Public or Private?

With the drive to privatise government quangos the vision has occurred to me of Serco or Centrica taking over the running English Heritage or the National Trust. Why not? I am sure they will run a lean tight organisation and would make pots of money out of it in the process. Far better than pour pots of taxpayers money down the bottomless drain. Government would then be free to concentrate on the important cabbages and king questions. Trouble is, just as with the NHS, when a government takes on accountability for providing a service to its citizens it cannot cherry pick and just do those nice easy profitable parts. The NHS ends up with all the knotty, difficult and inordinately expensive investigations and routines that the private sectors excludes out their policies and walks away from.

It easy to imagine honey spots of our countryside or highly popular stately homes, where the private sector would die to get their hands on them, to cream off some serious profits. That leaves all those scattered equally important but small or unspectacular visit places no one wants to go to, or where there are mountains of restoration to hold back decay or work to make available for visitors. Just those sort of places where profit orientated companies would run a mile from. As far as I know there are no plans to change the status of the National Trust nor English Heritage. My objective in raising this hare is that it exemplifies a breakpoint between functions that serve the nation and those functions which can or should be profit driven. The nations needs are not constrained to only profitable operations. Profit driven companies are not suited to providing needs where profit return cannot be the overriding judgement. For the record I do think its was a catastrophic mistake to sell off water, electricity and telephone. These are vital infrastructures necessary to sustain our nations progress, irrespective of cost or return. The sale of coal and postal services is fully justifiable as they are no longer mainstream to development. Equally ensuring a extensive high speed broadband backbone to cover the country is a crucial investment into our future. If left driven solely by profit, it may not be a fastest enough path nor ensure the widest covered.

We have to care for and invest in our Nation for our own wellbeing but also to give future generations as firm a start footing as we have inherited from the past. Which loops me back to my earlier post, Right to Plunder. We are but custodian of our Nation with a duty and obligation to nurture it and hand it on to future generations in a good viable state. Despite the strong armed bully boys who took whatever spoils they wanted, subjugated us to their will and tithed us on our labours. The Nation is ours, formed out of the sweat and toil of our forebears, cared, loved, protected and died for by succeeding generations. This is our inheritance and the inheritance we offer on to succeeding generations. Time to put our inheritance on a more secure and long term stable basis. No longer subject to the whims and fancies of monarch, or the titled, or those who would claim it and exploit as if it was their own.

Radical yes. For a start let us forgo on freehold. No one can own our Nation. Lease on a use, repair and return basis sure but in the end it returns to all of us. No more crown property, it was stolen from the people and now is the time to return it to the people. We all own the regal trinkets of wealth acquired out of our past endeavours and held as fiscal bounty. Not of course as individuals, not to be squandered but just as custodians. With a duty of care and protection. A duty exercised on all of our behalf's and well beyond the reach of government to mortgage against as cover to their extravagances. A custodianship that encourages us to connect with, participate in and take pride in, our mutual ownership. As in my Right of Plunder, nothing to be taken away unless restoration or compensation paid in full upfront. The land, the sea, the structures placed on it and the rights to run service on or under it, eventually all to return to us to pass on in turn to our successors.