There is a lot of debate right now in the UK about who should best be trusted to provide public services, should it be provided directly or should it be contracted out to the Private Sector. The Private Sector are the people who win Government contracts with exaggerated promises and then squabble about providing the services that they have promised and keep making menacing threats for more money.
Just this month a major Private Sector company called Carillion who enjoyed a lot of public sector contracts went bust and left the country and the tax payer in the lurch.
I feel well qualified to speak out on this matter because for ten years between 1990 and 2000 I had the misfortune to be employed in a privatised service in waste management.
Have Bag, Will Travel 
Yikes
LikeLiked by 1 person
How very depressing! I used to have a grudging admiration for Thatcher but now I find it very hard to even listen to a politician.
LikeLike
I don’t trust any one of them Jo!
LikeLiked by 1 person
A sorry tale!
LikeLike
Sorry Indeed, the Company made no money, the Council didn’t get its services and a lot of time was spent squabbling!
LikeLike
I do think privatisation of public services is never a good idea in that the shareholders not the taxpayers get the benefit – but it’s always sold to us as more efficient! Huh.
LikeLike
And it never is…!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Being a paid up card carrying member of the Australian Labor Party and a socialist ………………………..
need I add my thought?
LikeLike
I can fill in the rest!
LikeLiked by 1 person
And the battle rages on… and on. A private paramilitary group wanted Trump to hire them to take over duties in Afghan at the beginning of his presidency, but cooler heads prevailed. –Curt
LikeLike
It is a long running saga for sure!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Has there ever been a case when services have improved after a public service has been privatized? I don’t think it ever ends well.
LikeLike
I can’t think of a single example!
LikeLike
In Victoria we used to have State Electricity Commission. It was privatised and there are now a multitude of providers. Each one has its own bureaucracy and they compete with each other to rip the user off whilst they make profits for the almighty ‘shareholder’. Back then we all complained about the sluggish bureaucracies but we we rather proud that the trains and trams and rubbish collectors all belonged to us.
LikeLike
Carillion paid a massive shareholder dividend and manager bonuses just weeks before going bust!
LikeLike
Of course
LikeLike
It was the preferred supplier thing that used to get to me. I needed some video cassette tapes (remember those?) for a university project I was running, and was told they had to come from the preferred supplier through central purchasing at a cost of something like £9 each. I think we needed about 50 tapes. Well at that price I wouldn’t have had much of a budget left for the other things we needed, so I went out to the high street and bought a load at six for £5 – less than 15% of the preferred supplier price. I had to buy them myself (petty cash by then having been regulated away) and somehow managed to fiddle it back on expenses.
LikeLike
That was still public sector of course – but adopting so called private sector good practice.
LikeLike
I recall some poor practice in the public sector as well I have to confess!
LikeLike
I just love the story of the cost of a packet of painkillers, £3 something cost to NHS, .14p in ALDI. So why doesn’t someone from the hospital go to ALDA and buy up the entire stock?
LikeLiked by 1 person