I was watching a documentary last night about the largest airports in the UK. It was about BAA, the company that runs them, and how it operates, how it "seems" to force early checkins in order to push people into the trapped retail space behind security in order to maximise its profits (they get a huge chunk of any money you spend). The thing that amazed me most was - in 2005 BAA was bought by a private Spanish group. Yes. The company that runs the biggest UK airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Glasgow, is Spanish. More amazingly the Spanish company paid 12 billion for BAA... but only 450 million of that was it's own money. The rest were loans. Those loans have now been rolled into BAA... so BAA is effectively in massive debt to pay for its own purchase... They even said in the medium turn it might go into administration. I don't know the why's and what's of business, or this consolidation of debts that lets you borrow money to buy something which that something then has to pay for... But it amazes me yet again how another major piece of UK infrastructure is not British. Most of the water/power utility companies are foreign owned. Even essential road infrastructure like the bridges between England and Wales are owned overseas... There is free enterprise and capitalism, and then there is selling off your country piecemeal...
I do worry about this country.
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