If the Tories are in power, it must be private!

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Before May 2010 Cameron said that the N.H.S "is safe in my hands."  No it's not because he is a tory! These plans had been drawn long before he came into power he knew that he would hive off a chunk of our N.H.S to the private sector.   After the voting public turf him and his cohorts out in 2015 or earlier...      IS THERE A DIRECTORS JOB IN THE OFFING?


His next target was the Great British Bobby, our police force bringing in the private security companies to do back room work, and light policing.  After sacking the original back room staff, did he not realize that someone has to do the paperwork so that the police can do their job out on the streets, preventing crime and catching criminals?  Or is this an attempt to create:                  JOBS FOR THE BOYS

This week it's the motorways, now cars, vans and lorries are not just having to pay their road tax in the coming months and years.   There will be motor way tolls. When Ken Livingstone introduced the congestion charges for London the conservatives went for blood, however now we are just expected to smile sweetly and say nothing of these charges that are to be introduced by the tories!   !nn! !nn! If you use these private motor ways with the price of petrol and diesel rising the only people that will be able to afford to travel by these roads will be the top 1% of the UK.     In other words the filthy rich financial sector, is this what he intended to make sure that he put road travel out of the reach of the other  99% of the UK public?   Is this another way of putting motorway tailbacks so that him and his cohorts can sail up and down the motorways without having to deal with us (plebs) getting in their way? 

                                                                           WHAT IS THE KICKBACK FOR THIS?


When the Education Minister (Mr Gove) decided to bring in Academy and Free Schools as his pet project there was a promise of "No Council Interference" until some of the Academies failed and then the Councils where told clear up his mess.   Now another round of casualties have been racked up with the tory party practice of elitist snobbery, students that are not seen to perform to the expected targets  are been shipped out to f.e. Colleges to complete their studies. 

                                       PREPARING  FUTURE  GENERATION AS UP AND COMING TORY VOTERS

Significantly, not much real effort seems to have been made to collect a Sales Tax on goods sold here by Offshore companies.

Curious. Brussels is very agitated about that anomaly Europe-wide.

oftenwrong wrote:Could be quite interesting if the posties go on strike against privatisation at the same time as the Tories are flogging shares to their mates.

The First Minister of Scottish Parliament came out today and has said if Scots vote Yes in the referendum in September 18th 2014, he will Re-Nationalize Royal Mail here in Scotland so take note those of you out there that think you will make a packet out of OUR Royal Mail No you will lose your shirt and maybe every penny you have.

Why am I uneasy about the idea that independant Scots may be able to control events elsewhere in a (formerly) United Kingdom?

oftenwrong wrote:Why am I uneasy about the idea that independant Scots may be able to control events elsewhere in a (formerly) United Kingdom?

 
Do not worry OW anybody that had decided to buy into our Royal Mail would not risk their money knowing that they would lose some from the off, Salmond has warned them if Scotland says yes to Independence they will lose some of their investment that should be enough to put a spoke in this nasty gov'ts wheel.

How the Tories love to drape themselves in the union flag, yet how they also love to sell off state assets to foreign investors at knock down prices! Why did they sell the Royal Mail when it was making an operating profit? Why do they now want to sell our 40% stake in Eurostar when it made £52 million for the Treasury in 2012? Was that in either the Tory or Lib Dem manifesto in 2010, or in the coalition agreement? No. What purpose does selling well run and profitable assets serve, other than to make Tory allies and donors very rich? Or is it just barking mad ideology – I see that even the Lib Dem stooge Danny Alexander says “the government should not own things it does not need to own”. The government doesn't own anything, we own these 'things', and there's no acceptance that some of them should be run first and foremost as a service, not just for private profit.
 
Privatisation, a very British disease
 
From an article by Joe Guinan and Thomas M. Hanna:-  
 
"A few weeks ago, London was the scene of a heist of spectacular proportions. We may never know the full extent of what was stolen, but the indications are that it was anywhere between £1 billion and £6 billion. Although the robbery was carried out in broad daylight, it is unlikely the money will ever be recovered or the perpetrators brought to justice. This is because they were sitting in some of the world’s largest financial institutions – Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Bank of America and UBS – and acting on behalf of the British government.

