Osborne’s gone NATS, selling our air to Germany – !

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Osborne’s gone NATS, selling our air to Germany

Thatcher sold our water supply in 1989 which means that there can be no sensible policy to share out UKs water supply from the areas of plenty (the West & North West) to the areas of need (the South and South East). Those who now own the water do not live here so they just don’t care. The list of idiotic, incomprehensibly incompetent “policies” dreamt up, mainly by the Tories, continues.

Now there are  credible plans for George Osborne, The Treasury and a few airlines, who own the UK’s air-traffic control service  (NATS) to sell this to an outside bidder. This has been Tory party policy since before 1997, famously blocked by Labour, but now the possibility is all too real. Deutsche Flugsicherung the German air traffic service seem to be very interested.

George Osborne who has the financial nous of a bottom feeding Synodontis nigriventris…

(catfish if you were wondering) continues in the wake of New Labour  who in 2002 sold the controlling interest in NATS to the airlines for £50 million.

Neither Labour or Conservative have any financial savvy, as is evidenced, for example, by the way New Labour were screwed by the GPs when they last negotiated their pay settlement.

We ended up losing our own doctors providing “out of hours services” for an enormous pay increase. Then, on top, we the people had to pay extra for Polish doctors to do the “out of hours” bit of the GPs job! Unbelievable!

This is because our current crop of rich and privileged party politicians have never had proper jobs, they therefore “know the cost of everything and the value of nothing“.

Anyway – back to the next debacle waiting in the wings!

I quote an article showing the ineptitude of New Labour (just to be fair to the Tories) …

The Government seems to have received £800m from the sell off.  But the Airline Group paid only £50m of it and, by an extraordinary arrangement, the remaining £750m was paid by NATS itself out of a of £1.46bn loan taken out by NATS from 4 banks (Abbey National, Barclays, HBOS & Bank of America).  In other words, the Airline Group got a controlling interest in NATS for a mere £50m and NATS was saddled with an extra debt of £750m, which NATS – not the Airline Group – is responsible for servicing and repaying.  And if NATS defaults, the banks could acquire the controlling interest in it

NATS (National Air Transport Services) is currently 49% owned by the state and the rest is largely owned by UK resident airlines and BAA.

In my view the state should own 51% and UK resident airlines the rest, but no, Osborne, desperate for cash and clouded by short term party political considerations thinks the sales is a good  idea. Now look Georgey boy, if someone wants to buy it there’s probably a good business reason NOT to sell – and if what you are selling impacts national air security and safety then its not a very good idea!  Brainless, Asinine, Short Termist, Arrogant, Rank Dimwit …

Acknowledgements:-

  • Dominic O’Connell (Sunday Times 11th March 2012)
  • David Morrison’s website (for the picture of Osborne reading Economics for Dummies)
  • Oscar Wilde: For “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

 

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