Halt Labour’s flawed telecom takeover – forced nationalisation will rob all of us who have pensions
WHO but a self-confessed Marxist like John McDonnell could think that renationalising the telecoms industry is a good idea?
Before privatisation in 1984, you had a choice of two handsets, lumberingly heavy with a finger-numbing rotary dial — originally designed to slow your dialling down so the decrepit copper-wire network could cope with it.
That is, if you could get a phone line at all.
Mrs Thatcher brought in competition and since then, we have had a revolution in telecoms. The profit motive made industry innovate and brought us choice and the smartphones most carry today.
Copper wires have been replaced by fibre-optics, carrying far more information and allowing us to stream movies and play video games online.
Meanwhile, 5G is on the way, making broadband redundant for millions.
They won’t carry on with that if there’s a threat of nationalisation.
As you wait for your search engine to load, or wonder whatever happened to 5G, remember McDonnell’s role.
NATIONALISATION THREAT
Frankly, the Government shouldn’t be paying for a service most of us can afford. There are more pressing priorities for taxpayer funds like schools, hospitals and police.
McDonnell says it will be £20billion to build the state network and £230million a year to maintain it. Given the history of public sector projects, it will be several times that.
McDonnell says he will make a deal with the networks — the kind that could only be made with the victims looking down the barrel of a gun.
As with past nationalisations, a McDonnell-Corbyn government would offer shareholders a fraction of what their firm is worth.
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Forced nationalisation on the cheap would also rob all of us who have pensions. The way our pensions are invested mean we have mass ownership of these firms. We shouldn’t sit back and watch McDonnell rob us before our eyes.
All this is before we get into whether we want a far-left government having control of the internet, deciding what we can view online and being able to snoop on our communications.
Let’s not let McDonnell take us back in time.
