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I can't answer for Ed, obviously, Barry - but I can tell you that I (who considers himself to be a reasonably intelligent individual) am equally stuck in the mud over the privatisation of the port. Not privatisation in general, you understand, but just this one-off over the selling off of the Port of Dover.
The reasons are many, but the two salient points uppermost in my mind are that - despite what you say - salaries and job levels will be affected by privatisation. For you to insist otherwise is clearly contrary to private employment management principles: you keep overheads, including salaries, to a minimum whilst trying to maximise profits. Nothing wrong in that in my eyes at all - I'm a small businessman myself and it embodies the guidelines I try to work to myself; however, the Port has all sorts of employment ramifications that come hand in hand with being in the travel sector. As an example I would cite the lessons that have to be learned from Eurostar this week, where public safety seems to have been compromised - usually the first thing to be cut when budgets become tight is cutting corners on safety training procedures - we must ensure that whoever bids for the port has stringent rules regarding this imposed. I'm very anti over-legislating; I'm sure you'll agree that this Government is as guilty as any of going way over the top on employment and industrial legislation in general, and I simply question whether putting the port in the hands of a private company simply for the sake a fast buck (as you yourself put it, Labour's 'fire sale') is in the best interests of either the port or the travelling public.
My second point, one that I feel more strongly about, is that the Port should not be for sale in the first place. Bob Goldfield was obviously appointed to oversee the transition from trust status to commercially run company, the facts are beginning to speak for themselves. To this end, the people of Dover have been openly lied to, misinformed and otherwise led up the garden path; all of which leads me to ask 'Why the need for subterfuge if all is well?'. For once, I have some sympathy with your strongly anti-Government views, but I'm also asking myself if this isn't privatisation without considering if it's the right thing to do.
Do we simply throw away 400 years of history because the country's skint - would it not be a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire?