The Guardian has a headline this morning that says:
700,000 people is, of course, just over 1% of the UK population.
Which really does, rather neatly, summarise what privatisation is about, doesn't it?
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I don’t share your optimism that the 700,000 are the 1% of the UK population. I suggest that these people are the middle classes of the UK, of which one is you.
Maybe you need a little education about who make up the 1%
The facts on that are readily available
I think you are naïve who is buying the shares.
No I’m not…
Do you know wealth distribution in this country?
Most people don’t have £750 for shares
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2451702/Small-investors-jump-queue-stampede-Royal-Mail-shares.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24471622
Whilst I am not one of them. Nor do I have enough money for 1 share! However I think there are many small investors buying shares.
You really are clueless
The small investor has, almost by definition, to be in the top few % of the wealth distributuion
“The small investor has, almost by definition, to be in the top few % of the wealth distributuion”
That’s nonsense. Anyone who has money to spend after they’ve dealt with the essentials of life can be a small investor if they wish to. £750 is about the price of a fancy TV, or nice european city break. These are things afforded by many more than the top few percent, and it’s entirely conceivable that people might choose to buy some shares instead of those things.
Almost half of households have money left over after they’ve paid all the bills. Average monthly household savings are only £42, but even that’s enough to build up sums, over time, that are well suited to buying things like Royal Mail shares.
I find the indifference of your reply quite extraordinary
Seems to me that if we are going to do this we should gift the shares to every citizen: we are all in it together, after all. As it stands you cannot buy fewer than £750 worth. Who, on benefits or in low paid employment, has that amount lying about?
Or keep it nationalised
The Russian oligarchs came to power abusing share hand outs
Agreed, Fiona – except how can you give me what’s already mine? And no one’s asked my permission to sell my property! This is a con trick, on a par with “selling” Tower Bridge.
To get round Richard’s entirely valid criticism of Russian oligarchs (the late Boris Berezovsky decamped to the UK with the proceeds of such a Share issue – and wasn’t arrested as soon as he set foot on British soil, as he should have been, but was greeted as a “entrepreneur” – sheesh! who needs the Mafia with “entrepreneurs” like that?), simply grant every person on the Electoral Roll with dividend credits to set against e.g. Income Taz, and let HMRC earn its pay by working out the necessary arithmetic. Hire more staff to do it, of course.
I’ve often wondered – especially after the Lefties and Righties have been shouting at each other over QE, HMG debt etc – what would have happened if instead of the banks being ‘saved directly’, HMG via the BoE had simply ‘conjured up some cash’ and bunged everyone say £7,500 to spend as they wished – to pay down debt, go on the p**s with, whatever they fancied…
….surely it couldn’t have been that much worse…..than what the idiots in charge actually did.
As to the Royal Mail sale….as I’ve said on another website,
“And of course the taxpayer had to pay for the pensions deficit. I think in a year or two the ‘New Royal Mail’ will, as you say, start claiming that it isn’t possible at all to keep the USO up and that if HMG wants to keep the USO in place, huge slabs of taxpayers cash will be required……
…..even as the ‘New Royal Mail’ pays out some serious cash in dividends to its shareholders.”
There is no point in privatising something that is a natural monopoly, is expected to act as a ‘social good’ and the taxpayer has to be the lender of last resort anyway to ensure the service keeps going….like Railtrack (now NR of course), like a TOC that hands back the keys to the rail line and so DOR have to do the job anyway, like NATS (the ‘ATC bods’ will never be allowed to collapse) or even Royal Mail.
Fiona, ‘we should gift the shares to every citizen:’
We are at that point already !
Yes. I know. But this right to steal our property was established long ago and there does not seem to be any legal or political challenge open: any party could state they will nationalise without compensation, but they won’t.
There is not even a debate worth the name about this and I hear that when they privatised the post in Holland it was a disaster: and still is. But that is true of every privatisation and it does not seem to make any difference
“any party could state they will nationalise without compensation, but they won’t.”
Possibly because shed loads of shares in nice ‘safe things’ are held by the pension firms…..
…..and pensioners tend to vote and be very, very vocal about such matters.
No they’re not
People are clueless about their pensions
In practice I do not advocate such action
When you say in practice you do not favour such action do you mean you do not advocate nationalisation without compensation, Richard? If so, then why? It has been privatised without compensation…
I do not believe sequestration of private property rights is fair – but the price has to recognise the subsidy business gets from the state
That is a big question, naturally, but it seems to me that we first have to agree what constitutes private property rights, and that depends on how you view what happens. When a burglar makes off with your grandfather clock in the middle of the night he is not entitled to say that the transfer of your clock gives him title. Not even if you left the door open. Not even if you were away and left your granny house sitting and she left the door open.
If the burglar than sells your grandfather clock to a third party, that third party does not have proper title, even if he bought it in good faith. The clock is still yours.
It may be argued that this is not the same because we agreed to sell our grandfather clock when we elected this government. If democracy was working properly that would be a strong argument. But it isn’t and we didn’t. At least that is my view.
These things tend to be asset striping exercises at the expense of the public purse -some financial institutions, yet to be revealed, will make a lot of money out of years of public expenditure -and give little back.
This is so obvious that there is not even much pretence any more
http://thosebigwords.forumcommunity.net/?t=45603892&p=317955543
RETURN OF THE ASSET STRIPPERS!
