There's an interesting point about those industries being crap
They were crap because they were crap. And the post-war "let's buy up some nascent industry and make an industrial world-beating giant out of it" (such as the unlamented Leyland cars) was madness. I don't disagree. Public ownership let them get away with doing stupid things and not killing of bad ideas, but they were badly run, fundamentally, by people who didn't know what they were doing. The two are not synonymous - there are a raft of very large companies that waste a huge amount of time, money and talent but are now so large they just keep plodding on being useless but doing just enough to not fail.
Public owned is not synonymous with crap, the NHS might get slagged off a lot but it way better than the alternative - the people who run these organisations need to be well motivated and held accountable in an honest and fair way - you will get good companies that deliver good services, particularly if you involve the people who consume those services and design what you do around their needs rather than some idiot bureaucrat deciding what they will want.
My problem with so-called old labour is they will just create the old post-war command and control organisations, because that's all they know how to do, instead of making something amazing that will show the world that you can do more with less without having to compromise on what your citizens get from their taxes.
But there are huge awfully run companies everywhere - most of them aren't publicly owned. Next time you start screaming at the call centre for your ISP remember this.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
