Public-spirited as I am, I gave one of my customers a lift to the polling station. Even after they said they were voting UKIP. Shall be gutted if UKIP wins by that vote though.
Meanwhile, on the Romanian/German thing I think it's being whipped up way too much in this thread. zomg, with his analytic head on, has come up with a rationalistic argument for one over the other that is way away from being racist but I don't think the argument holds water in itself. There's a bunch of socioeconomic facts, and there's a bunch of unruly immigration rules, and there's a whole bunch of immigrants but it is all getting twisted way out of proportion on both sides. And incidentally, I have a family of Romanians living next door to and over the shop and they are perfectly nice people except the 12-year-old is rather heavy-footed. In regards to the criminal element, I'd prefer we did more with the European arrest warrant and with criminal checks in immigration rather than waste time going on about national/racial stereotypes. But that's really all I want to say about it.
Back to topic, I really can't let this go:
The main difference for me is that a public company is not out to make money, their goal is improve the service for the 'customer'. Private companies on the other hand are always out to make money and squeeze every last bit out of their respective companies.
That's a political mantra rather than fact. Motives run the whole range from compassion, customer service, easy life, not rocking the boat, avarice, fear, callings-from-god, making a fast buck, power-craziness, kowtowing to corporate or political masters in every organisation everywhere. Everywhere there are sticklers, cheats, carers and criminals.
It is just plain false to claim the only the public sector (and all the public sector) is motivated by service to customers and that only the private sector (and all the private sector) is motivated by personal or corporate profit. Or indeed, that these are mutually exclusive things.
For public sector examples, yesterday evening I had a 3-hour meeting with a refreshingly frank local councillor who explained straight out that the vast immovable bulk of the local council officers have no interest in anything but keeping the status quo. For example, Stafford Hospital. For example BT - did it somehow become less customer-focussed when it was privatised? That's not what the customer saw, the customer saw services improve massively.
Besides, where there is a reasonable amount of competition, private companies care too. They have to, because if they do not keep their customers then somebody else will snitch them. I'm successful in my business because I have the best bead shop for 100 miles, I go the extra distance for customers, I'm specially favourable to old ladies, patient husbands, wheelchairs, give customers lifts to polling stations/tescos etc.
Now if you are even more of a grumpy old sod than I am you might attribute that to raw naked capitalism, but it isn't. I am a nice guy who happens to earn his living in the private sector and I kind of resent being told by some politician that private sector = bad.
Admittedly, this sort of falls down when there is anything approaching a monopoly. Because then (in the private sector) gouging the customers takes hold - for example French water companies and many others, and then (in the public sector) satisfying the bureaucracy takes hold - witness pretty well any public sector organisation anywhere, NHS is a prime example, but so are local councils. And
neither of these are good for customers.
From personal experience, way back when I was a consultant long time ago, I could do very significant turnrounds in private sector businesses in about 7 days (which irritated the hell out of my bosses who would have preferred probably that I milked the man-hours). Public sector, you're talking a six-month
minimum, because for all the management grades nobody is actually responsible for
doing anything.
Lots of especially infrastructure services require very very long term investment strategies, as money spent now will only have a positive effect in 10, 15 or 20 years. That is not the kind of time scale privately held companies can or want to work on. Resulting in a serious lack of long term funding in order to please the quarterly numbers. The best thing about that for them is. If these investments stay out and shit hits the fan in 10 or 15 years, they have made their money go bust and the tax payer is left to pick up the pieces.
Sure. But there's nothing to prevent the government writing a contract that separates the capital investment from the service delivery - except that they'd probably do it badly (see: railways, all the NHS and courts PFI stuff).
I suggest you watch
Water Makes Money as an illustrative example of how privatisation of water has worked (or not) in France.
Problems with the privatisation of a "natural monopoly" is no reason to claim in general that the public sector cares or that the private sector doesn't. It is a good argument against creating monopolies in the first place (which largely happens by taking them into the public sector).
It's a big complicated thing, but the "public sector=good v private sector = bad" doesn't even come close to descrbing it.