I think an argument over which section of British society will be buying these shares is probably moot.
An article in yesterday’s Guardian online says that large overseas investors, including sovereign asset funds, are to be given precedence over many UK investors. As we have previously seen with the power companies the shares invariably end up in the hands of the ‘International Nation of Wealth’, as intended by the neo-liberal establishment.
This of course complicates the issue for any future government who may wish to reverse privatisation, and further detracts from the balance of payments. As a policy it is either economically illiterate, or anti-British . As much as I like to use the term economically illiterate in reference to Osborne, et al, I find it difficult to believe that he is that naïve or stupid. Which leaves us with the latter option that he is deliberately undermining the national economy… and that, is treason.
There is also the question of share price. In a carbon copy of the privatisations it already appears that the shares are heavily undervalued at £3.30. Speculation is rife that the shares will trade at significantly above £4.00 on day one. (33% ROI in 24 hours, anyone?) Several commentators are suggesting that should trigger an investigation, were it to happen. I bet Vince Cable is quaking in his boots.
Coming soon…
‘BANK FOR SALE. SLIGHTLY USED. KNOCK DOWN PRICE FOR QUICK SALE, DUE TO PREVIOUS OWNERS IDEOLOGY’
Since posting my comment I have received a news item saying that trading opened at £4.55. Off with their heads!
No need to renationalise anything. Just remove the right of shares to vote. Shares cannot think, cannot discriminate and cannot reason. Why therefore should shares have a vote? Capitalism is cut down at the knees. We need to move beyond Capitalism’s outdated form of organisation to one of economic democracy. Economic democracy is where the people who work in an enterprise are themselves the board of directors. They decide what to produce, where to produce and what to do to with the profits. It is system where the workers hire and fire the managers, not the reverse. If we had such an arrangement do you think the employees would award a few of their number an obscene level of remuneration whilst the majority struggled to make ends meet? I doubt it. Do you think the workforce would decide to shift production overseas thereby making themselves unemployed and leaving their families and the people in the wider community to suffer the consequences? Hardly. Would they devote sizable portions of their profits to finance anti-welfare, anti-tax and anti-NHS think tanks? Not a chance. Once people stop believing in Capitalism it will as a system collapse and like the collapse of the USSR we will not see it coming.
Who administers the P.O. Pension fund after the sale?
Asset Strippers PLC?
I think the pension fund – complete with a huge deficit – is now under the control of HM Treasury with the funds provided by the taxpayer….
….naturally the profits will go private and the losses will of course stay in the public sector. Won’t be long before the ‘New Royal Mail’ comes begging for slabs of cash to do all the expensive, loss making services to the rural areas etc.
Questions:
1) This sale was rushed through parliament at the speed of light, which means there couldn’t have been much consultation, therefore. how legal is it? Is there a chance it could be challenged?
2) Labour could have stymied this from birth by announcing it would renationalise Royal Mail. Why didn’t it?
3) As the companies taking it over have more or less faithfully promised to keep a universal service, can they be sued in court if they renege on that?
4) If foreign firms buy this, what is there to stop them asset stripping Royal Mail and taking the profits home?
“1) This sale was rushed through parliament at the speed of light, which means there couldn’t have been much consultation, therefore. how legal is it? Is there a chance it could be challenged?”
In essence the current HMG used the plans already developed by a previous HMG. The ship HM Royal Mail was built and in dry dock, all the the current HMG had to do was flood the dock and float out the good ship HM Royal Mail…
“2) Labour could have stymied this from birth by announcing it would renationalise Royal Mail. Why didn’t it?”
Respectfully, see above, the policy crosses party lines. They’re all up their b*****ks in it. Labour can’t s**t on a policy it created…..correction…joyfully created. Which is why of course at the top of the political parties, they’re pretty much all interchangable.
“3) As the companies taking it over have more or less faithfully promised to keep a universal service, can they be sued in court if they renege on that?”
I’d say nah, not a chance. This is another railways privatisation and if RM ever came close to collapse, a deal would be done to keep the ‘essential services going’ regardless of cost to the taxpayer….just like Network Rail.
“4) If foreign firms buy this, what is there to stop them asset stripping Royal Mail and taking the profits home?”
As the deal currently stands – nothing…..Royal Mail will in effect be a company that has some legal obligations but other than that, it can be run as the owners see fit.
The last point is the worrying one
Hi Richard Murphy!
I’ve watched all your videos. They are quite educational. I have used the majority of your ideas for my banners at 50,000 people protest in Manchester on 29.09.2013. Keep posting your videos on tax haven and the schemes they use. If you have any suggestion I should place on my banner for the next protest, please let me know. At the moment I have 4 out of 42 related to 99%: ‘END_ALL_UK_CONTROLLED_TAX_HAVENS’, ‘DEMAND_UK_CONTROLLED_TAX_HAVEN_ADOPTING_AUTOMATIC_INFORMATION_EXCHANGE’, ‘CLOSE_TAX_LOOPHOLE_FOR_ALL_NON-UK_DOMICILED_RESIDENTS’, ‘EMPLOY_MORE_HMRC_STAFF_TO_TACKLE_TAX_AVOIDANCE_SCHEMES’
Thanks
PS I’m awaiting your comments on Lloyds TSB privatisation in the nearest future.