Originally Posted by cmonstanley (Post 1062159)

ive just found out that arriva the private transport company is mostly owned by the German government, edf who run the nuclear power stations are mostly owned by the french government,the utilities are all owned by middle east companies. this is proof ,this is the real reason we are in debt .this is evidence this is hard facts we need radicalisation nationalisation of the transport system the utilities ,the waterways no subsidies to these companies get them back in british hands.

Originally Posted by cmonstanley (Post 1062172)

but your anti-European is it good for their governments to own our utilities :confused:

Originally Posted by cmonstanley (Post 1062159)

the transport system the utilities ,the waterways get them back in british hands.

Originally Posted by DaveinGermany (Post 1062203)

In his own ham fisted way (more through luck than design) he's making a valid enough point. If the assets that are now held by foreign owners were back in British ownership there would be more chance of reaping the benefits, taxes paid into UK, employment of locals & not their own people being brought in from outside, plus the added spending power from the workers within their own economy.

Originally Posted by GEaston (Post 1062241)

I defer to the Landrover story. Good initial design hampered by crap company management under British Leyland (state owned and state miss-managed). The last cars we produced (up to 2001) were the worst Land Rovers and Range Rovers ever produced and certainly the most unreliable. BMW bought the company and invested in it in 2002 - the Land Rovers and Range Rovers from 2003 onwards are superb. They sold it to Tata and we now produce more very high quality Land Rovers and Range Rovers than ever before. These are all made in Britain with British Jobs and exported to the world. Noone sees it as an Indian company even though it is.

Originally Posted by GEaston (Post 1062249)

What you don't touch on Stan is where this happens in reverse. The overseas companies that UK firms own. UK has always been one of the largest owners of overseas assets, and that continues to this day.

Royal Dutch Shell owns $271 billion of Foreign Assets
BP owns $244 billion of foreign assets
Vodafone $224 billion of foreign assets

and so the list goes on (2010 numbers from the Office for National Statistics). Would you like to moan about that also ?

I'm sure there's Stanley equivalents overseas moaning about how the Brits own so much stuff. The Irish probably don't like that Genius is a British Brand (Guinness is owned by Diageo - the worlds largest drinks manufacturer, which by the way is a British firm).

The real owners of overseas assets though are our banks:

HSBC owns $2,454 Billion of overseas assets
Barclays owns $2,322 Billion of overseas assets
RBS owns $2,262 Billion of overseas assets

so our top 3 banks (all top 10 global banks by size) own a staggering $7 trillion of overseas assets or enough to repay the entire UK national debt 5 times over.

So if our banks sneeze, that's a huge problem for the UK. Having such a large UK financial sector as we've all seen is in many ways unhealthy. However, when moaning about how "foreigners" are invading our shores and plundering our prized though mostly loss making nationalised industries the other part of the picture should also be considered - our ownership of johnny foreigner which is a large number.

Even with our broken banks the UK earns more on our investments abroad than foreigners earn from investments in us.

Originally Posted by GEaston (Post 1062248)

Time flies. My point is the brand is better than ever, more cars produced in the UK than ever and it's been in the dreaded "foreign ownership" since 1994.

MG were never a volume car manufacturer in the UK, but were another shining example of poor quality car production by a UK nationalised industry. If MG was the best we could do, then we should not be producing cars.