Skip to main content

BAA Monopoly may not be a good thing. No... Really??

The Privatisation model adopted by the Conservatives was, well, conservative. Although they talked a lot about the value of the free market, in practice they tended to privatise monopolies intact. British Gas for example was privatised as a single business despite the very obvious conflicts of being a supplier, a distributor and a maintenance company in one. This was certainly noticed at the time- indeed the then Alliance spokesman on energy is mentioned by name in the enabling bill as advocating the break up of the business- which is, I think unique in the annals of British legislation.

In the end, what the government chose not to do, the market forced on the company, and eventually the sheer unwieldiness of the integrated gas business forced its break up into separate entities for each of the basic underlying businesses: transit, end-user supplier, maintenance etc.

Another monopoly that was privatised intact was the British Airports Authority: privatised as BAA PLC. Why anyone could have failed to notice that keeping Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted under common ownership was hardly likely to foster competition and better services is beyond me. The fact that BAA can not set prices for slots at the airports in an economic fashion has led to each airport becoming a giant shopping mall with a runway attached- but the airports increasingly lack the kind of infrastructure that other airports offer as standard- easy transit between terminals for example.

So this morning we have the news that a Commission has suggested that common ownership of both London and regional airports "may not be in the best interests of the consumer" - You don't say?

Next week- news that the Pope may be a Catholic and more revelations on the excretory habits of bears.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Truth and Justice

The past decade has seen the rise of so-called "post truth" politics.  Instead of mere misrepresentation of facts to serve an argument, political figures began to put forward arguments which denied easily provable facts, and then blustered and browbeat those who pointed out the lie.  The political class was able to get away with "post truth" positions because the infrastructure that reported their activity has been suborned directly into the process. In short, the media abandoned long-cherished traditions of objectivity and began a slow slide into undeclared bias and partisanship.  The "fourth estate" was always a key piece of how democratic societies worked, since the press, and later the broadcast media could shape opinion by the way they reported on the political process. As a result there has never been a golden age of objective media, but nevertheless individual reporters acquired better or worse reputations for the quality of their reporting and ...
1 comment
Read more

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...
Post a Comment
Read more