Just released under the 30 year rule.
from
The prime minister's plan to protect local breweries by nationalising them as part of an initiative to show he was sensitive to small problems that caused people concern, called "little things that mean a lot".
Weird. Thank goodness CAMRA appeared in instead.
At the time there was a lot of opinion in CAMRA in favour of public ownership of the brewing industry. It is a policy advocated in "Pulling a Fast One" by Roger Protz, in the days when Protz actually was a socialist.
People didn't seem to appreciate the standardisation and mediocrity it would have led to - instead of a Big Six there would have been a Big One.
Following on from PeterE's message. . .
That's interesting.
Then the Tories would have done a 'British Rail' sell-off and we'd have vastly increased prices, no accountability and appalling standards of quality provided by a few foreign-owned conglomerates. There would be a few preserved breweries and a hugely complex and expensive bureaucracy that serves no purpose. How lucky we are this nationalisation never happened.
In message , Peter Fox wrote
Isn't this what we have now for the majority of beer sold in the UK?
I don't know that this would necessarily have transpired like that, after all I seem to remember that the old Carlisle State Brewery wasn't too bad.
Yes. But presumably under a nationalisation scenario there would also have been restrictions on private individuals starting breweries (as there were with coal mining) and so the micro-brewery revolution would never have happened.
On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 11:13:44 +0000, Peter Fox
British Rail had no accountability and appalling standards of quality too.The problems in the rail industry stem in large measure from decades of neglect before the sell off. But look what happened to the telecom industry-could a state owned monopoly have given us the system we have now?
Yes - by using the same model of monopoly infrastructure provider reselling to both their end user division and other providers at the same cost. Although the current status does have the bonus of the state having no financial liability despite giving the orders about level playing field pricing to the end providers.
Yes - but look what happened when it was privatised!
John C
This popped up on the h2g2 section of the BBC web site
Of course Freeminer, just like its name sakes would have remained free from Crown Hindrance, er until Labour got in in 1997 and refused to recognise the "free" rights of the Freeminers, not even Maggie touched that!
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