Started with BT.
All the middle class hippies/alternatives/socialists/etc I knew at college borrowed money from the Bank Of Mum and Dad to buy shares.
Then sold them for pieces of silver a few days after the IPO.
You know, the one that would lead to a shareholding populace...
Just like selling the nations housing stock was going to produce a nation of house owners...
Fucking idiot Brits would sell granny and their kids for a drink... then moan about being lonely.