John McDonnell: Grenfell victims 'murdered by political decisions'

Chris I worked in a very well governed public industry in the 1980s namely the Scottish Electricity industry the SSEB (South of Scotland Electricity Board) later known as Scottish Power, we ran a mix of Hydro, Coal, Oil, Gas and Nuclear, Coal and Nuclear were the largest in those days, I will happily admit that my workload in that company was tiny, indeed on my first day I was told that I was now a nationalised layabout by a tory who was quite happy to be complicit in the 'laying about' aspect of the phrase

Saying all that it was incredibly well run and incredibly efficient at the job of delivering electrical power to the UK we exported vast amounts of power to the rest of the UK even then.

I simply don't believe that my old employer's new owners are as efficient or supply energy at anything like the price that we had back then.

The market is supposed to have some intrinsic 'betterness' quality, the notion of intrinsic efficiency, but I have never seen that in my old industry I just think we all got conned with the idea that private power companies would provide cheaper electricity, it didn't happen, they just switched to gas because that was the way to make the greatest profit, so when the crunch eventually comes we will find that we lack the infrastructure to power the nation

Same is true in a great many other hitherto privatised industries.