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  You have it in a nutshell, Vic. The port can only be sold for what a buyer is prepared to pay for it, bearing in mind the tiny profits that it is making even when all its major users are protesting stridently that they are being charged too much.
  
  The lesson from previous privatisations is that the family silver was sold off for a fraction of what it cost the nation to build up over many generations. This is particularly true in the case of the ports as, for example, the ten ports of Sealink together with all their other assets were sold abroad for the princely sum of £66m at a time when the country was broke as usual but not in the dire economic situation that it is today.
  
  As a rule of thumb, privatisations result in the nation receiving about a quarter of what its assets have cost to build up. The announcement this week of the proposed sale of High Speed 1 (the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) for £1.5 billion is in exactly that ratio. It is expected that the most likely purchaser will be Groupe Eurotunnel S.A., the French owners of the Channel Tunnel.
  
  I would imagine that the Port of Dover would also have to be sold to a foreign buyer as an internal sale from the government to a British buyer would not alleviate the debt of UK PLC one whit.
  
  The small ray of hope in all this is that the port will be knocked down for such a pittance that even the Government will see that it would make so little difference to the huge debt burden hanging over the nation that it is not worth the effort.

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