The good
Although many of the now-privatised companies are part or fully owned by foreign companies, they have proved to be lucrative investments and were once the means by which Margaret Thatcher aimed to create a nation of shareholders.
NATIONALISATION OF INDIAN BANKS AND THEIR PROGRESS AFTER NATIONALISATION The banks are the custodians of savings and powerful institutions to provide credit. They mobilize the resources from all the sections of community by way of deposits and provide them to. Jul 14, 2016 The military is actually a perfect example of why nationalization is a bad idea. They regularly spend billions of dollars on equipment they don't need, because if they don't use 100% of their budget, they lose funding the next year. Then a lot of that surplus equipment ends up.
In 1986, when British Gas was floated on the stock exchange, shares cost 135p each, or 334p in today's terms. Since then, British Gas has undergone several organisational changes and the resulting organisation, BG Group plc, is worth £11.09 a share. A £100 investment in 1986 would have gone up by £821.
Some privatisations have brought improvements for consumers. According to the water and sewerage regulator Ofwat, since the privatisation of the 10 state-owned regional water authorities in 1989, the number of customers at risk of low water pressure has fallen by 99%.
Those critical of state-run services often cite the six-month wait for the installation of a new BT line that customers allegedly suffered before telecommunications were privatised. New BT lines are today installed within 15 days, according to BT's website.
The bad
Many would say the standout failure of privatisation was that of British Rail. While the actual process did not take place until after Thatcher had left office, she was known to be discussing it with the then Department of Transport months before her resignation. At the 1990 Tory party conference, a month before she left office, her then transport secretary, Cecil Parkinson, said: 'The question now is not about whether we should privatise it [British Rail], but how and when.'
Since the privatisation the amount of government subsidies to the rail industry has risen higher than it was in its state-run days. A yearly average of just over £1bn in the late 1980s rose to a high of more than £6bn in 2006-2007, according to a public spending report from the House of Commons.
In 2011, the then Conservative transport secretary, Philip Hammond, alluded to the sharp rise in ticket prices since privatisation when he described train travel in the UK as 'a rich man's toy'. Five years earlier, economists at UBS bank said train travel in the UK was the most expensive in the world.
… and the ugly
For opponents of privatisation, the most damaging legacy has been job losses. In the decade after the miners' strike of 1985, more than 200,000 jobs were lost as a result of coal privatisation, as well as creating the largest British industrial conflict of modern times.
Since privatisation, more than 100,000 jobs have been lost at BT, while the restructuring of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) – the result of an industry being left increasingly to its own devices by the government – led to the loss of 15,000 jobs in Teesside.
The government's laissez-faire approach to the changes, and the resultant sudden, mass unemployment led to the transformation of what was once a region booming from steel industry to one of the most impoverished in the country. By the time it was privatised in 1988, British Steel had shed 20,000 jobs.
Supporters of privatisation would reflect upon it as a move that was necessary in order to adapt to increasing international competition, yet its impact on many communities within the UK is still felt today.