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Interesting that the Dr David Kelly assassination is refusing to go away:



[img]http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9 ... TzUk-PCFI=[/img]

He has given his advance, some ?4.6m, and all royalties from the book to the British Legion.

I now expect snide comments about a guilty conscience, but I think this is admirable.

And I hate the bloke.

Well done Tony.

David Johnson wrote:

> I agree with part of this. The Labour party did not confuse
> credit with income. They did underestimate the potential
> impact of a global recession on long term PFI type deals. [snip]
>
> Thatcher did not confuse selling assets with income. She sold
> the "family silver" in the words of former Tory PM Harold
> MacMillan because Thatcherism believed in a smal state where
> the family was key and private companies were inherently better
> at running things than the public sector.

What I was aiming at is that both governments used these measures as income-substitutes.

Thatcher believed in a small state, yes, but asset-selling also created a temporary income that financed part of the budget; moreover, it gave friends of the party an easy way to better themselves, wealth-wise, by snapping up that family silver at a bargain price.
To put it differently: I do not quite buy the ideological argument - I fear the ideology was to a large extent a smokescreen.

Similarly, New Labour freed themselves from the need of capital expenditure by using the PFI tool, freeing funds for other projects on a short-term basis, making them look good for the next electoral cycle. That's like remortgaging your house when the housing-market is booming and financing your opulent lifestyle with it. The only time where there is any justification at all for using that tool is during a recession, but B&B used this during economic boom times. And it wasn't difficult to foresee that this was daft, I do recall political satirists at the time picking up on it.

Which of the two was more damaging to the country I do not know and do not care. In either case, I failed to see a long-term vision for these policies, i.e. how the budget would be financed when the corresponding short-term measures had run their courses. That is the reason why I said that they confused credit/selling with income; I do not mean by this that they did not know that this was not sustainable, rather that they did not care.

I think it is concience money, but, even I will go and buy the thing just to throw it away. I have no intention of reading the smarmy bastards fucking lies.
Now we need everyone to buy it and throw it away so that the RBL and Headley Court can do some good with the money.
My personal view is that ALL of the medical and rehab for our troops should be funded 100% by the government, and I don't care which one.

As a former patient in the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot I can attest to the brilliant care and treatment by Army Medical staff.
The last Labour fucking government has systematically closed all of the MH's and now that we are in a war scenario our wounded are treated in a NHS hospital that knows fuck all about the needs of wounded squaddies.
As afather of a seving squaddie due to go back to Afghan I fervently hope that my boy does not become part of a casrep and end up at Selley Oak.

"That is the reason why I said that they confused credit/selling with income; I do not mean by this that they did not know that this was not sustainable, rather that they did not care."

I suspect your analysis is wrong. I think there is a difference between governments. Thatcher knew that selling off the family silver was not sustainable. The simple fact, clear to all, is that there is only so much family silver to flog before the cupboard is empty.

With Brown having banged on about prudence for year after year, and even announcing as I vaguely recall, that the government had abolished boom and bust, I suspect he actually believed his own rhetoric that the period of growth would continue and that like so many others he didn't consider a catastrophe such as the near collapse of the banking system which was the key factor in the recession.

Cheers
D

He did of course make that comment about how Thatcher was 'selling off the family silver'. The fact that it was the family who were buying the silver back was obviously something that passed him by.

"He did of course make that comment about how Thatcher was 'selling off the family silver'. The fact that it was the family who were buying the silver back was obviously something that passed him by."

This is totally and utterly false.

For example, the utilities were sold of. Many of them ended up in the hands of overseas companies and being bought for huge amounts of money. Basically they are a license to print money and the consumer is left at the mercy of rip-off merchants.

Secondly if you are referring to the "right to buy" re. council houses, this has had disastrous impacts on council house waiting lists etc.

Cheers
D

David Johnson wrote:

> With Brown having banged on about prudence for year after year,
> and even announcing as I vaguely recall, that the government
> had abolished boom and bust, I suspect he actually believed his
> own rhetoric that the period of growth would continue and that
> like so many others he didn't consider a catastrophe such as
> the near collapse of the banking system which was the key
> factor in the recession.

That may be true, but I don't think the recession plays a substantial role in the long-term damage of PFIs.

Because, if you keep using this tool for a sustained period a substantial proportion of your hospitals and schools are privately owned, so much so that the amounts the government has to pay back well exceeds its pre-PFI school/hospital budget, and that before any new investments could be made. (A recent BBC news report set the figure for now at 10% for the hospital budget but if the current government keeps using that tool this figure will rise substantially over time.) Such empty koffers will encourage the use of even more PFIs as no capital is available, and the situation gets even worse. Brown knew that from the start. But it was a problem for a future government, not his, and that's the similarity to the Thatcher policy.