A few months ago the government reclassified the project as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project to allow Thames Water to to take the proposal out of the hands of the local authority, potentially allowing the project to go ahead. [2]
If it goes ahead as planned it will be the second largest reservoir in the UK.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abingdon_Reservoir [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9kp2d4d0vo
"Thatcherism" does, however. It is a warped [Ayn] Randian view of capitalism and those who drive it. State intervention into the machinery of capital, even when it comes to essential infrastructure, is considered a corrupting influence.
Nobody able to change national policy within Downing Street or even ministries in Whitehall, at the time - or since - has had the gumption to say it's not working and we need to do something about it.
You are however right, that NIMBYism has also worked remarkably well - the planning process in the UK is the reason we can't build HS2 cheaply or quickly, and that is relatively painless compared to wind farms, solar farms (also often blocked), never mind building a dam and flooding an entire valley, which was the old way of creating new capacity.
https://www.ft.com/content/1057f722-75d5-11e1-9dce-00144feab...
A lot of NHS privatisation was done by Blair and Brown - especially to facilitate Brown's use of off-balance sheet debt to fund spending while pretending the government was not increasing national debt.
A lot of privatisations were a good idea. I think most people would agree the government should not own oil companies, airlines, car manufacturers, steel manufacturers, or telecoms, etc. I think the mistakes need to be seen against the backdrop of a necessary correction of a lot of nationalisation.
The problem has also been regulatory. Why were water companies not required to build capacity? Why were they allowed to borrow in order to pay shareholders? This was all entirely foreseeable.
I think the problem is not an ideology, but the lack of a coherent ideology. Privatisation has become an end in itself, backed by politicians who do not seem to understand that its not a magic bullets, and there is no incentive for efficiency in the absence of competition. A private monopoly is usually worse than a state monopoly unless very closely regulated.
Nationalised water in Scotland is no better than privatised in England and Wales, and has a higher rate of sewer leaks: https://theferret.scot/scotland-behind-england-sewage-leaks/
One thing of note about Scotland is that water is free (i.e. paid for by taxes) there.
So despite the best efforts of critics, they can't really show that Scottish water is any worse in terms of sewage outflows etc - if anything it is marginally better on that metric, and significantly cheaper to run. And the actual water quality is good, although that has a lot to do with incidental geography. Why would I want it privatised?
But it’s unmetered, unlike most of the UK, and, as the other poster mentioned, cheaper.
https://www.fife.gov.uk/kb/docs/articles/housing/council-tax...
I think there is a good argument for metering water - it provides an incentive not to waste it, and potable water is expensive to supply and has a significant environmental impact.
It does need to be affordable even to people on the lowest incomes though.
People are starting to revisit the idea that oil and steel manufacture should at least be held domestically, if not run by the government outright, given the current geopolitical situation. Let's talk straight: if China and India would close down export for steel, or if OPEC decides to repeat the 70s... the Western world is fucked. And yes, that includes America, because most US refineries need OPEC oil for chemical composition reasons. The US is only net positive on oil imports and exports, it is by far not self sufficient. Add in a major war, we'd not be able to produce ammo, much less vehicles, even if we somehow found enough staff to man the plants.
As for telecoms: the base infrastructure should belong to the government. That is a lesson we in Germany are learning at the moment...
I think you got that backwards, Venezuela needs US refineries because of chemical composition reasons. North America as a whole is self-sufficient.
> People are starting to revisit the idea that oil and steel manufacture should at least be held domestically
Oh good, lets push the inflation button even harder. I can only hope steel manufacture can someday be as efficient and competitive as US boat building.
Better have expensive boats than no boats, particularly when preparing to wage war with a country that can be reached either by air - which means either missiles or nuclear bombers - or by water, the only option allowing for conventional warfare.
That's the thing we all have to prepare for, the inevitable confrontation with China.
In any case, the secret to cheap building is scale. When all you build is a few boats, planes or god knows what a year, of course each will be expensive. But if you build dozens, hundreds or - just look to WW2 - thousands of units, suddenly efficiencies of scale and standardization really kick in.
Which was clearly the case in WW2.
And _might_ be the case if the confrontation with China is proxy wars. Hundreds or thousands of spare units (of tanks, AA, helicopters, fighter jets) would be useful in Ukraine, for example.
But it's hard to see a use-case for hundreds of B-2s, for example. By the time those things are flying in anger, twenty or thirty will do everything you're ever going to do.
Sell them to allies. But ever since both Trump and Biden seriously restricted Ukraine from defending itself... let's say the US isn't among the most trusted arms suppliers these days. A lot of soft power, just gone.
But if private companies are taking the equity out of the service via profit, then why should the government spend public money to build new infrastructure to support them?
Thatcher's been dead for 12 years and out of power for 35, so I'm not sure why it should take much gumption. All it needs is national leaders who believe in the flourishing of the country, and that that requires infrastructure development, not just banks, software and scientific research. Unfortunately I don't see any such leader on the horizon.
Reagan, Thatcher, all the same, and their ideology kept alive by neoliberals (basically every politician that isn't an out and out socialist or snidely toeing fascism) and the Chicago school of economics.
Find me a national leader that believing in the flourishing of the country (and all the people in it) and I'll find you an entire political apparatus in opposition to that in favor of the flourishing of Capital.
But I can't find one, that's the point.
The US and UK were in terrible shape before Reagan and Thatcher took office. Both improved after they were elected?
Again if any politicians today were half the person Thatcher was things might actually get done. Even Blair might be an improvement.
Mr. savings and loans crisis? The guy that tripled the national debt?
The epically failed war on drugs guy? That guy improved the united states?
The US and UK economies were terrible. Stagflation, “malaise”.
Reagan ushered in a decade of strong economic growth. I’m sure all races would trade of a higher paycheck despite the media comments.
By what measure? Can you source that claim?
“Since World War II, according to many economic metrics including job creation, GDP growth, stock market returns, personal income growth, and corporate profits, the United States economy has performed significantly better on average under the administrations of Democratic presidents than Republican presidents.”
Reagan was the only Republican that reduced unemployment by a little bit, but he was in the lower half of presidents who did that. But he failed to increase employment significantly, he increased the deficit significantly, and he did damage with the bunk feed-the-rich “Trickle Down” theories.
Even Trump agreed. “During a March 2004 interview, Trump stated: ‘It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans.’”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...
1984 inflation: 4%, GDP growth: 7.4%
Higher growth less inflation is great for us workers
Some other things that are good for us workers include low federal deficits, income growth, low inequality, and job creation. And Reagan scores poorly on all of those metrics. People aren’t even debating these facts, they’re only debating _why_ Reagan and other Republicans seem to consistently bring the economy down despite their confidence in their economic theories...
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?location...
Why does privatisation mean that the government can't build infrastructure? I think the answer is more likely nimbyism than privatisation.
I personally think it makes no sense to privatise infrastructure for which no competition can reasonably take place, and I'd include distribution networks of many sorts in that: water distribution, rail lines, electricity distribution.
But I'm not aware that privatisation means that the state can't take on reservoir projects. The problem is that development of all kinds in the UK is utterly crippled by nimbyism. The article mentions the proposed Abingdon reservoir but links it to the boogyman of data centres rather than call out what the picture obviously shows: it's being stalled by nimbys.