I get so fed up with the propaganda we are constantly being fed about the need for yet more privatisation of this or that part of our public services. The reality is that privatisation has, with a very few exceptions, been an utter and total disaster. And why would we expect it to be any different?
These are, after all,
generally “natural monopolies” and privatisation is achieved by “pretend
competition” strongly regulated by the state which rides in to rescue the
private companies when they fail. So we get the worst of all possible worlds –
· hugely inflated prices for
the consumer,
· huge salaries for the
executives,
· additional costs of the
new regulatory systems,
· the profits to
shareholders and
· the additional tax on all of us as the companies collapse, one by one.
During the past decade, a
significant movement has been the return
of privatised public facilities to municipal and national governments. You
don’t hear much about this – but the TNI produced a useful paper on this in
2019 called The
Future is Public. It contains lots of examples.
And today is the final day
of what looks to have been an important 3 day Conference on global Public
Services which considered this useful report
on Shifting Narratives on Public Services whose tables map the very
different narratives used variously by global bodies (including private
companies), national and local governments and social movements in the last 2
decades in the fightback against privatisation of public services
The paper also assesses what we can do to get more effective stories which can help dismantle the make-believe world the marketing lobbies have created
Update; early August, UK public opinion is now really building about the unbelievable spikes in prices particularly in energy and food. Emergency payment now the subject of discussions everywhere. New campaigns catching the public imagination eg https://wesayenough.co.uk/; https://dontpay.uk/pledge/meter/; https://twitter.com/We_OwnIt; https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/06/gordon-brown-set-emergency-budget-or-risk-a-winter-of-dire-poverty; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/07/britain-social-emergency-leaders-political-vacuum
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