Their instrument was the undervaluation of shares in Royal Mail, which with the initial public offering immediately soared from 330p to above 500p. The company was sold at £3.3 billion but in J.P. Morgan’s estimation the real value may have been as high as £10 billion. The biggest private shareholder is now the hedge fund TCI, which snagged 5.8% of the company. The principal victim of this daylight robbery is, of course, the British public.

Viewed from an international perspective, Britain is an extreme outlier regarding privatisation. In no other advanced industrial country would quite so flagrant a rip-off have been engineered and tolerated. Nowhere else – not even in the corporate-dominated USA – is there such a degree of nonchalance about ownership and control over vital infrastructure and public services. In the UK, the attitude seems to be that if it isn’t nailed down then it is for sale. Privatisation is increasingly the British disease."
 
For the full article:-
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/joe-guinan-thomas-m-hanna/privatisation-very-british-disease
 
Eurostar stake up for grabs in £10 billion sell-off of government assets
 
From an article by Rowena Mason:-
 
"Britain's stake in the cross-channel rail operator Eurostar will be sold off under as part of a new £10 billion privatisation programme. The disposal of the UK's 40% stake in Eurostar could potentially net the Treasury hundreds of millions of pounds.

The higher target for privatisations will lead to speculation about which other businesses in the government's estimated £600 billion corporate and property portfolio will be sold in the coming years. Assets held by the state include the broadcaster Channel 4, and support services businesses such as Companies House, the Royal Mint, the Met Office and Ordnance Survey, as well as the Post Office.

In the past, coalition ministers have maintained that the Eurostar stake would be retained. The company, which is majority-owned by the French state rail firm, SNCF, more than doubled profits to £52m last year. The surprise announcement comes weeks after ministers were criticised for allowing Eurostar to bid for the state-owned East Coast mainline over concerns it would create a conflict of interest.

The sell-off also comes at a time of debate about private versus public ownership of the railways, amid concern about soaring fares and poor performance by many franchises. Labour is opposing the sale of the East Coast mainline and has indicated it would allow publicly owned companies to operate railways on the same terms as private companies."
 
For the full article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/04/eurostar-stake-for-sale-government-assets-privatisation

The Nation has fallen among thieves, but where is Ali Baba?

Handbag economics: the ideology of austerity

From an article by Mary Mellor:-

“George Osborne’s Autumn Statement was a classic espousal of handbag economics, so named after the saint of the handbag, Mrs Thatcher. Handbag economics is the common sense of our age.  Public sectors are like households, they must live within their means, balance their books, cut their coat according to their cloth. Britain is to face more years of austerity, not because it is in recession, but in pursuit of the handbag ideal.

According to handbag economics there is only one breadwinner in the economy, the private sector. Only the private sector can determine the size of the public household budget. In this gendered analogy, the public-housewife must not ask for more house-keeping, or borrow more, to make ends meet. Most emphatically, the public-housewife must not set up a printing press in the back room to create her own money.

There is a shed, though, at the end of the garden beyond her reach. This shed has a printing press and every time the private sector-breadwinner runs out of funds he asks the gardener-central banker to crank it up. Despite this, handbag economics denies that the public household should have any access to this money, even though it has a monopoly on producing coin and its garden shed has the monopoly on producing banknotes. Handbag economics, in any case, has its own money supply, debt. New money as debt is created through the banking system.”

For the rest of the article:-
http://thelondoneconomic.com/2013/12/11/handbag-economics-the-ideology-of-austerity/

Well, yes. Government-printed money and low-cost loans to Banks (!) have conspired to produce tiny returns for Savers far below the rate at which cash loses value due to inflation.

It's a reason why overseas investors enjoy a 20% discount when they buy London property.

01.04.14
The National Audit Office (NAO) disclosed that 12 priority investors sold all or some of their holdings within the first few weeks of trading.

"The Government could have achieved better value for the taxpayer through its controversial privatisation of Royal Mail, according to a new report which revealed that most investors given priority to buy shares, sold them shortly after making a profit."

Who's the April Fool then?

Poker players might describe Vince Cable as a "busted flush".

“This government has treated its time in power like a smash and grab raid, selling off as much of this country's infrastructure and services as it can get away with. It doesn't care about the consequences and it knows it'll be a disaster for Britain - but it gives politicians friends in high places and sets them up for a lucrative post-politics career. It's corruption and we need proper laws against it.”
 
