All in it Together: How Government Is Handing Ownership of our Schools and Hospitals to Banksters
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Tony Gosling
May 20, 2013, 9:21:50 AM5/20/13
to UK 9/11 & 7/7 Truth
All in it Together: How Government Is Handing Ownership of our Schools
and Hospitals to Banksters
http://911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=164701#164701
http://scriptonitedaily.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/all-in-it-together-how-government-is-handing-ownership-of-our-schools-and-hospitals-to-banks/
There is a scandal unfolding quietly in this country which poses an
existential threat to our most critical public services. It is called
the Private Finance Initiative. Today, we look at the dangerous
circle of self-interest which means our government is making the tax
payer pay the bill for private service providers and banks to take
over our schools, hospitals and other core public services.
What is PFI?
PFI stands for Private Finance Initiative. The schemes were initially
designed by Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1992 and were rapidly
expanded under New Labour. They are touted as a form of Public
Private Partnership. The government uses private finance, rather than
borrowing in the usual way, to raise funds for projects. Since 1992,
our hospitals and schools have been built this way. PFI loans are at
least twice the rate of interest of ordinary government loans, and
repaid over 25-30 years.
The Truth about PFI
A recent report by the Treasury Committee condemned the Private
Finance Initiative, as “always…more expensive than government
borrowing”. Furthermore, the report continues “we have not seen clear
areas of savings and benefits in other areas…quality was lower in PFI
buildings (and)…PFI is also inherently inflexible, especially for NHS
projects”.
The report did identify major benefits to PFI unrelated to absolute
costs or value for money.
The majority of PFI debt does not appear in government debt or deficit
figures – the government can therefore use it to bury the true debt
burden.
Government departments can use PFI to increase their own budgets
without dipping into their allotted funds for capital investment.
Another benefit of PFI is that is allows the private sector to develop
the infrastructure to deliver national services while shifting the
costs and the risk to the tax payer. Put another way, the tax payer is
funding the development of a private network of service providers. For
it is the loan provider of the PFI scheme (the Bank) which retains
ownership of the asset (the school or hospital) for at least the term
of the loan (25-30 years) or in the case of default.
In fact, the only people who are not benefitting from PFI are the
people actually paying for it.
The report could not have been clearer “These incentives unrelated to
value for money need to be removed”.
They need to be removed because they create a conspiracy of mutual
self-interest between private service providers eager to create new
markets in publicly run services, banks seeking to make profits on the
financialisation of our public services, and successive governments
seeking to put a gloss on their spending figures. The simple
interests of the tax payer – to get what they pay for – has been
quietly abandoned amid this circle jerk of the state, private service
providers and the financial services sector.
It Gets Worse
It is actually in the interests of the private service providers and
the banks engaging in PFI for the state to default on its payments.
In which case, they can retain ownership of the asset – the school,
the hospital, the road, the bridge etc. This might draw one to a more
sinister interpretation of the “poor quality procurement methods” used
by those responsible for negotiating the PFI contracts.
Already, 22 of the 103 NHS trusts to enter PFI are facing financial
difficulty due to the exorbitant PFI repayments. Some hospitals are
having to handover a fifth of their annual budget on paying for the
PFI deal.
In Education, it was revealed that we are due to have a shortfall of
250,000 school places for our children by 2014, whilst the tax payer
has picked up a £70m bill for PFI schools which had to close.
Overall, for a capital investment of £54.7bn (that’s how much money we
actually borrowed to build stuff), the tax payer will pay back an
astounding £301bn in just twenty five years. Given what we have
already seen, many of the 771 PFI projects currently running will bust
the budgets of these public services long before then, leaving us with
the debt but not the service.
The average profit for a Bank on an equivalent capital investment
project would be between 1-2%. A recent report by the European Union
Services Strategy Unit (EUSSU), showed that the average profit for
banks in PFI projects is over 50%.
So why is PFI so profitable for the banks?
Firstly, as we have seen above, the interest rates on the loans are
enormous. They are double ordinary government borrowing and the
equivalent of using a credit card to build our hospitals and schools.
Secondly, the ‘Special Purpose Vehicles’ or shell companies set up to
manage the PFI projects are generally based in offshore tax havens.
