Communism would also work if it wasn't for human nature to be greedy and take more than you give either by fraud or by violence. If Britain was a plc as you describe it would have been sold to some large American firm like any half way successful British company.
Sorry I could have worded it better, I was saying that the UK should have a great business-like approach in place, but NOT be privatised. Although, having said that, if we could have a much better system in place, where the end users were always guaranteed to be better off than they are now, and shareholders were involved, then yeah I guess that could work. But only if the guarantee was there ...
Its ok I know what you were saying, i was attempting to be light and comment on most of the successful companies in the UK being sold at the first possible opportunity. Lets face it there are very few instances where the end user is better off and the product is delivered cheaper once there are shareholders to pay.
If nationalised companies were run this way (in the UK), I'd be happier with utilities, the railway etc being state owned I have no experience of English Water. I know that I'm (very) happy with Welsh Water, and - in general - the railways around here. Perhaps I've just been lucky
The problem is governments do have to consider re-election while in power. Obviously democracy is favourable to other systems of government but it does have a tendency to lead to populist policy such as labour public sector splurge in order to remain popular. The conservatives come into power and get attacked every time they try to reverse this.
There is that There's also a 'trendy' anti-right wing movement from the left (be it the Guardian being Daily Mail-esque and referring to the Tories as Nazis or saying that the right hate the 'poor', or the Unions talking about going to war with the Tories etc) - part of it is just a lefty 'movement' based on stereotype. Heck, the left are talking of the Tories dismantling the public sector - even though it's going from 6 million to 5.7 million workers, even though the country is 8-10% poorer (which would imply a public sector workforce of 5.4-5.5 million, not 5.7 million - so jobs are being saved, if anything; a dismantling of the public sector would be <5 million workers). A lot of it is just rhetoric and not based on hard facts. Much of Cameron's personal beliefs are more to the left of Tony Blair, in-fact. (And economically, New Labour and the coalition aren't too far apart - despite both sides saying differently ) In many ways what you mentioned would be a big advantage of PR. Having the more lefty and righty elements of both the 2 big parties 'nullified' due to a coalition - along with ensuring that Labour don't get us into too much debt and artificially bloat the public sector (and then the Tories coming along and cutting things 'too much') - would be a fairly good system.
With PR the problem then occur though of sideline parties appearing. It wouldn't remain with the Tories/Labour swapping 80% of the vote and the rest going to Lib Dems/regional parties. Socalist/far right/single issue parties eg greens/anti euro would also -become much more prominent because they would be able to win seat under PR. So the centre parties have to other concession to them in order to form a coalition. Look at Belgium for examples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_general_election,_2010
Fair point. And wow, that's a pretty.. interesting result for Belgium. Would be fairly chaotic to organise. I know that coalitions work well for some countries (Switzerland springs to mind; unless I'm remembering things wrongly!), although it would vary.
Belgium recently took over a year to form a stable government. Had a look at Switzerland, there dam lucky to have so many centre parties. I just don't see those kinds of result happening in the UK though. Sorry for taking this rather of topic.
