The IMF Speaks: The Tories got it wrong with Privatisation

[horizon]

Well, I'm not going to dig out pictures of 1970s monstrosities but you are right: it all depends on policy, context, political beliefs and decision-making power: if these are lined up behind good design, then all is well, council or not.

As a general principle, IMV local is best, devolved decision making is best, distributed power is best. But even these are sometimes trumped by other needs: for example in the past it's been necessary to remove the right of tenants' groups to determine allocations due to concerns over racism. Good principles do need to be followed.

Incidentally it's been put forward as a serious suggestion that it was the messy committee system of government in the UK that beat Hitler, saving the country from the worst excesses of Churchill's febrile imagination. Most surveys of human wealth and happiness put imvolvement and governance at the top of the list.

[pete75]

Incidentally it's been put forward as a serious suggestion that it was the messy committee system of government in the UK that beat Hitler, saving the country from the worst excesses of Churchill's febrile imagination. Most surveys of human wealth and happiness put imvolvement and governance at the top of the list.

It was the Soviet army that beat Hitler not our governmental committees. Even D Day was made possible by the Soviets - at the same time they launched operation Bagration using 5 million troops, 15,000 tanks, 100,000 artillery pieces and over 20,000 planes.

[Ben@Forest]

Incidentally it's been put forward as a serious suggestion that it was the messy committee system of government in the UK that beat Hitler, saving the country from the worst excesses of Churchill's febrile imagination.

I have to say I've read the exact opposite. The UK mobilised for total war from the off. Hitler and Germany by comparison were inefficient, part of the reason Nazi Germany didn't develop an atomic weapon was that competing branches of the German military had their own research projects. On the Allied side UK and US scientists collaborated on the Manhatten Project.

Goebbels didn't call for total war (i.e. the gearing of the German economy to a war economy) until 1943. The Germans had believed Blitzkrieg would work - by the time it hadn't it was too late.

I read somewhere that Churchill had 100 ideas a day of which only 6 were any good. But the UK wasn't a messy system of government in WW2, it was a National Government and Churchill and Attlee worked well together. And despite their differences they liked each other. It's notable that Attlee, who was an officer at Gallipoli, always believed that operation (devised by Churchill) was a good strategic idea - just badly executed.

[broadway]

The privatization ideology is spent and dead.

Until state ownership gets over-heavy, self-serving, sclerotic and dismissive of the customer (remember those telephone boxes?). And no-one is proposing that the cycle industry is nationalised!

That may have been true at one time, but by the time they were sold off that was not the case otherwise they would not have been worth selling.

[horizon]

Incidentally it's been put forward as a serious suggestion that it was the messy committee system of government in the UK that beat Hitler, saving the country from the worst excesses of Churchill's febrile imagination. Most surveys of human wealth and happiness put imvolvement and governance at the top of the list.

It was the Soviet army that beat Hitler not our governmental committees. Even D Day was made possible by the Soviets - at the same time they launched operation Bagration using 5 million troops, 15,000 tanks, 100,000 artillery pieces and over 20,000 planes.

. . . by contrast with Hitler's top down approach.

[horizon]

Incidentally it's been put forward as a serious suggestion that it was the messy committee system of government in the UK that beat Hitler, saving the country from the worst excesses of Churchill's febrile imagination.

I have to say I've read the exact opposite. The UK mobilised for total war from the off. Hitler and Germany by comparison were inefficient, part of the reason Nazi Germany didn't develop an atomic weapon was that competing branches of the German military had their own research projects. On the Allied side UK and US scientists collaborated on the Manhatten Project.

Goebbels didn't call for total war (i.e. the gearing of the German economy to a war economy) until 1943. The Germans had believed Blitzkrieg would work - by the time it hadn't it was too late.

I read somewhere that Churchill had 100 ideas a day of which only 6 were any good. But the UK wasn't a messy system of government in WW2, it was a National Government and Churchill and Attlee worked well together. And despite their differences they liked each other. It's notable that Attlee, who was an officer at Gallipoli, always believed that operation (devised by Churchill) was a good strategic idea - just badly executed.

No, committees aren't messy but effective - it's just that most people think they are less effective than top down. So broader, more inclusive governance is better. Even, as you say, at winning wars.

[pete75]

Incidentally it's been put forward as a serious suggestion that it was the messy committee system of government in the UK that beat Hitler, saving the country from the worst excesses of Churchill's febrile imagination. Most surveys of human wealth and happiness put imvolvement and governance at the top of the list.

It was the Soviet army that beat Hitler not our governmental committees. Even D Day was made possible by the Soviets - at the same time they launched operation Bagration using 5 million troops, 15,000 tanks, 100,000 artillery pieces and over 20,000 planes.

. . . by contrast with Hitler's top down approach.

It may well contrast with Hitler's approach but it wasn't what beat him as you claim. What did was Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration etc.