This means that a tax payer funded enterprise, is itself exempt from
paying tax.
So the Banks have become heavily engaged in chasing the PFI pound.
At least 91 pieces of public infrastructure are now owned in this way.
HSBC has a controlling stake in 27 PFI projects, predominantly schools
and hospitals. It is now the outright owner of three NHS hospitals in
Barnet, Central Middlesex and West Middlesex.
Barclays has joined HSBC in aggressively chasing the PFI pound,
setting up its own wealth fund on the back of this rigged market.
As a sign of things to come, one might look at Barnet Council’s ‘Easy
Council’ outsourcing project which sees 70% of the Borough’s services
handed out to the private sector to exploit in just the same way.
So What?
Some might well ask – so what? If the services are still free at the
point of use, what do we care who provides them?
This question is so ill conceived, it pains me to even have to counter
it. It pains me more that it appears to be the predominant view of an
increasingly out of touch electorate, without the knowledge base or
the curiosity to appreciate their own mugging.
Financial Costs
The service might be free at the point of use, but it is not free. Our
taxes pay for the services. PFI, by the Treasury Committee’s own
report is proven not to provide value for money for the tax payer.
The scale of this cost has seen 4 out of 5 Local Authorities (LA)
report that their LA will be in financial trouble by 2014. As
reported above, these costs are seeing the closures of hospitals and
schools. We are being bankrupted.
Human Costs
As the recent health care disaster in Mid Staffordshire, and the
unfolding NHS 111 scandal have taught us – prioritising the
financialisation of a service over its core purpose (helping people)
costs lives. Real people get poor quality care and die as a result.
The Economy, Stupid
Historically, a national construction project would have created jobs
in a domestic construction industry, profits for domestic building and
services firms, a publicly owned asset and tax revenues to the
Treasury.
Now, the taxpayer forks out double the costs for the build, whilst the
profits and in many cases the assets themselves go to an offshore
company, which is not eligible to pay taxes in the UK. The money is
siphoned out of our economy.
The End Game
Ultimately, as seen in Hinchinbrooke hospital, it is the public and
not the private side of the ‘partnership’ that gets the blame when the
service inevitably collapses.
Despite being an entirely manufactured cost inefficiency for the
benefit of private companies, the PFI scandal is being used by those
vested interests as a case for more privatisation. It is turned into
proof positive that publicly run services are inherently inefficient,
bureaucratic and costly. They claim the answer is to allow the market
(those same banks and private service providers who bankrupted the
services in the first place) to take over entirely.
Every Day is Christmas Day for the Banks
UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently told the 300 delegates at the
Global Investment Conference 2013 that he believed it was time stop
“endlessly bashing bankers” because the City was one of Britain’s
greatest strengths.
According to the National Audit Office, The UK National Debt rose by
£1.5trn as a result of the Bank Bailout. This is twice the nation’s
total annual budget. For this amount, the UK could have funded the
health service (£106.7bn a year) for fourteen years , the entire
education system for forty years (£42bn a year) or over three hundred
years of Job Seekers Allowance (£4.9bn a year). Not a single banker
has gone to court, let alone to jail. Instead bankers are being let
off with fines and the removal of honours, effectively buying their
way out of justice.
The bankers needed bailing out not due to some unavoidable natural
disaster, but because of their own greed. The bailout was the
taxpayer paying down the banking sectors own bad bets, allowing the
sector to privatise its profits, but socialise its losses.
Now we find, with PFI, that they have been invited in to pilfer from
the tax payer in ever more elaborate ways for more than two decades.
Banker bashing by the public will not and cannot end until this
criminal sector, and its cronies in parliament are held to account
properly in a court of law. This has not happened, and shows no signs
of happening.
The British public needs to face up to a terrifying but empowering
reality. We have no advocates. This is not a Tory, a Lib Dem or a
Labour issue. This is a democratic issue. All three major parties
have participated in these scams, they are all in it together. That’s
the terrifying bit.
Now for the empowering bit. We need to really get it in our bones
that the cavalry is not coming. We are it. We are the cavalry. Only
our newly emerging people’s campaigns and institutions can resolve the
crisis, because our existing institutions not only created it, but
exist to serve it.
We are only ever as ignorant and powerless as we make ourselves.
