

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Leonie Mansell 10 years ago

Privatisation of utilities and transport has not, as boasted/promised, made them more efficient. It has made them many times less efficient; no money is spent on infrastructure, the only consideration is how to screw the most money out of the public for the minimum level of service in order to enrich shareholders. I am particularly worried by the creeping privatisation of the NHS. I recommend nationwide showing of Ken Loach's excellent film "Spirit of 1945" which shows exactly how much we gained after WWII and have since lost!

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Dave Powell 10 years ago

My Dad worked for the Eastern Electricity Board from just after the 2nd World War until his retirement in 1983 and he saw his job as to provide a service to the public. The notion of customers, in order to attempt to keep their homes warm in winter, providing companies and their shareholders with huge profits epitomises the venality of the political parties of today.

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Les Cheek 10 years ago

I strongly agree that public services should be in public hands, it would be great if the government thought the same.

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Eleanor Milton 10 years ago

I believe all utilities + public amenities should be owned by + for the people!! Private companies should not have the right to hold the public to ransom making huge profits from what is ours by right! Our government should be taking control + putting them back where they belong RUN BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE!!! Give us back our Gas/Electric/Water/Buses/Trains/NHS!!!!

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Pete Magee 10 years ago

It seems to me that a visitor from another planet might wonder why something so fundamental to our existence, indeed something we are almost wholly composed of, is bought and sold for the monetary advantage of a select few.
The idea that somebody owns water is absurd.

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Margaret Littlejohn 10 years ago

Thank you so much for your work on keeping public services in public hands. The care system has been in increasing chaos since the NHS and Community Care Act' outsourcing, the point of which I never understood at all other than to provide care for the least money in the most shoddy (and as we have seen dangerous) manner. The railways are a disgrace with problems on every third journey I take and now dread taking. All I can see from privatisation is more money for fatcat chief executives and those who can afford to be shareholders and poor wages and training for workers along with bad services for the users. Keep public services public and claw back those that have gone into the hands of the greed fat cats who couldn't care less about the people they provide services for.

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Carol Hills 10 years ago

The basic means by which people need to live decently are being "quietly" eroded by this unelected quango of a government, through privatisation of services and the subsequent greed of those who strive to own and make money from. If taxes were paid fairly by those who can well afford them then there would be enough money to ensure vital services are owned and maintained BY the public FOR the public.

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Shaolin Monkey 10 years ago

Essential reading at a time when the media is either docile or complicit in the public being ripped off. Private companies with shareholders have shareholders to pay, therefore that money does not get re-invested in the service, therefore the service is unlikely to be as good. If people NEED it - keep it in public hands. If people WANT it - then private companies can have a look in. It's a no-brainer.

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Oliver Charleston 11 years ago

Public services belong to the People!
Do you ever get the feeling you've completely lost any say in how our public services are owned and run? Great names like British Rail, British Gas, British Telecom and, more recently, the Royal Mail and the NHS have joined a long roster of public services which have been privatised over the last thirty years. Is now not the time to consider taking essential public utilities used by you and yours back into public ownership? The Right will say public ownership is a wasteful, beauracratic nightmare. The Left are starting to say no, not so: public services in public hands means democratic accountability, public participation in major decision making affecting all of us and your taxes spent wisely to benefit you through reinvestment in the economy thus creating employment, universal prosperity and most of all, good value for money for everyone.
Imagine, if you will, the faceless corporate conglomerates, fatcats or the CEOs of any number of private firms running the railways, public healthcare, social security or even the very schools your children attend at a profit you will never see or enjoy.
This is happening today in 2014 and until we, the British people, start waking up to the loss of everything our forefathers sacrificed so much for in the Great Depression and subsequently the Second World War, will never be able to look our children and grandchildren in the eye and honestly say we didn't try to make a better future for all based on taking back our birthright from the avaricious clutches of those who would sell us short.
Let's stand shoulder-to-shoulder and say together: people over profit, public over private!

