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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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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

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.