Those remarks appeared in the comments section which followed the article below. Can there be anything left for this evil government to sell?   
 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BllN1coCQAAgneH.jpg
 
HMRC to sell taxpayers' financial data
 
Extracts from an article by Rowena Mason:-
 
The personal financial data of millions of taxpayers could be sold to private firms under laws being drawn up by HM Revenue & Customs in a move branded "dangerous" by tax professionals and "borderline insane" by Tory MP David Davis.

Despite fears that it could jeopardise the principle of taxpayer confidentiality, the legislation would allow HMRC to release anonymised tax data to third parties including companies, researchers and public bodies where there is a public benefit. According to HMRC documents, officials are examining "charging options".

HMRC's chequered record on data is likely to come under scrutiny given historical scandals involving the loss of personal information about 25 million child benefit claimants and 15,000 bank customers.

The government's plans to change the law to allow the sale of anonymised individual tax data and release of the VAT register were buried in documents as part of the autumn statement and recent budget.
 
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell-taxpayers-data

Allotments being sold off for development despite government pledges
 
About 3,000 plots, 2% of the national total, have been destroyed since 2010, according to official figures, with the final decision being taken by Whitehall (Eric Pickles) in each case.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/10774314/Allotments-being-sold-off-for-development-despite-government-pledges.html

Tory plans if re-elected include outsourcing the entire British monarchy to Disneyland.

I can think of people who'd vote for that.

There's no evidence that privatisation works, but it marches on
 
Extracts from an article by Polly Toynbee:-
 
If you think the government might hesitate to sell other national assets after the Royal Mail fiasco, think again. The Land Registry, the office that certifies property ownership, is being readied for privatisation. It collates data on prices and transactions and catches fraudsters. It has cut its fees, scores 98% satisfaction and last year made a £98.7m profit for the Treasury – yet it's part of this government's £20bn asset sell-off.

The 1980s promise of a shareholding democracy failed: fewer shares are now held by individuals. The state sold off its assets at knock-down prices, with an average increase in profits of 419% in nine companies from privatisation to 2010, compared with a FTSE100 average of 206%. Many are now owned by foreign companies, so all that gain went overseas.

Above all there is rail, and the botched sell-off by John Major has seen fares rise by between 100% and 200%. No wonder there is overwhelming public support for taking the franchises back – 66% – including among Tories. Instead the government is selling East Coast and Eurostar in February.

This is the world Cameron assumes always does better than public service, as a matter of unproven conviction. He said: "The old narrow, closed state monopoly is dead", but forgot to say that services sold or contracted would become private monopolies making handsome profits at our expense. The dogma driving these privatisations wilfully ignores past experience.
 
For the whole article:-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/06/privatisation-land-registry-east-coast-rail-public-assets

For about thirty years a private company has maintained the record of County Court judgments. Traders, Lenders and Solicitors can check whether a potential client has "form", on payment of a small fee or by annual subscription, and it seems to work.

The Land Registry however has the potential for creating incredibly expensive mistakes. Mortgage lenders require an absolute guarantee that a property offered as security has not already been pledged elsewhere. I wouldn't take on that level of responsibility without fearsome professional indemnity insurance in place - the cost of which can be imagined.

Our government would probably cheerfully continue to provide a tax-payer guarantee to sweeten the deal - as with Royal Mail Pensions and Railway maintenance.

The sad thing about privatisation, to me, is that selling off publicly owned utilities will usually result in a reduction in wages and conditions of employment within the lower-waged occupations.

The knock-on effect of this is that it reduces the opportunities for young people from the working class to get into decently paid and secure employment that could in time ensure a degree of social mobility for their offspring.

Those of you who do genealogical research will no doubt have seen examples within a more prosperous family where the family fortune springs from some elder relation landing a job on the railway or in the post office, thus being able to fund some further education for sons and daughters who then go on become teachers, doctors, lawyers and the like.

To my mind, publicly owned industry and utilities not only protected prices and provided decent employment for large numbers of people, but was also one of the major vehicles of social mobility - possibly one reason why the Tories are dead set on getting rid - despite positive proof that in most cases privatisation results in loss of efficiency and raised prices

"Man is the only animal that will trip over the same stone twice."

We discovered what thieving bandits lurked in Tory ranks when Thatcher "sold" us various companies that already belonged to us. Having got away with that, it was likely that once returned to power, the Tory games would be revived.

