Is everything in this country(U.K.) up for sale?

‘We’ don’t own it anyway - see below.
www.heathrow.com/company/about-heathrow#:~:text=Heathrow%20Airport%20Holdings%20Limited%20is,Trust%20(11.18%25)%2C%20China%20Investment

It’s been happening for years.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states are buying up a great deal of UK interests, sports clubs, utilities, now airports. No doubt that is affecting othe western countries as well. They are well aware how weak or economies are and are using their wealth now to make us indebted to them when the oil runs out.

Yes unfortunately we sold our soul to Satan many, many years ago and it still continues now with our politicians lining their own pockets at our expense.

Yes, see my recent long comment on the subject on the
News & politics
Britain needs a new economic strategy to end its stagnation and close its £8,300 living standards gap with its peers. thread.

I could cut and paste it hear but think GNHQ would not approve.

I don't think anyone would mind if you pasted it here, MOnica. GNHQ would only know about it if someone reported it. Who on earth would bother to do that?

A TV programme called who owns Scotland* was an eye opener to me.
Just because it's always been done shouldn't be a reason for it to continue, surely.

Martin Geissler was the presenter*

GSD as you can see I get your point. That’s why I mentioned shareholders.
It’s too late to stop the HR transaction, that boat sailed a long time ago but we can only hope that the government begins to understand that we do need to hold on to what is still ‘ours’. That’s if anything is still under ‘our’ control.
I will go and read Monica’s thread now.

Here it is, with minor revisions

We need to do far more to encourage the internal investment in British business by Briish business and the British public

One of the biggest problems facing this country is that so many companies especially utility companies are now owned by foreign entities, as are our media, and this is on the edge of growing - and as far as this govrnment is concerned the whole of British business is for sale to the highest bidder, regardless of its effect onthe public good.

Much of this investment, especially in utilities, is being made by Sovereign Wealth funds. The first Sovereign Wealth fund was set up by Norway, when the offshore oil and gas industry, with the admirable purpose of harvesting the bonus of the profits from oil and gas to serve Norway long term and not economically destabilise it short term.

Since then the concept has expanded and now almost any country with a huge source of wealth and a small economy has a sovereign wealth fund - and is investing it in the UK. This is why so many gulf states; Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai are buying up British water companies, for example.

The only shareholders these funds have is the national governments, which is why Thames Water is in such a bad financiial way. Ownership is overseas, the wealth funds are the shareholders and they bleed the company and country dry.

It suits these funds that we do everything we can to keep wages down, and if these means employing labour from poorer countries to do so then we should encourage the migrants that will accept low wages.

As with Sovereign funds, what started as a sensible solution to a specific problem, has ballooned out of proportion. Importing labour should be a solution to a short term problem only.

I will add to this, the other problem is other huge non-industrial investors, insurance companies and foreign retirement funds invested in Britih utilities.

Thames Water's current majority owners are : a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi investment authority, the China Investment Corporation, and two Canadian public sector funds and the UK Universities Superannuation Scheme, all organisations whose main interests are maximising returns not providing a good service.

I recommend this link [[www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/28/thames-water-public-ownership-water-privatisation-england-and-wales-executives-shareholders}}

As a country we have been so shortsighted! Uk seem to be prepared to sell everything at a price.

I don’t think it’s just the UK doing this tho, have read that China has bought all sorts of things in very many countries.
I suppose it means that they have a vested interest in seeing these companies do well and use many British workers.

There could be provisos put in place to ensure they do use British workers.
There could well be too many companies that are foreign owned, but how many is too many?

It means that the profits made from UK consumers go abroad.. It also gives a financial lever to influence UK policy.

China has been on a buying spree for decades. They bought up a lot of the Caribbean 20 years ago..

As with Sovereign funds, what started as a sensible solution to a specific problem, has ballooned out of proportion. Importing labour should be a solution to a short term problem only.

As is the case in other countries. My DF was on a contract. When it ended he ( and dependents) left the country.

I should have pointed out that the first paragraph was copied from Monica.

I agree that British investment in British companies is to be encouraged MOnica. Hence the lower taxes on dividends and capital gains than on other income - which are then complained about by some posters as helping the rich to get richer. It’s impossible to have it all ways.

We need limits on the extent that Sovereign Wealth funds than invest in this country. Theirninvestmentnin any oen company should be limited to 10% and no company should b allowed to have more than 49% of its shares in the hands of Sovereign Wealth funds.

The purpose of Sovereign Wealth funds is to earn income to return to their own country to improve services etc there. they will be run to maximise profits, not run an efficient company.

As siad above, you only have to look at the way Thames Water has been run over the last decade to see all the problems they cause us.

I think that is impossible now MOnica. It would have been achievable years ago, but we live in a very different world now.

Governments have control in their own countries. Other countries have strict controls over incoming investment.

Here is an interesting link www.chathamhouse.org/2022/04/how-countries-can-regulate-investment-screening

Investment screening would be a way forward for future investments but the pass has been sold on existing ones as a result of Thatcherism. Nationalising the water monopolies, for example, would probably deter further foreign investment (as distinct from ownership). Britain is an industrial basket case and I see no way out other than bolstering production using immigration. Productivity improvement requires massive investment.

I so agree, now we can all see how bad privatisation has been for our rivers, now we can see the same is happening to our post office. Privatisation has not been good for the uk and I hope Labour will get in next election to start to rebuild our country when NHS contracts etc expire

Well China owns most of Australia from ranches to shopping centres to most housing development. They also own Darwin harbour. Very effective ‘government’ we have. They like to roll over and play dead.

IMO is madness. Brexit was “sold” on migration and “taking back control” How can we ever be in control when so many of what should be national services have not only be sold off but also been sold off to foreign entities. It’s utterly beyond my comprehension why ANY govt would allow this.

Again, in my opinion, if we genuinely want to become “great” again we should look to becoming far more self sufficient.

We sold ourselves out when we ditched manufacturing and started to rely only on invisible services such as banking and insurance.

Frankly, we are in a bit of a mess!

It’s not beyond reversing, instead of asking investors to run the utilities we could take them over and run them ourselves, it’s not a difficult concept. Instead of borrowing at commercial rates, just use government finance to fund utilities.

There is one big disadvantage with that, “ the buck stops with the government” they don’t have a middle man to blame for failure. The original argument for private finance was increased efficiency, we can see that hasn’t worked, the water industry in particular has failed miserably because Ofwat has prevented investment to keep bills down. So pay the loans off and run the industry as you want, it won’t get done of course because polititians dont want the responsibility let alone the cost of doing that.