Email your local MP/Council – Ask how much they are spending on PFI
projects, who those projects are with, where the shell companies are
based (are they offshore tax havens) and send this information to this
blog (email on the ‘About’ page). We can then publish this
information. Not only will you help create the bigger picture of the
PFI scandal, but between us we can turn a whisper of discontent into a
roar of outrage. We must become as relentless in opposing this
corruption as the participants are in furthering it. People who have
taken up this challenge are posting their FOI requests here.
Move Your Money – take your money out of your bank. More than 2.3
million people moved their money last year, double the usual number.
This means that knowledge of the corruption is having a real impact on
consumer behaviour. We enable these banks by keeping our custom with
them. Get out, now, and do so loudly.
UK Uncut Legal – support the activism and court cases to bring these
scoundrels to justice.
Note of Thanks: Joel Benjamin of Move Your Money supported today’s
blog with invaluable research.
and Hospitals to Banksters
http://911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=164701#164701
http://scriptonitedaily.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/all-in-it-together-how-government-is-handing-ownership-of-our-schools-and-hospitals-to-banks/
There is a scandal unfolding quietly in this country which poses an
existential threat to our most critical public services. It is called
the Private Finance Initiative. Today, we look at the dangerous
circle of self-interest which means our government is making the tax
payer pay the bill for private service providers and banks to take
over our schools, hospitals and other core public services.
What is PFI?
PFI stands for Private Finance Initiative. The schemes were initially
designed by Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1992 and were rapidly
expanded under New Labour. They are touted as a form of Public
Private Partnership. The government uses private finance, rather than
borrowing in the usual way, to raise funds for projects. Since 1992,
our hospitals and schools have been built this way. PFI loans are at
least twice the rate of interest of ordinary government loans, and
repaid over 25-30 years.
The Truth about PFI
A recent report by the Treasury Committee condemned the Private
Finance Initiative, as “always…more expensive than government
borrowing”. Furthermore, the report continues “we have not seen clear
areas of savings and benefits in other areas…quality was lower in PFI
buildings (and)…PFI is also inherently inflexible, especially for NHS
projects”.
The report did identify major benefits to PFI unrelated to absolute
costs or value for money.
The majority of PFI debt does not appear in government debt or deficit
figures – the government can therefore use it to bury the true debt
burden.
Government departments can use PFI to increase their own budgets
without dipping into their allotted funds for capital investment.
Another benefit of PFI is that is allows the private sector to develop
the infrastructure to deliver national services while shifting the
costs and the risk to the tax payer. Put another way, the tax payer is
funding the development of a private network of service providers. For
it is the loan provider of the PFI scheme (the Bank) which retains
ownership of the asset (the school or hospital) for at least the term
of the loan (25-30 years) or in the case of default.
In fact, the only people who are not benefitting from PFI are the
people actually paying for it.
The report could not have been clearer “These incentives unrelated to
value for money need to be removed”.
They need to be removed because they create a conspiracy of mutual
self-interest between private service providers eager to create new
markets in publicly run services, banks seeking to make profits on the
financialisation of our public services, and successive governments
seeking to put a gloss on their spending figures. The simple
interests of the tax payer – to get what they pay for – has been
quietly abandoned amid this circle jerk of the state, private service
providers and the financial services sector.
It Gets Worse
It is actually in the interests of the private service providers and
the banks engaging in PFI for the state to default on its payments.
In which case, they can retain ownership of the asset – the school,
the hospital, the road, the bridge etc. This might draw one to a more
sinister interpretation of the “poor quality procurement methods” used
by those responsible for negotiating the PFI contracts.
Already, 22 of the 103 NHS trusts to enter PFI are facing financial
difficulty due to the exorbitant PFI repayments. Some hospitals are
having to handover a fifth of their annual budget on paying for the
PFI deal.
In Education, it was revealed that we are due to have a shortfall of
250,000 school places for our children by 2014, whilst the tax payer
has picked up a £70m bill for PFI schools which had to close.
Overall, for a capital investment of £54.7bn (that’s how much money we
actually borrowed to build stuff), the tax payer will pay back an
astounding £301bn in just twenty five years. Given what we have
already seen, many of the 771 PFI projects currently running will bust
the budgets of these public services long before then, leaving us with
the debt but not the service.