If you or I tried to sell national assets we might gain personal experience of the legal criminal process, so what is different? Anyone want to buy Tower Bridge?

Today we hear there are plans to privatise parliamentary security and maybe child protection. So much Tory dogma being enforced and they didn't even win a majority at the last election.

Privatisation means removing services from democratic accountability. Soon there won't be any point in voting in local elections because councils (whose emasculation began under Thatcher, who even abolished those which she didn't like) won't be running anything.

Well it seems to have worked quite well for Oligarchs from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan who have collectively invested some £235billion in London.

Sauce for the goose.

Sadly, with the power of the right wing press against them, local authorities are probably grateful for the opportunity to offload such potentially contentious functions

A conscious decision was made by the Thatcher administration to curb the powers of local councils, who might otherwise form a potential focus for alternative government. They have been kept short of money ever since, and it really shows.

Thames Water: a lesson in privatisation

From a blog by LEAP (the Left Economics Advisory Panel):-

Last year Thames Water made a profit of £259 million on revenues of £1.9 billion - a very comfortable 13.6% profit to turnover ratio. While revenues were up 8.5%, profits leapt by an astonishing 79%. This bonanza was "driven by increased prices", chairman Sir Peter Mason (presumably knighted for services to larceny) explained to shareholders.

This begs the question: what is Ofwat doing? The water industry regulator obviously thinks this is acceptable; light regulation was part of the privatisation deal. Water bills have risen 40% above inflation since the industry was privatised.

The UK water industry was privatised under the Thatcher government. It followed the privatisation textbook: 'the profits shall be privatised, the losses shall be nationalised'. Chancellor Nigel Lawson stated "once it was clear the regulatory and environmental responsibilities would remain in the public sector, privatisation never looked seriously at risk". And so today, the state funds the Environment Agency because the privateers just wanted to cherry pick the profitable bits.

This government has slashed the corporation tax that Thames Water will pay on their rip-off profits from 28% to 20%.  But it won't be paying a penny of it, and according to its finance director Stuart Siddall, it won't do for the next ten years. This is because it is receiving tax credits to invest in the infrastructure that it profits from - the same infrastructure it inherited on the cheap and has failed to invest in, despite making bumper profits on the back of ever higher bills.

http://leapeconomics.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/thames-water-lesson-in-privatisation.html?m=1

Principal shareholders in Thames Water are Australian and Chinese. They probably do it for the money.

Iain Duncan Smith Urged By Senior Tories To Shut All Jobcentres

by Asa Bennett

Iain Duncan Smith is reportedly being urged by senior Tories to shut down all Jobcentres and let private companies and charities step in to help Britain's unemployed back to work. The proposal, backed by allies of Osborne, is being considered for potential inclusion in the party's election manifesto for 2015.

One senior Tory told ‘The Sun’: “Introducing competition into the job search market is a natural Conservative thing to do. Tailoring help from experts for what people really need will work far better than the clumsy one-size-fits-all state solution.”

A spokesperson for the Public and Commercial Services Union said: "Any failings in our social security system are entirely down to privatisation, with the work programme being the most obvious example, or a lack of staff and resources as a result of successive years of spending cuts. Jobcentres need the exact opposite of what some in the Tory Party and their supporters appear to want."

This comes as a report by Cameron's favourite think-tank Policy Exchange called for Jobcentres to be split up and forced to compete with charities and the private sector to help people into work.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/21/tories-jobcentres-tories-iain-duncan-smith_n_5604778.html

Further evidence that the Tory party is being pulled in several different ways simultaneously. Businesses that frequently employ new staff have always been pleased to find them through the (free) service provided by the Labour Exchange/Job Centre. Specialist recruiting agencies in the private sector typically charge a finding-fee equal to the first-year salary offered.

We must change the narrative. The public sector is often more efficient than the private sector

From an article by Ha-Joon Chang:-

“In the early days of their industrialisation, 19th-century Germany and Japan set up state-run ‘model factories’ in order to kickstart new industries such as steel and shipbuilding, which the private sector considered too risky to invest in. For half a century after the second world war, several European countries used state businesses to develop technologically advanced industries: France is the best-known example, with household names like Thomson (now Thales), Alcatel, Renault and Saint-Gobain. Austria, Finland and Norway also had technologically dynamic state-run enterprises.

