Neil Clark: G4S's Olympic struggles should derail the drive towards more privatisation

This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears on The Guardian's Comment is Free website.



Private companies have one aim: profit maximisation. So expect cuts in staffing levels and everything done on the cheap 

The next time you meet one of those free-market ideologues who tells you private companies are always more efficient than the public sector, don't bother to get involved in a lengthy argument. Instead just use the example of G4S. 

You can read the whole article here.

Athens plans huge wave of privatisations

Terrible news from Greece.

Ben Chacko at the Morning Star reports:

Greece's ruling coalition unveiled an "everything must go" sale of the country's assets over the weekend as Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras gushed that privatisation was his "top priority.

"The privatisation programme aims at attracting important international capital," Mr Stournaras told MPs on Saturday, sketching a vista of foreign corporations rushing in to snap up Greece's infrastructure and services.

The initial wave of the project would include 28 major privatisations, including state natural gas, water and betting companies, a number of key airports including that of Athens, the state railways and various marinas and other properties.

Some services would be taken over entirely by the private sector, he said, while in others the state would rent back the infrastructure from the buyers.

Mr Stournaras added that this was just the beginning, with a second bout of sell-offs, including that of the Public Power Corporation, planned for a later date.

You can read the whole of Ben's report here.

Railway bosses give themselves average salaries of £1million as passengers face fare hikes

The Daily Mail reports:


Bosses of the five main companies that run the nation’s railways have paid themselves average salaries of £1million. 


Critics say the rises are ‘scandalous’ at a time when passengers face inflation-busting fare hikes.
Millions had to cope with fare rises of up to 11 per cent this year and more increases are in the pipeline for next year. 


The pay rises, before bonuses, pension contributions and share-options, come as taxpayer subsidies to rail top £4billion a year. 


You can read the whole article here.

Neil Clark: Why it's time to renationalise England's water

You can listen to an interview with Neil Clark, co-founder of The Campaign for Public Ownership, on BBC Radio Newcastle, here. The discussion starts at around 10 minutes into the programme.

Neil Clark: Eastern Europe's neoliberal disaster provides a warning for the Arab spring

This article by CPO co-founder Neil Clark appears on The Guardian's Comment is Free website:

I wonder if David Cameron spent any time in eastern Europe in the 1990s.



Judging from his recent remarks about the Arab spring and international aid, the British prime minister seems to believe that having a more "open" and "free", ie privately owned, economy is the key to both economic development and a successful transition from one-party rule.

The evidence from the former communist countries gives lie to that neoliberal viewpoint.


You can read the whole article here.

71% say renationalise the water industry

The Sunday Express reports:

CALLS to renationalise the water industry have risen as a summer of drought looms despite heavy rain. 


Seven out of 10 voters want the control of water supplies taken out of the hands of major companies, many foreign-owned, and put back into public ownership.


After a month of constant rainfall and even flooding failed to lift drought restrictions in many areas, there are strong signs the public is increasingly frustrated with the performance of private companies and the Government at tackling the water crisis. 


You can read the full article here. 


If you live in England, then please write to your M.P. asking whether or not they support renationalisation of England's water.

Water bosses pocket huge bonuses and hand shareholders massive payouts

The Daily Mail reports:

Four million pounds in bonuses have been paid to the directors of water firms – despite their failure to repair leaks which allow 300million gallons to be lost every day.

All but one of the companies, which today brought in hosepipe bans for 20million customers, handed rewards to their board members in the last financial year.

These include £2million for three executives at Britain's largest water supplier Thames Water, whose highest paid director, understood to be chief executive Martin Baggs, took home £1.67million in 2010/11.

More on this story here.

It surely is time to renationalise water and end this great privatisation rip-off.

Neil Clark: Pull up on the hard shoulder, David Cameron, and think again

This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears in The Week.

THEY'VE flogged off the Tote, the state-owned bookmaker set up by Winston Churchill in 1928. They've sold the Channel Tunnel rail link to two Canadian pension funds. The NHS faces privatisation in all but name, some police services are to be carried out by private companies, and the Royal Mail, in state hands since its inception in 1516, is to be sold, with the taxpayer left paying for the company's pension fund liabilities.

And still the serial privatisers in the ConDem coalition aren't satisfied.

The most manically pro-privatisation government in British history - one which makes even the Thatcher governments from 1979-90 look positively social democratic - now wants to hand our motorways and 'A' roads over to private companies and foreign-owned investment funds.

The whole article can be read here.

Neil Clark: Renationalise English water

This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears on the The Guardian newspaper website.

