[St Charles Owl]

Problem in the UK is that we have never shown the ability to run big nationalized industries in an efficient and certainly not profitable way!! Railways, electricity, gas, phones, you name it they always struggled. Now I accept that this is essentially all down to funding at the end of the day and that for me is where the UK is different from those countries you mention. There never appears to be any appetite for tax increases to pay for these services, whether it be by the politicians or the public!! The sense of what is for the good of society is more important in other countries than it seems to be in Britain. Even in this Labour manifesto, they fall into the same old trap as other parties of all persuasions, they have it written into their manifesto that there will be no tax increases on 95% of the population, yet to provide the services they want to will require more taxes to be paid by everyone to be able to effectively run and sustain nationalized industries. The NHS is a classic case, it is the 5th largest company in the world, but requires a huge amount of money to pay for it and to keep developing it as medicine progresses. Everyone complains about it being eroded, or about the service it provides at ground level but you rarely hear anyone say they will pay a bit more tax to fund it properly, and you certainly won't hear a politician say that!!

I don't for one minute think private ownership is sacrosant, but I do think their is an unwillingness on behalf of enough people to say I will pay more to help make it work, and that usually means that market forces will determine what works and what doesn't within the private sector.