The most dramatic example, however, is Singapore. It has the most heavily state-owned economy, except for some oil states. State-owned enterprises produce 22% of Singapore’s national output, operating in a whole range of industries. Taiwan, another Asian ‘miracle’ economy, also has a very large state-run sector, accounting for 16% of national output. Arguably the most successful state enterprise in human history, however, is the United States military, which has almost single-handedly established the modern information economy.

When people realise that the history of capitalism is full of highly successful state enterprises, the rush for ever more privatisation can be halted. If the Labour Party puts forward this case, it will not only gain popularity in the run-up to next year’s general election, it would also be doing something of lasting benefit for Britain.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/privatisation-dogma-labour-us-military-singapore

A prominent donor to Tory Party funds has today said that sanctions against Russia may result in his factories laying-off workers.

Or he could sell one of his many properties - perhaps the one he has in the Bahamas. Just a thought, Sir Anthony.

Comparison of fares for some similar rail journeys in Europe (courtesy of 'The Daily Telegraph'):-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BvdTv6BIAAEGord.png

20 years of rail privatisation in the UK has worked really well, hasn't it?  

Personally, I doubt whether the Australian, French, German and other foreign investors in British TOC's are troubled by the level of fares for us.

“Everything is better in private hands” is a classic piece of the Tories’ dogma and their excuse for privatising everything they can get their hands on. However, when they sell off state assets they often end up being controlled by foreign governments, so they are not in private hands at all. Nevertheless, the Tory hypocrites will carry on waving the union flag around, implying that they are somehow more ‘patriotic’ than the rest of us when they are selling off UK plc to all and sundry.  

How the world gets rich from privatising British public services

Extracts from an article by Jim Armitage:-

"Foreign governments are making hundreds of millions of pounds a year running British public services, according to an investigation highlighting how privatisation is benefiting overseas – rather than UK – taxpayers.

Swathes of Britain’s energy, transport and utility networks are run by companies owned by other European governments, meaning foreign exchequers reap the dividends while UK customers struggle with increasing fares and bills.

In the past two years alone, overseas taxpayers have taken dividends totalling nearly £1bn from companies which make their profits from UK households and passengers. The figures will boost those who argue that the railways should be opened up to publicly owned UK operators, or even renationalised."

For the whole article:-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/revealed-how-the-world-gets-rich-from-privatising-british-public-services-9874048.html

Should they all be renationalised then in your opinion Ivan?

And UKIP would be far bigger by now eh?

A BBC2 TV program scheduled on Thursday at 9.00 p.m.is entitled The Super-rich and us. It concerns the number of British billionaires who pay little tax, due to a government ruling that they are not "domiciled" in the UK.

But we're all in it together, aren't we?

Well how many millions do you have OW? and I think you live in the UK too?

How much more corruption must the British taxpayer underwrite?

From a blog by Mike Sivier:-

"The latest private firm to face allegations that it took huge amounts of public money and used it corruptly is Capita. That’s right – the outsourcing giant whose government contracts include taking over the work capability assessment from discredited Atos in some parts of the UK is facing an investigation into allegations that it used a major government contract to short-change small companies, resulting in some going out of business.

Capita took a minimum 20% cut of the value of all contracts to administer a £250 million civil service training scheme, in a project hailed as a model of how to open up the public sector to small businesses and provide better value to the taxpayer. But twelve companies involved in the scheme have now teamed up to demand that the Cabinet Office and the National Audit Office launch an investigation into Capita.

If it is found guilty, the company will join a roll-call of shame that includes Pricewaterhousecoopers (helping clients avoid tax while advising the Treasury on its policy to tackle tax avoidance), G4S (failure to provide security for London 2012, criminal tagging fraud), Serco (criminal tagging fraud) and A4e, if anybody can remember that far back. To its shame, it seems this government is still employing all of these companies."

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/02/11/capita-another-nail-in-the-coffin-of-government-outsourcing/

Financial Times November 19, 2014

British outsourcing groups dominate public sector contracts

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ff1d076-666d-11e4-9c0c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3RZi8oAUX

oftenwrong. The problem with posting links to the 'Financial Times' website is that most of us won't be able to read them because there is a paywall. If you are a subscriber maybe you could, from time to time, post a few lines from any articles which you think would be of interest to other members? Thanks.