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Sally Smith 11 years ago

I pay about £500 a month in tax and National Insurance.
I expect all of that to be spent honestly on truly public services not for shareholders profits too.

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jane 11 years ago

In Scotland the water supply is still publicly funded-and long may it last.
Compared to England and Wales,there are no glaring inefficiencies,no share holders to mollify,no drive to force up charges.
We pay the water charges with our council tax and it works!

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Ray Allott 11 years ago

Public services are owned and paid for by the public through taxes and were set up for the benefit of the public at large, not private businesses for private profit.
We the public are all shareholders in our services and has such should have a vote as to whether they should be handed over to the vested interests of tory profiteers. This vote has never happened and as such should be considered as a flagrant misrepresentation of power by this coalition that should result in it's expulsion from office.

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Sedley Bryden 11 years ago

It's quite basic, really. Human beings have a few basic needs, but unlike our ancestors we cannot go out and cut down trees to provide heat, they all belong to someone else. Likewise the water we need for hydration. We cannot catch or grow our own food, the land, rivers all belong to people who will stop you from sustaining yourself and you family. Thus no one should profit from providing the basic necessities of human existence. We should all own the means of producing what we need.

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C 11 years ago

As public services become delivered by multiple providers under complex contractual arrangements, who do you hold accountable for poor performance or service failings? The risk is that challenge will be lost over under a cloak of 'client confidentiality'. Why does big business want to provide public services? Let's not kid ourselves that it is through some altruistic impulse. First and foremost it is because they see a healthy profit margin or opportunity for future expansion. Their accountability lies to their share holders, not to the public body and certainly not to the service user.

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Brian McNeil 11 years ago

A Public Service is one where the aim is to provide the best-possible service for the lowest cost.
A Business, regardless of what it may throw at you as a 'mission statement', exists to provide the bare-minimum service, for the maximum profit.
Look at every single thing sold-off since Thatcher's time. All of our services are worse, and we are paying much more for them.

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christina sosseh 11 years ago

I already pay income tax, national insurance, council tax, and VAT on virtually everything I buy. All these taxes are for public services, that does not mean they should be provided by private companies who only want to make a profit, there should be no profit in these type of services, if there is, it should go back into the service to make is sutainable. These services should be provided for peoples need and should be accessed equally by all. if people want a different type of service, fine they can pay for it.
OUR hospitals etc, which this government are giving away to private companies, are not theirs to give away, they belong to the people, we are the ones who have paid for them.

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Mart 44 11 years ago

Privatised from the civil service to an American firm. Terms & conditions under constant threat. Redundancies EVERY quarter for the last 7 years. Compulsory redundancies at the same time as they hire (non unionised) new graduates. Work that was done for nothing now paid for in multi million pound contracts by the taxpayer, with all profits going OUT of the country. You are lied to and cheated by this privatisation

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Jenny Hnriques 11 years ago

Why should share holders or private companies benefit financially from public services? I think that services for the public should be in the hands of the public, and should not be based on any profit making enterprise.
You only have to look at what's happening to our utilities, rail services, care homes, etc to see what a messy free for all privatisation and competition has made of people's basic needs.

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Brigitte Lechner 11 years ago

I cannot see why state ownership of, say, the car industry or the steel industry, would be preferable to private ownership. That sort of nationalisation was ideologically driven, for sure. Private and profit-driven ownership of essential public services like clean water, education,energy, transport or health reproduces inequalities on a massive scale. There is no justification other than greed. Businesses make very liberal use of such services, directly or via their workforce. If they want the workforce adequately and equitably reproduced they should pay for it with higher taxes.