The average profit for a Bank on an equivalent capital investment
project would be between 1-2%. A recent report by the European Union
Services Strategy Unit (EUSSU), showed that the average profit for
banks in PFI projects is over 50%.
So why is PFI so profitable for the banks?
Firstly, as we have seen above, the interest rates on the loans are
enormous. They are double ordinary government borrowing and the
equivalent of using a credit card to build our hospitals and schools.
Secondly, the ‘Special Purpose Vehicles’ or shell companies set up to
manage the PFI projects are generally based in offshore tax havens.
This means that a tax payer funded enterprise, is itself exempt from
paying tax.
So the Banks have become heavily engaged in chasing the PFI pound.
At least 91 pieces of public infrastructure are now owned in this way.
HSBC has a controlling stake in 27 PFI projects, predominantly schools
and hospitals. It is now the outright owner of three NHS hospitals in
Barnet, Central Middlesex and West Middlesex.
Barclays has joined HSBC in aggressively chasing the PFI pound,
setting up its own wealth fund on the back of this rigged market.
As a sign of things to come, one might look at Barnet Council’s ‘Easy
Council’ outsourcing project which sees 70% of the Borough’s services
handed out to the private sector to exploit in just the same way.
So What?
Some might well ask – so what? If the services are still free at the
point of use, what do we care who provides them?
This question is so ill conceived, it pains me to even have to counter
it. It pains me more that it appears to be the predominant view of an
increasingly out of touch electorate, without the knowledge base or
the curiosity to appreciate their own mugging.
Financial Costs
The service might be free at the point of use, but it is not free. Our
taxes pay for the services. PFI, by the Treasury Committee’s own
report is proven not to provide value for money for the tax payer.
The scale of this cost has seen 4 out of 5 Local Authorities (LA)
report that their LA will be in financial trouble by 2014. As
reported above, these costs are seeing the closures of hospitals and
schools. We are being bankrupted.
Human Costs
As the recent health care disaster in Mid Staffordshire, and the
unfolding NHS 111 scandal have taught us – prioritising the
financialisation of a service over its core purpose (helping people)
costs lives. Real people get poor quality care and die as a result.
The Economy, Stupid
Historically, a national construction project would have created jobs
in a domestic construction industry, profits for domestic building and
services firms, a publicly owned asset and tax revenues to the
Treasury.
Now, the taxpayer forks out double the costs for the build, whilst the
profits and in many cases the assets themselves go to an offshore
company, which is not eligible to pay taxes in the UK. The money is
siphoned out of our economy.
The End Game
Ultimately, as seen in Hinchinbrooke hospital, it is the public and
not the private side of the ‘partnership’ that gets the blame when the
service inevitably collapses.
Despite being an entirely manufactured cost inefficiency for the
benefit of private companies, the PFI scandal is being used by those
vested interests as a case for more privatisation. It is turned into
proof positive that publicly run services are inherently inefficient,
bureaucratic and costly. They claim the answer is to allow the market
(those same banks and private service providers who bankrupted the
services in the first place) to take over entirely.
Every Day is Christmas Day for the Banks
UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently told the 300 delegates at the
Global Investment Conference 2013 that he believed it was time stop
“endlessly bashing bankers” because the City was one of Britain’s
greatest strengths.
According to the National Audit Office, The UK National Debt rose by
£1.5trn as a result of the Bank Bailout. This is twice the nation’s
total annual budget. For this amount, the UK could have funded the
health service (£106.7bn a year) for fourteen years , the entire
education system for forty years (£42bn a year) or over three hundred
years of Job Seekers Allowance (£4.9bn a year). Not a single banker
has gone to court, let alone to jail. Instead bankers are being let
off with fines and the removal of honours, effectively buying their
way out of justice.
The bankers needed bailing out not due to some unavoidable natural
disaster, but because of their own greed. The bailout was the
taxpayer paying down the banking sectors own bad bets, allowing the
sector to privatise its profits, but socialise its losses.
Now we find, with PFI, that they have been invited in to pilfer from
the tax payer in ever more elaborate ways for more than two decades.
Banker bashing by the public will not and cannot end until this
criminal sector, and its cronies in parliament are held to account
properly in a court of law. This has not happened, and shows no signs
of happening.
