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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/16/uk-public-paid-200bn-to-shareholders-of-key-industries-since-privatisation-study>
"The public has paid almost £200bn to the shareholders who own key British
industries since they were privatised, research reveals.
The transfer of tens of billions of pounds to the owners of the privatised
water, rail, bus, energy and mail services comes as families face soaring
bills, polluted rivers and seas, and expensive and unreliable trains and buses.
As a result, citizens have been paying a “privatisation premium” of £250 per
household per year since 2010 alone, the analysis found.
Recent focus has been on the privatised water industry, which has run up
long-term debts of £73bn and paid out dividends of £88.4bn in the past 34 years
at the same time as overseeing record sewage spills, according to the latest
figures.
But for the first time the thinktank Common Wealth has drawn together the
haemorrhaging of billions of pounds to shareholders across four key sectors,
most of which were privatised from the 1980s and 1990s by Margaret Thatcher’s
Conservative government – energy, transport, water and mail.
The sell-off of these key industries has “led to a historic transfer of wealth”
with at least £193bn having been paid out to shareholders, private equity funds
and foreign holding companies since 1991, the report found.
The fallout from the privatisation has created today’s “rip-off Britain”, said
Mathew Lawrence, the director of Common Wealth, adding that the privatisation
promise of “competition, cheap investment and lower bills” had instead
delivered “corporate monopolies, inadequate investment and rising bills”.
“It was sold as the dream of a shareholder democracy but instead created the
nightmare of rip-off Britain: families paying more for essential services,
while shareholders pocket hundreds of billions in dividends from what were once
publicly owned services,” he said."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