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Robin Watts 11 years ago

To my mind, it's simple. The utilities & services we all use, should not be required to generate income & profit for shareholders & consortia (who mostly aren't even in Britain, or have any interest in the service, or standards we experience). We should hold them in common, to service our needs, and ours alone. That requires them to be nationally owned

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Andy 11 years ago

It's simple.
- public services service the public.
- they exist as services to keep the country running: to facilitate people getting on with life.
- they therefore cannot be run for profit. If run for profit, the service is not run for the public, or the country, or to facilitate the daily life of the country. They are then run for profit: and therefore the core reason for the service is lost.
What comes from private business running private services? Everything you see now.
High prices
Low staff morale and no identification from the public of the importance of the jobs done by public services
Low standards of service
Major mistakes (deaths etc) with post-accident analyses done in the corporate style - no accountability
Endless business "bottom line" style rationalisation and justifications for lowering standards
Frankly, the inevitable end point is that the country descends into hell.

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Nick Hawkes 11 years ago

I would not like someone to have access to my testicles and access to a hammer and a perverse financial incentive. Same principles.

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Jim Hutchon 11 years ago

We pay taxes for clean water, public transport and heat and light, not for vanity projects in Afghanistan. These are the inalienable duties of Government. It cannot handover these duties so we have to pay twice for what we rightfully expect in a civilised society. These pillars of life are not to be bandied about for profits. They are too important.

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John Dakin 11 years ago

The point about public ownership is that services are owned by the people for the people--all the people; this ideal has been lost sight of by all three main parties since the Thatcher era; but it is an ideal which has been betrayed, most recently by the privatisation of the Royal Mail and of the NHS; neither of these were discussed at the last election: this is outrageous, yet the Coalition seem so far to have gotten away with it; nor am I convinced that privatisation lead to better services: quite the contrary: the performance of Atos and G4s are lamentable.

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Alan Cummings 11 years ago

Public ownership is about providing a quality, cost-effective service to the public. It is a way of providing a benchmark that demonstrates care and concern for the quality of life everyone experiences.
Private ownership is about creating as much profit as possible - period.
The two concepts are both necessary - but incompatible when mixed.
Government SHOULD recognise this and stop forcing everything down the private side.
Utilities, health care and education, for example, simply do not work in private hands as the profit motive get in the way. Incompetent management and inappropriate government interference in public sector organisations is designed to encourage the "privatise it" mentality. What we really need is government that recognises the value of the private sector and makes sure that it can function effectively and efficiently for the benefit of us all. For this to happen we must fight to make sure the spivs do not win.

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Roger Drion 11 years ago

We are always told that these services are not profitable, so why are these people so hell bent on getting hold of them to privatise them?

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Simon Linskill 11 years ago

For too long the debate about public/private has tried to make a false dichotomy: one side being ungainly, slow and badly managed and the other as enterprising and efficient. It only takes a short holiday to continental Europe to ride on some clean cheap trains, a glance at your energy bills, a ridiculously long wait at a bus stop or sheer rage at one's overflowing bins to know that some things are public goods and not commodities.
I wouldn't ask that Creepy Overbearing Govt Inc. runs all of my life, but I want some accountability from my politicians. I want to know that ultimately they are in charge of vital services, and we are in charge of them, rather then them being managers who purchase services at the lowest cost (and quality) every few years... until they go wrong and we bail them out and prove to run them better. *cough* East Coast Mainline *cough*.
It's about time our professional policians restarted running running our services for the benefit of citizens, not shareholders. If anything, privatise the monarchy and make them work for us.

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Andy Kemp 11 years ago

It strikes me as self-evident: public services should be in public ownership and control. Wherever profit becomes a factor we inevitably see those services undermined, a lack of accountability and a serious breakdown in the very notion of the social good. Our common inheritance is not for sale! For a society to hand over such functions as the provision of fresh water and the imprisonment and rehabilitation of offenders to parties whose vested interests are inimical those of society as a whole, is morally bankrupt and the sign of a deep malaise.

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Cormac McCarthy 11 years ago

An excellent example of how public services and democracy work in a wealthy country is Norway. And in emerging countries in South America there are a number of excellent examples on the same model. An example of the nightmare model that we in Britain are being led to, is the USA. The will of the people needs to be reasserted. We want our democracy back.

