Not for the first time Clive I'm surprised, nay disappointed that you seem to think that Government's of what ever colour are seemingly incapable of discriminating in favour of one region over another dependent upon their perceived political loyalities. To think otherwise I'm afraid portrays an idealistic naivety, which I'm sure the world would be a better place for, if we all possessed it. This trait has manifested itself in UK regional policy for decades, but never more so than the Thatcher years as she had a particularly good grasp on the demographic hegemony of the electoral arithematic. In short provided she could supply the artesan C1's and C2's in areas where there was a high enough concentration of seats with a standard of living, then she could shaft other parts of the country to pay for it and sustain her regime, and the Conservatives exhibited little by way in principle in executing this. Though I broadly fall into the 'serves them right camp' this was never more brutally demonstrated I suspect with their treatment of the Notts miners once they'd served their purpose and become expedient.
Although not widely known, the most blatant example of a politically charged decision that immediately comes to mind, has to be the renegaing on a contract for the Royal dockyard of Rosyth for submarine re-fitting, and it's transfer to Devonport, which was starting to suffer the effcets of the peace dividend and the recession of the early 90's. One was a staunch Labour constituency of which Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown was MP, the other was a political sensitive and increasingly vulnerable seat of Plymouth Sutton amongst others, who the MP was a former Defence Minister, the late and 'colourful' Alan Clark. Such Faustean pacts are almost an intrinsic, (some might say necessary?) by product of democracy. Don't think for one second that when a Government perceives themselves to be in danger of not getting re-elected, that they won't hesitate to take such defensive and discriminatory action to incentivise those who they think might support them, at the expense of those who they perceive won't. Survival is a watch word in politics afterall, and rewarding your supporters, and punishing your opponents go pretty much hand in hand.
If you really think that concpet is so daft you don't regard as worth responding to, then fair enough, I'm more than happy for everybody else to consider it and draw their own opinions.
As regards the nationalised industries, I think its mildly amusing that this forum is frequently clogged up with complaints about the various energy and telecoms companies that privatisation has spawned, many of whom are now foreign owned as well of course, which in itself carries a potentially strategic dividend if an international crisies were ever to arise again in Europe. Similarly, the systematic running down of the coal industry could be seen in the same light, and few I suspect would argue that another agenda wasn't being pursued there? Whether we could ever get that capacity back is debatable now, I just hope we never have to, as the implications for us havign to do so, would probably point to cisis of some sort. Indeed it was the Ridley report of 1978 that prepared the path for this when Thatcher was in opposition, and it was pursued despite the fact we were producing the cheapest deep mined coal in Europe. This was clearly an attempt to punish and remove a perceived threat, and owed little to industrial policy ( which of course Thatcher never had one). The fact that Ridleys family (already wealthy North East property barons and industrialists) made millions personally by selling their mining interests to the then NCB post war is ironic at best. The best example however, (and somewhat fortuitously in last week of all weeks, as the train operating companies announce fare increases double the rate of inflation) has to be the railways.
