When state-owned monopoly businesses were privatised in the 1980s and 90s, I welcomed most of them as I thought that it might free up the investment needed to modernise the enterprises and make them more responsive to customers. \u00a0After all, anything funded by the Treasury was never likely to do the former, and the sad history of UK nationalised industries showed that customers were the last thing on anyone's mind.<\/p>\n
Sadly, it has not worked out like that. \u00a0Whether we look at water (high bills and sewage in the rivers) or energy (high bills and insecure supply) or phones (high bills and a sloth-like roll out of broadband) or ..., it looks a problem.<\/p>\n
I felt at the time that a lot would depend on how the regulators did their job. \u00a0That looks a particular disappointment, particularly so with water where between the regulator and the Environment Agency, corporates have been very well looked after, but UK citizens who fancy a swim much less so.<\/p>\n
Regulators seem unaccountable to the public. \u00a0I guess they are supposed to be accountable to parliament in some arcane fashion, but search me as to how that is. \u00a0Mind you, the accountability of nationalised industries was similarly opaque. \u00a0Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?\u00a0<\/i>indeed! \u00a0The wikipedia page on Juvenal's phrase<\/a> is ironically instructive.<\/p>\n When the fashion for regulators was at its height, I feared it might stray into other commercial areas of public life \u2013 just imagine the chaos that a supermarket (or coffee shop) regulator would cause. \u00a0It has been extended into broadcasting and school exams to no great success in my mind.<\/p>\n Looking back, it's clear that I've held a dim view of regulators for a while. \u00a0My evidence for this is that I began writing about OfScoff \u2013 Office for Strictures and Control on Fodder and Food<\/em> \u2013 in 2010. \u00a0This frighteningly plausible but entirely fictional regulator, whose remit is to establish minimum food standards for animals and people, and make sure that these are never exceeded<\/em>, might seem to have been more successful than many an official one. \u00a0The first post<\/a> set the scene, although it took me a while to develop the idea. \u00a0See this<\/a> and this <\/a>\u2013 and this<\/a> for news of OfPlot \u2013 the regulator for\u00a0allotments, domestic and school gardens, window boxes, patio tubs, and all hitherto unregulated growing spaces in England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When state-owned monopoly businesses were privatised in the 1980s and 90s, I welcomed most of them as I thought that it might free up the investment needed to modernise the enterprises and make them more responsive to customers. \u00a0After all,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}