The British public needs to face up to a terrifying but empowering
reality. We have no advocates. This is not a Tory, a Lib Dem or a
Labour issue. This is a democratic issue. All three major parties
have participated in these scams, they are all in it together. That’s
the terrifying bit.
Now for the empowering bit. We need to really get it in our bones
that the cavalry is not coming. We are it. We are the cavalry. Only
our newly emerging people’s campaigns and institutions can resolve the
crisis, because our existing institutions not only created it, but
exist to serve it.
We are only ever as ignorant and powerless as we make ourselves.
Email your local MP/Council – Ask how much they are spending on PFI
projects, who those projects are with, where the shell companies are
based (are they offshore tax havens) and send this information to this
blog (email on the ‘About’ page). We can then publish this
information. Not only will you help create the bigger picture of the
PFI scandal, but between us we can turn a whisper of discontent into a
roar of outrage. We must become as relentless in opposing this
corruption as the participants are in furthering it. People who have
taken up this challenge are posting their FOI requests here.
Move Your Money – take your money out of your bank. More than 2.3
million people moved their money last year, double the usual number.
This means that knowledge of the corruption is having a real impact on
consumer behaviour. We enable these banks by keeping our custom with
them. Get out, now, and do so loudly.
UK Uncut Legal – support the activism and court cases to bring these
scoundrels to justice.
Note of Thanks: Joel Benjamin of Move Your Money supported today’s
blog with invaluable research.
ian neal
May 20, 2013, 10:50:26 AM5/20/13
to uk-911...@googlegroups.com
Related fact
Cameron has claimed that over one million new jobs have been created in
the private sector since the coalition took power.
How so?
Because public sector jobs that are contracted out to the private sector
are classified as private sector jobs even though tax payers fund these
jobs plus when labour were in power a shed load of private sector jobs
went into the public sector when various banks were 'nationalised'
Statistics and damn lies
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> revealed; and nothing hid that shall not be made known. What I tell you
> in darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye hear in the ear, that
> preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27
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Cameron has claimed that over one million new jobs have been created in
the private sector since the coalition took power.
How so?
Because public sector jobs that are contracted out to the private sector
are classified as private sector jobs even though tax payers fund these
jobs plus when labour were in power a shed load of private sector jobs
went into the public sector when various banks were 'nationalised'
Statistics and damn lies
> Group owners do not necessarily agree with any of the views expressed in
> these emails. Please post any new 9/11 or 7/7 Truth info you find, or
> reminders, with links, to everyone via. this email group address
> uk-911...@googlegroups.com
>
> You are subscribed to Google Groups "UK 9/11 & 7/7 Truth Network" group.
> Associated with the 9/11 Forum http://www.911forum.org.uk/
> We support the official UK Reinvestigate 9/11 Campaign which grew out of
> the UK 9/11 Truth campaign: http://www.reinvestigate911.org/
>
> News sources http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=13410
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, visit
> http://groups.google.com/group/uk-911-truth/subscribe
> To subscribe
> uk-911-trut...@googlegroups.com
>
> Fear not therefore: for there is nothing covered that shall not be
> revealed; and nothing hid that shall not be made known. What I tell you
> in darkness, that speak ye in the light and what ye hear in the ear, that
> preach ye upon the housetops. Matthew 10:26-27
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "UK 9/11 & 7/7 Truth" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to uk-911-truth...@googlegroups.com.
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jay ginn
May 20, 2013, 11:33:44 AM5/20/13
to uk-911...@googlegroups.com
PFI was exposed as a sn expensive scam about 10 yrs ago under Labour. see A POLLOCK.
The latest wheeze is incinerators on such conrtracts, where councils tie themselves into a 25-30 yr contract woth a builder-operator to supply waste for burning despirte recycluing rates increasing and potentially reaching 90%. Next generationpays in 2 ways - once in money and then in damaged health from toxic emissions.
jaY GINN
The latest wheeze is incinerators on such conrtracts, where councils tie themselves into a 25-30 yr contract woth a builder-operator to supply waste for burning despirte recycluing rates increasing and potentially reaching 90%. Next generationpays in 2 ways - once in money and then in damaged health from toxic emissions.
jaY GINN
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