Privatisation is the social equivalent of selling a kidney to pay the mortgage. Except that, under current circumstances, it’s not even your mortgage you’re paying but that of some crook you’ve never met but whose well-being you’re assured is fundamental to economic stability.It was no accident that the real start of the privatisation drive co-incidedContinueContinue reading “The Hollow State”
Category Archives: Public Services
Joined-up Looting
Plans to sell off forestry land have been put on hold as the Coalition confesses that it misjudged the public mood. The plans will be back. All three of the main London parties are committed to continuing privatisation in order to fund big giveaways to their respective backers.The great fire-sale is driven by five keyContinueContinue reading “Joined-up Looting”
The Infamous Five
In 1945, the Labour Party campaigned to destroy Beveridge’s ‘five giants’ of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. In 1997 and each subsequent election it tried the same trick, the latest pledges being to “secure the recovery”, “raise family living standards”, “build a high tech economy”, “protect frontline services”, and “strengthen fairness in communities”. AllContinueContinue reading “The Infamous Five”
No State To Be In?
Lord Deben – the former Tory MP John Selwyn Gummer – wrote approvingly this week of the Coalition’s decentralist agenda: “People who feel that they cannot influence big decisions in a globalised world are adamant that they should control the space around them. It doesn’t help to call it nimby. It is more ‘ideah’ –ContinueContinue reading “No State To Be In?”
Nonsense. Nonsense. Nonsense.
So there we have it. Three practically identical guided tours of Fantasy Island, courtesy of the main London parties.Now that the manifestos are out we can see that the all-pervading theme of this election is that the sins of the bankers are to be visited upon the users of public services, even unto the tenthContinueContinue reading “Nonsense. Nonsense. Nonsense.”
Mortgaging Democracy
“Will the Tamar Bridge be sold?” That was the question posed by the Western Morning News earlier this month. And not just the bridge. Torquay’s Torre Abbey was mentioned too, though in both cases the relevant local councils denied any sale plans.Gordon Brown’s announcement that he plans to sell off our public assets was, theContinueContinue reading “Mortgaging Democracy”
The Axeman Cometh
Political discourse in the Disunited Kingdom is now turning to public spending cuts. Brown continues to tell us that capital investment is his priority, as if new schools, hospitals and the rest are of any lasting use without the right professionals to staff them. Cameron promises us ‘an age of austerity’, relieved only by taxContinueContinue reading “The Axeman Cometh”
Free is Cheaper
According to Alan Cochrane in the Daily Telegraph recently, “Alex Salmond is walking on water”. The drive displayed by the SNP administration at Holyrood has in equal measure astonished the Scots and enraged the English. Why can we not have the same standard of public services now available north of the border? Well, we can.ContinueContinue reading “Free is Cheaper”
Wessex Regionalists 