Passports Privatisation & Nationalisation

No Jay!


Our daughter Jay, husband Paul and their children Timmy & Amélie should be arriving here on Monday morning after an overnight drive - except they are not coming at all.


Problem is a lack of passport for Jay, as she changed her surname to Mackay after getting married last December. I know, plenty of time to order a new one, but she finally sent off the application 3 weeks ago. This should have been within the guidelines for return delivery of a new one, but on this occasion, was not. Jay may have to abandon the school of thought that "If it wasn't for the last minute nothing would ever get done!"


Their non-arrival has a knock-on effect on us (minor compared with the loss of not seeing them) We have ordered 10 tonnes of logs to be delivered, 5 tonnes on the 7th August & 5 tonnes on the 13th, anticipating plenty of help to stack them, but now Jo & I will have to do the lot. Jay was also bringing out some shoes I'd ordered in the UK, 6 litres of "Tomorite" for feeding the plants and the télépéage control that guy used going back to the UK in June.
Ah well, perhaps they'll come over at Christmas?




Privatisation.


Like many political/economic:social ideas, the dogma seems to overcome rational discussion; you have to be either for or against, when experience would suggest good & bad in most things. So in Britain, there is a case to be made that the privatisation of telecommunications has worked very well to the benefit of the users, broadcasting rolls along happily as a blend of private & state owned companies, whilst there must be severe doubts about privatising the railways in Britain, where we now have some 37 TOC's (train operating companies), a separate entity for controlling track and bigger government subsidies than ever! (One has to compare this with France's splendid, state owned & run, railway system)


These thoughts developed over conversations here in France and were strengthened when helping Jo to get a new passport. It seems to me that the issuing of a document such as a passport is rightly the job of Her Majesty's civil service, but it has, for some time now, been contracted out to a private firm.


If you phone the Consular Office in the British Embassy in Paris, or I guess anywhere else now, then you hear a recorded message that tells you that all enquiries must go to the private firm, telephone number kindly supplied!


So, you phone the firm processing passport applications and what do you get? A message stating that all calls will be charged at 72 pence a minute, so please provide  the details of a credit card before going any further! People who don't have credit cards, as far as I know it's not compulsory in British law to have one,are disfranchised & permanently cut off from talking to the passport issuing firm


When my daughter tried to find out where her passport was after 3 weeks, a friendly civil servant agreed to help, but had to admit defeat as "The lines are always busy and you can't get through to the passport issuing firm!"




Nationalisation.


For some years now I have re-discovered my love of history and now have the time to indulge myself in reading for long periods.


It was in one of my favourite historian's books that a novel (to me) idea was proposed. That state ownership of industry trade and commerce was likely to succeed or fail dependent on the political system that it was operating within. 


State ownership & control is less likely to work within a democracy, as the efficient and sensible running of an enterprise runs the risk of its operations being subsumed or otherwise distorted to meet short-term political priorities.


Harold Wilson, when prime minister, started out by running the railways as a social service & then made a huge change to run them as a profit-making operation. The head of British Rail, Richard Marsh, an ex minister of transport in a Wilson Cabinet, stated that you couldn't hope to run a large industry like this!


On the other hand, with a totalitarian state, where there is no need to consider the electorate as a necessity to continuing in office, the undertaking can be run in he best way to meet the individuals' and state requirements.


Whether this actually happens, is of course, variable!