Tuesday 22 February 2011

UK public sector fire sale! Be in quick!

From the pen of British PM David Cameron, writing in The Telegraph:
We will soon publish a White Paper setting out our approach to public service reform. It will put in place principles that will signal the decisive end of the old-fashioned, top-down, take-what-you're-given model of public services. And it is a vital part of our mission to dismantle Big Government and build the Big Society in its place.

.oOo.

We will create a new presumption – backed up by new rights for public service users and a new system of independent adjudication – that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service. Of course there are some areas – such as national security or the judiciary – where this wouldn't make sense. But everywhere else should be open to diversity; open to everyone who gets and values the importance of our public service ethos. (1)
So, with lashings of phoney fearmongering about LAIRBORZzz DET MOwnTUN, bullshit about inefficient Stalinist 'top down' public service structures, and horrible Tony Blair speak about 'diversity' and 'choice,' David Cameron announces his intention of selling off virtually THE WHOLE PUBLIC SECTOR, based on the crazed idea that profit driven competitive markets are better at delivering universal health care, or education, or whatever.

Madness. As in James Donald as Major Clipton in The Bridge on the River Kwai gasping "Madness! Madness!" sort of madness.

Special prize for anyone who can find where this is mentioned in their 2010 manifesto (2).
1 - "How we will release the grip of state control," by David Cameron. Published in The Telegraph, 20th of February, 2011. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/8337239/How-we-will-release-the-grip-of-state-control.html)
2 - The Conservative Manifesto 2010, reproduced on the website of the Conservative Party. (http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Manifesto.aspx)

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