If I don’t like my sewerage company, can I ask a competing company to build a separate sewer to my house?

All that competition produces in the public sector is wasteful duplication or privately owned monopolies, whose incentive to provide good service is overrules by the profit motive.

It is when I see what has happened to the railways that I wonder why other people think that public services would be better if they were privatised. When I go to some of the Trade Union meetings that discuss this I hear some terrible instances in other countries of what happens when public services are in private hands.

I certainly don’t know the answer to this private public thing – I hope you do. Having worked in the public sector, I know it leads to “cushiness” and doing “just enough” and yet it leads also to consistency of service, i.e. you always know what you’re getting.

It is also employment and sustenance for civil servants and their families.

Applying private methods is silly, in my eyes, trying to be like little businesses and adopting the jargon such as “service delivery” and other guff like that. Slightly outside this are the railways. They’re not there to make a profit – they’re there to offer a service, consistently, day after day, come rain, hail or leaves on the line. That’s what people want from them.

If you’re going to make cuts in public services, you first of all create an infrastructure in the country where new businesses are springing up and need retrained workers, then you gradually release your public sector workers. Throwing them on the streets is not the way to go.