The obscene commodification of a natural resource has gone on long enough, ripping off ordinary people


Here we go again. In the past 12 months, we've had significant hikes in our gas and electricity bills (not reversed by recent cuts due to a fall in wholesale prices) and above-inflation increases in train fares – which are already the highest in Europe. Now it's time for the water companies to put the boot in.


Ofwat has announced that average household water and sewerage bills in England and Wales are to increase by an average of 5.7% from April. As in the case with the rail fares, we're told that the reason that prices are rising is to enable more "investment" by the water companies. But a closer inspection is highly revealing.

You can read the whole article here.

Neil Clark: Help fight fare rises and push for railway renationalisation

This piece by CPO co-founder Neil Clark , appears on the Guardian's Comment is Free website.

The latest price increases show Tory serial privatisers got it very wrong in the 90s. Join the protests to put things right

“Whichever way one looks at it, privatisation is a giant asset-stripping process. It is a very efficient way of taking money out of taxpayers' pockets". Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour MP who uttered those words during a debate in parliament on rail privatisation in February 1995, deserves some sort of posthumous New Year honour for calling it exactly right.

While Tory ministers claimed that selling-off the railways would bring "benefits to passengers and taxpayers", and scoffed at opposition concerns, the latest above-inflation price increases in Britain's rail fares – already by far and away the highest in Europe – shows once more that the serial privatisers of John Major's Conservative government got it very, very wrong.

You can read the whole article here.

"Rail fares are TEN times higher in UK than in Europe"

The Daily Mail reports:

Rail passengers in Britain pay up to ten times more for their tickets than their European neighbours, figures reveal today.

They come as passengers brace themselves for a fresh round of fare rises of up to 11 per cent from Monday, and against a background of worsening train punctuality.

Critics say consumers are being ‘ripped off’ by an alliance of greedy train companies and tax-hungry Treasury ministers while passengers on the Continent pay significantly less for their journeys.

Neil Clark: The Coalition's Public services proposals will not mean more choice

This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, appears on the Guardian's Comment is Free website.

Neil Clark: David Cameron wants us to believe that rolling back state provision will benefit the public. The opposite is true.

Thirty-two years after Margaret Thatcher swept into Downing Street promising to roll back the frontiers of the state, the neoliberal drive towards a fully privatised Britain is entering its final stages. The government's new Open Public Services white paper, revealed by David Cameron last week, may have passed under the radar somewhat due to the scandals engulfing the Murdoch media empire, but it's an important document nonetheless.

You can read the whole of the article here.

‘A good day to bury bad news‘-full speed ahead for NHS privatisation

The Guardian reports:

The government will open up more than £1bn of NHS services to competition from private companies and charities, the health secretary announced on Tuesday, increasing fears that it will inevitably lead to the "privatisation of the health service".

Labour questioned the policy, which the shadow health secretary John Healey said was "not about giving more control to patients, but setting up a full-scale market."
His colleague Emily Thornberry, the party's health spokeswoman, added that "today is a good day to announce the policy because everyone is preoccupied with telephone hacking. (They) hope no one will notice it". This theme was picked up on Twitter with a stream of comments about "it being a good day to bury bad news"

Press Release on the Sale of the Tote

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE CAMPAIGN FOR PUBLIC OWNERSHIP ON THE SALE OF THE TOTE

Today is a very sad day for British horse-racing.

Announcing the sale of the Tote, Britain’s publicly-owned bookmaker to the private bookmaking chain Betfred, gambling and racing minister John Penrose said ‘Most people can’t understand why in the modern world, the government should be even part owner of a bookie.‘ But the Tote is no ordinary bookmaker. Since its foundation in 1928 by Sir Winston Churchill, it has helped British racing develop into the wonderful sport it is today. Last year the Tote gave £19m to racing and sponsored over 700 races. The Tote’s profits are ploughed back into the sport and it largely because of the Tote and the generous support it gives racing, that we have such diverse racing in Britain, with no fewer than 60 racetracks.

The Tote is no failing business, but a much-loved institution that has carried out its duties in support of racing perfectly well for the best part of a century. For a comparatively small sum- £90m, the government is selling-off another national asset.

There is no logical reason to sell the Tote, no one in racing was calling for its privatisation. The long-term effects for racing, a sport which employs over 100,000 people directly and indirectly and which brings pleasure to the lives of millions of people are likely to be disastrous, with Tote betting shops likely to be closed and small tracks threatened by the likely ending of the Tote’s subsidy.

Neil Clark: Selling off the Tote marks a race to the bottom for the sake of ideology

This article, by CPO co-founder Neil Clark appears in The Guardian.

Britain's publicly-owned bookmaker keeps horseracing diverse. Without it, smaller courses would struggle to survive

Sir Winston Churchill will be turning in his grave. For 83 years, the Tote, Britain's publicly-owned bookmaker, set up by Churchill when he was chancellor of the exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government in 1928, has been an integral part of the British horseracing scene. Now, however, the institution endearingly known as "the Nanny Goat" is to go the way of our railways, our buses and our utilities and be transferred to the private sector.