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Christopher Wellard 11 years ago

I support everything you stand for, but all this propaganda goes out to the committed. We should be forming local groups to leaflet people, and/or houses and out side the relevant premises, factories, offices,large shops and supermarkets, outdoor and indoor meetings as well as colleges and universities. I am old and this is the job of the young as well as the old.The young in particular because they will have original and unique ideas and it ias their futures. I'm not suggesting a single nationwide organization, but a series of small autonomous groups. Emails are fine to start a movement, but it is only a mass movement which will force change. AND CHANGE THERE MUST BE.

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Calum McGregor 11 years ago

Successive governments have claimed that privitisation of essential public services offers greater choice to the 'consumer' increased competition and value for money. What is has actually meant is that our public services have become shrouded in commercial confidentiality agreements, obscured from public oversight by complex tendering agreements, and driven up prices whilst simultaneously offering a worse service to the public. All outsourcing achieves is to hand vital public services to private companies, who exploit their monopoly position to raise prices and divert our money into the hands of private shareholders. Essential public services such as energy, water, transport and the like should be transferred back to public ownership, so we can have a say in how they are run, and so that they operate with the public good in the forefront of their minds, rather than secondary to turning a profit. We should also be recognised not as consumers, but as users and collaborators in these services. Co-operation is the key! Thanks for your campaign

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Clare England 11 years ago

Privatised monopolies can be bought by private equity companies, loaded with debt ensuring they pay as little tax as possible, and can hide behind commercial confidentiality. Regulators appear to have no meaningful sanctions and, even when services are demonstrated to be unsafe and inadequate the CEOs still receive massive bonuses and shareholders receive dividends. Companies that fail to deliver properly (G4S, Serco, A4E, Atos) on one contract still receive other government contracts and the public, whose services are being sold off, who are ultimately paying for all of this in the form of huge subsidies and increased prices have no say in the process.
This week it was revealed that the privatised water companies are responsible for over 1000 incidents of water pollution. These are companies that are meant to protect the environment but instead the need to make profits overwhelms all other considerations as is the case for all of the various privatised monopolies and services. There is no evidence that privatisation of the NHS and Royal Mail will turn out any differently. The public will just end up paying more to companies that lack accountability.
We Own It is a hugely important campaign because privatisation affects the nature of our democracy.

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mike watkins 11 years ago

The unconstrained free market only works for the benefits of the multi-national companies, the already wealthy, shareholders, hedge fund managers, etc, the rest of us are simply a human revenue stream to be tapped at will.

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Hugh Daniels 12 years ago

Wherever you look you can see the so-called market failing our fellow countryman and taking away our freedom. Prices are no longer under proper control, and our right to a say in how national services are run is being sold off to foreign and multinational companies, who have no commitment or loyalty to the people and values of this country. To them we are just customers to be manipulated and dictated to in a monopolised market. As for their policies on taxation, it is just an inconvenience to be got round rather than an essential income to fund basic services and facilities here.
Thank you for your campaign.

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Kandy 12 years ago

Failures at Winterbourne View show that staff working in residential social care need supervision and training. Pay and career structures must reflect capabilty. To promote inclusion facilities provided for those in residential care need to be in the community not on a remote industrial estate where rent and rates are cheap. Care homes need to be run in a way that safeguards care and not profit. The ethos must be public service not private gain.

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Kevin Meaney 12 years ago

I want public services. Services that are not contracted out but provided publicly and paid for out of our taxes.
This is the most efficient and equitable way to provide essential services.
By keeping the services public there is greater democratic accountability. Freedom of Information means there is greater transparency and excuses like commercial confidentiality etc. can't be used to fob off requests for information.
I do not wish to see tax payers money being used to subsidize corporate profits.
Keep up the good work.

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Jane Lennie 12 years ago

I'll pay taxes for public services provided by adequately waged public workers. I don't agree with my taxes lining the pockets of shareholders when they use workfare, zero hours and temporary contracts for their workers.

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