A pressure group backing Andy Burnham for the Premiership has launched a document, essential handing out it's wishlist of items for a new PM to address.
Top of the pile is the nationalisation of water and power companies.
Now the water companies, I'd nationalise in a heartbeat. I'd also make legislation so that they could never be again sold into private hands.
I'd go one further and start criminal investigations into the boards of these companies and make than personally liable for the damage caused to the environment by their actions. Let's claw back some of those bonuses by fining the shit out of them.
The power companies I'm a bit more ambiguous about. They've just maximised profit in the best way they can. By screwing the paying customer, with a side serving of government ideology.
Sure, a few grannies have died of hypothermia, we have poor baseline energy generation and energy costs are at the very least twice or even three times what they should be because the energy companies and government ideology made it so, but you can't fault the energy companies for just following the ideals of the government.
In true Communist fashion, the group also advocate more caps on more things, because they have no idea of the concept of unintended consequences, or the extra cost to the government of setting up yet another watchdog organisation to oversee (badly) yet another facet of our lives.
I mean, they could just start building more homes, to bring the cost of rent and purchase down, but oooh no, rent caps are what we need.
Then once all of these new expensive bodies have been created, keep them off the books somehow, so that they don't show up on the national balance sheet. Or more likely we won't see the massive extra drain on resources they will create.
The thing is with Burnham's policies, is it's a build it now, pay for it later sort of regime, like the new bee network in Manchester is financed in such a way that the pigeons don't come home to roost for a few years. But they do eventually. By which time, Burnham has moved on and someone else is left picking up the pieces. It's forecast that the local authorities in Greater Manchester will have to pay an ever-larger chunk of change to allow the bee network to keep running.
I predict the usual socialist fuck up, by which in 5 years time the bee network faces collapse without a big government bailout.
And Andy Burnham wants to use this model to national infrastructure.
I mean lets apply it to defence: Imagine all our tanks being franchised and rented from BAE or whatever, the same for our aircraft too. Our ships rented out from Scottish shipyards. All all of the above rented from some huge corporate.
Assets that could be withdrawn at any minute, especially if there was a threat to the safety of the asset. No more entering war zones or fighting wars. Too dangerous. Those Tanks, planes and ships might get damaged and would affect the bottom line of the leasing company.
It's nonsensical.
But when have Socialists ever been sensical?