While free-market enthusiasts will no doubt be pleased to see a further shrinking of the state, the sale is likely to prove disastrous for a sport which employs more than 100,000 directly and indirectly, and which brings joy to millions of people's lives.

The whole article can be read here.

Save our Public Libraries!

Over 450 public libraries in England are threatened with closure.
Details about tomorrow's Save Our Libraries day can be found here.

Please join the day of protest in defence of public libraries and join the fightback against market fundamentalism!


Market fundamentalism, this madness that's infected the human race, is like a greedy ghost that haunts the boardrooms and council chambers and committee rooms from which the world is run these days. The greedy ghost understands profit all right. But that's all. What he doesn't understand is enterprises that don't make a profit, because they're set up to do something different. He doesn't understand libraries at all, for instance.

Like all fundamentalists who get their clammy hands on the levers of power, the market fanatics are going to kill off every humane, life-enhancing, generous, imaginative and decent corner of our public life. We're coming to see that old Karl Marx had his finger on the heart of the matter when he pointed out that the market in the end will destroy everything we thought was safe and solid. "Everything solid melts into air," he said. "All that is holy is profaned."

You can read the whole of author Philip Pullman's wonderful speech in defence of public libraries here. An abridged version also appears in The Guardian.

Neil Clark: Margaret Thatcher's extremism has already been outdone by this coalition

This piece by CPO co-founder Neil Clark, on the coalition government's free-market extremism, appears on the Guardian Comment is Free website.

Ask any genuine socialist or progressive which was the most extremist British government since the war and it's long odds-on that they'd say one of the three administrations of Margaret Thatcher. But I believe that is now an outdated judgment. For when it comes to political extremism the present government has already outdone Thatcher.

The coalition, which its supporters ludicrously claims occupies the centre ground, seems hellbent on privatising the entire British state.

Everything must go: our publicly owned forests, our postal service, our state-owned bookmaker, our air traffic control. And though the government denies that its health bill represents the privatisation of the NHS, there can be little doubt that its real aim is to open the door for profit-hungry private companies to take over surgeries and hospitals.

You can read the whole of the article here.

Save England's Forests from Privatisation!

From The Sunday Telegraph:

In a letter published in The Sunday Telegraph and signed by almost 100 dignitaries, the Coalition sale is branded as “unconscionable” and “ill-conceived”.

The signatories to the letter, organised by a new campaign group, Save England’s Forests, include Dr Rowan Williams; Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate; Dame Judi Dench, the Oscar-winning actress; and Bill Bryson, the author and president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

The Government has already announced its intention to sell off 15 per cent of all land owned by the Forestry Commission in the course of this parliament in the hope of raising as much as £100 million.

A consultation launched this week by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will put forward plans to sell off the remaining 85 per cent. A clause has been inserted in a new Public Bodies Bill that will give the Environment Secretary permission to transfer ownership of all the land.

CPO comment: It’s good that more and more people are waking up to the fact that we have the most extreme neo-liberal government in our history- a government that won’t rest until every last remaining public asset is privatised.

For Sale: All of our forests

John Vidal reports in The Guardian:

We now know, thanks to the junior environment minister Jim Paice's frank evidence to a recent House of Lords select committee, that the government is considering the sale of not just "some", or even "substantial", amounts of woodland as the public was originally led to believe, but of all state-owned English trees across the commission's 635,000-acre Forestry Commission estate.

Paice also accepts that foreign companies might want to buy up the trees, and that foreign-owned energy companies might want to cut the whole lot down for renewable energy.

The sale is clearly ideologically-driven, a statement that the private sector – traditionally the large landowner, but now the corporation – should maintain the environment.

As such, we should see the sale as further evidence of the dismemberment of conservation in England, the approach that has marked environmental stewardship in Britain and most European countries for the last 60 years.

You can read the whole of John Vidal's report on this alarming story here.

UK government set to privatise national coastguard service

The Herald reports:

The UK Government was last night accused of putting lives at risk as expectations grow that it will announce the closure of more than half of Britain’s coastguard centres and the privatisation of the nation’s search-and-rescue helicopter service in a bid to cut costs.

The Department for Transport – facing spending cuts of 15% over four years – is due to propose reducing coastguard stations from 19 to eight and only three will operate around the clock. The move could see 250 jobs lost and save £7.5 million a year.

In another cost-saving exercise, Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, is expected to press ahead with plans to privatise the search-and-rescue helicopter fleet, operated by the RAF and Royal Navy together with civilian helicopters through the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.