#MastoHelp Alors voilà, dimanche dernier, dans mon TER pour revenir d'Amiens à Paris, j'étais toute seule, épuisée, je suis handicapée à 80%, et ma maladie Chronique fait que si je ne change pas de position, assez souvent, j'ai très mal.
Donc j'ai allongé mes jambes sur la banquette devant moi. Mes pieds ne touchaient pas le siège, juste mes mollets et le dessous de mes talons. Des contrôleuses sont arrivés en disant que c'était indécent et que c'était illégale. Et hop une amende de 60 euros.1/2
"More than anything else, Portsmouth International Port offers a living, breathing argument for public ownership. Not only does it work – it thrives. The port’s cruise and ferry terminal, which opened in 2011, uses thermal energy from seawater to heat and cool the building – using only 20% of the energy one would expect from a traditional system."
Aaron Bastani on how one councillor's vote saved Portsmouth Port from #privatisation.
Tori Whanau's column in this weekend's Sunday Star-Times talked about introducing water meters and charging households for water.
Have we learned nothing from the privatisation of the publicly-funded electricity network? Which has led to households facing massive price hikes since the 1990s - a contributor to the rising cost of living - while effectively subsidising commercial users who can get power much cheaper on the spot market.
I don't but one of our sons works for the NHS in Manchester.
Meanwhile Wes Streeting has taken £175,000 from donors with links to private health firms since January 2023. Labour will come for the SNHS given half a chance.
There may be no national policy of renationalising the railways, but that's where we're headed; by this year around 40% of passenger rail-KMs were being managed by the state.
This would be so much better if it were a clear & well managed policy, not the political result of fire-fighting as subsidy-hungry operators still fail to provide an acceptable service.
Like other privatisations, its time to conclude there are some 'natural monopolies' that should be state-run!
#GreenParty sees chance of second MP as Labour voters waver in Bristol
Poll predicts Green co-leader Carla Denyer will win in new #Bristol Central seat by siphoning off votes from disillusioned left
@proseandpassion Great news, and #Starmer's direction of travel - rightwards, ever rightwards - will reinforce that move to the #greens
With Starmer seemingly determined to piss-off as many people as possible who are not supporters of #austerity, #privatisation or #genocide, I look forward to many more green councillors and MPs
This is the classic scam. Privatise an essential service. Load it with masses of debt, while investing the minimum it can get away with. Pay shareholders as much as it can get away with. When it collapses, walk away so the state has to pick up the pieces until it becomes viable again. Rinse and repeat.
The shareholders of the privatised UK water companies are laughing in our faces, while OfWat and the Environment Agency, many of whose staff come from the water companies, sit on their hands.
"Analysis of the latest data shows that more than 2,000 overflows owned by a number of companies are discharging raw sewage into rivers and seas at a scale that should spark an immediate investigation into illegal breaches of permit conditions"
Great news for NHS privatisers this morning. The Tories' policy is working.
"That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital"
Noam Chomsky
“In higher education: should pay with their own money, or funds voluntarily given by others. And early‐childhood education must be the purview of families and providers, NOT Government.”
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tankheadquartered in Washington, D.C. (to lobby) It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute
Researchers looked at 13 long-term studies from well-off countries including the #UK to examine what happened ‘before’ and ‘after’ public health provision was outsourced.
Their conclusion: Increases in privatisation generally corresponded with worse quality of care (who knew 😬 inc. dental)
A brand new Oxford University analysis has debunked #NHS privatisation.
Oxford researchers looked at studies of healthcare #privatisation and found they agreed on one thing: privatisation leads to poorer quality care for patients.
"Water companies are commercial entities and we do not comment on the financial situation of specific companies as it would not be appropriate."
A Government spokesperson.
Ludicrous. Water is an essential service. It should never be subject to such subterfuge, particularly as Thames Water is demanding being allowed to pay higher dividends, while increasing bills by 40%, and limitations on fines for serious pollution of rivers.
Another indication of what happens when private firms are involved in delivering social services... unsurprisingly, budgets include a significant element of profit for investors.
Given the crisis in capacity & the low pay of workers in the sector, the privileging of investors interests can hardly be said to be socially optimal.
It is definitely time for the sector to better (more robustly) regulated.
Remember this is England - suckers. They sold their water companies for £6Bn with no debt. They now have in excess of £60Bn in debt, serviced overseas which has the great bonus of making sure that profits are not even taxed in England.
And they think they are responsible adults who should control the other three nations of the UK?
For those of us worried about the creeping #privatisation of the #NHS, this Corporate Watch timeline sets out the long-term political project that underlies the current #Tory engineered #NHScrisis.
A great resource for those of you arguing the privileging of private resources in health care is not a recent development - the campaign against public health care in the UK has a long, and worryingly bipartisan, history!
Here's a podcast on New Books Network where I talk about (surprise surprise) my new book, 'Visions of a Digital Nation', and why Margaret Thatcher's 1984 #privatisation of British Telecom was a pivotal moment for both #neoliberalism and #digitalisation.