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The Conservatives are so brazen about it they'll even spell it out in writing. This is the Google Books synopsis for the book Privatising the World by Conservat

The Conservatives are so brazen about it they'll even spell it out in writing. This is the Google Books synopsis for the book Privatising the World by Conservative MP Oliver Letwin: "Identifies the reasons why governments in a number of different countries have chosen to privatise their nationalised industries. The opposition to privatisation and the techniques used to overcome this opposition are also analysed." https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Privatising_the_World.html?id=PSl2QgAACAAJ https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Privatising_the_World...

hansjorg 10y ago
That synopsis doesn't sound very nefarious. Does the book recommend sabotage as a technique?
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Would you class deliberate underfunding of the public sector in order to build public support for privatisation as sabotage?
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    You realise the UK has a large deficit, right? And taxes are comparable to other western countries. The NHS will never not be broke. Your position is typical of the British left but is entirely meaningless: the government could go into Greek style debt to double the budget of the NHS tomorrow and 10 years later it'd be once again constantly broke.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      Depends on your definition of "broke". If you think of something that requires tax money to function as perpetually broke then you're only seeing half of the story. Do you agree that, per person, the British spend less per head on healthcare than people living in the US? If so, why do you think this is? As I said in a different comment, many of the problems in the NHS have come from privatisation. If you want the NHS to cost less, take a look at what's happening with PFI. Just by stopping PFI funding of hospitals and going back to the old funding model of government loans at low interest rates could save huge sums of money. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11748960/The-PFI-hospitals-costing-NHS-2bn-every-year.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11748960/The-PFI-hospita...
      - zigzigzag 10y ago
        By "broke" I mean telling the government that it desperately needs more money or else services will start failing.
        ZenoArrow 10y ago
        Fine, that's your definition of broke. How about the rest of the points from the same comment.
        zigzigzag 10y ago
        I do agree that the UK spends less per head than the US does and gets more for it. But the USA has one of the world's most dysfunctional health systems. Constantly comparing the NHS to it, or worse, implying that people face a binary choice between the US system or the UK system, is a fallacy that ignores the highly capable and often very efficient healthcare systems in other countries. Which don't seem to suffer the same ills of the NHS. It's also not the case that the UK vs US comparison is one of government vs capitalism. All healthcare systems have heavy government involvement and distortion of the healthcare market, and this is fine, because developed societies always choose these problems over the much larger problem of poor people being unable to afford healthcare. PFI schemes have not been good value for money and were essentially a trick to hide the ballooning costs of the NHS from a population that can't treat the topic rationally. Unfortunately, too many people in the UK look at this sort of thing and instead of saying "wow our government is really bad at public procurement, we should give them less power" conclude something along the lines of "oh noes, they should have guessed that trying to buy things from companies would lead to disaster - the solution is a fully state run economy!" All kinds of organisations manage to procure services and investment from the private sector, all over the world, every day ... without problems. PFI boiled down to a complicated kind of loan that let Labour do what it always seems to try and do: massively increase spending on the public sector without raising taxes. No surprise that they paid a very high interest rate for such a thing.
        ZenoArrow 10y ago
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  To anyone who intuitively understands why the maintenance of human health and well-being might suffer for being corrupted by vested interests who are more interested in said vesting than human health and well-being (ie, "opposition to privatisation"), the disturbing aspect is precisely how non-nefarious and academic the synopsis seems. "Starve the beast" and other traditional conservative anti-public-service techniques are functionally sabotage, yes. I'm not sure what other concept might succinctly describe "cut as much funding as you can, then highlight the resultant disaster as proof that the private sector can do better". The cultural acceptance of the practice doesn't change what the practice is.
fooster 10y ago
I'd think the UK population are a bit gunshy about privatization after privatisation of British Rail. I'd also think that the US would have learned their lesson by looking an Enron... but since when have facts gotten in the way of a good story?
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "I'd also think that the US would have learned their lesson by looking an Enron... but since when have facts gotten in the way of a good story?" I'm not sure what you meant by this, can you explain further?
  - fooster 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis Overall this crisis, imo, was caused by the pro-privatization advocates arguing for deregulation. The wikipedia article addresses this to some extent.
- pjc50 10y ago
  The population is quite against it, but that makes little difference when politics and the media are as dysfunctional as they are at the moment.

hansjorg 10y ago

That synopsis doesn't sound very nefarious. Does the book recommend sabotage as a technique?

ZenoArrow 10y ago
Would you class deliberate underfunding of the public sector in order to build public support for privatisation as sabotage?
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  You realise the UK has a large deficit, right? And taxes are comparable to other western countries. The NHS will never not be broke. Your position is typical of the British left but is entirely meaningless: the government could go into Greek style debt to double the budget of the NHS tomorrow and 10 years later it'd be once again constantly broke.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    Depends on your definition of "broke". If you think of something that requires tax money to function as perpetually broke then you're only seeing half of the story. Do you agree that, per person, the British spend less per head on healthcare than people living in the US? If so, why do you think this is? As I said in a different comment, many of the problems in the NHS have come from privatisation. If you want the NHS to cost less, take a look at what's happening with PFI. Just by stopping PFI funding of hospitals and going back to the old funding model of government loans at low interest rates could save huge sums of money. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11748960/The-PFI-hospitals-costing-NHS-2bn-every-year.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11748960/The-PFI-hospita...
    - zigzigzag 10y ago
      By "broke" I mean telling the government that it desperately needs more money or else services will start failing.
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        Fine, that's your definition of broke. How about the rest of the points from the same comment.
        zigzigzag 10y ago
        I do agree that the UK spends less per head than the US does and gets more for it. But the USA has one of the world's most dysfunctional health systems. Constantly comparing the NHS to it, or worse, implying that people face a binary choice between the US system or the UK system, is a fallacy that ignores the highly capable and often very efficient healthcare systems in other countries. Which don't seem to suffer the same ills of the NHS. It's also not the case that the UK vs US comparison is one of government vs capitalism. All healthcare systems have heavy government involvement and distortion of the healthcare market, and this is fine, because developed societies always choose these problems over the much larger problem of poor people being unable to afford healthcare. PFI schemes have not been good value for money and were essentially a trick to hide the ballooning costs of the NHS from a population that can't treat the topic rationally. Unfortunately, too many people in the UK look at this sort of thing and instead of saying "wow our government is really bad at public procurement, we should give them less power" conclude something along the lines of "oh noes, they should have guessed that trying to buy things from companies would lead to disaster - the solution is a fully state run economy!" All kinds of organisations manage to procure services and investment from the private sector, all over the world, every day ... without problems. PFI boiled down to a complicated kind of loan that let Labour do what it always seems to try and do: massively increase spending on the public sector without raising taxes. No surprise that they paid a very high interest rate for such a thing.
        ZenoArrow 10y ago
justratsinacoat 10y ago
To anyone who intuitively understands why the maintenance of human health and well-being might suffer for being corrupted by vested interests who are more interested in said vesting than human health and well-being (ie, "opposition to privatisation"), the disturbing aspect is precisely how non-nefarious and academic the synopsis seems. "Starve the beast" and other traditional conservative anti-public-service techniques are functionally sabotage, yes. I'm not sure what other concept might succinctly describe "cut as much funding as you can, then highlight the resultant disaster as proof that the private sector can do better". The cultural acceptance of the practice doesn't change what the practice is.

fooster 10y ago

I'd think the UK population are a bit gunshy about privatization after privatisation of British Rail. I'd also think that the US would have learned their lesson by looking an Enron... but since when have facts gotten in the way of a good story?

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "I'd also think that the US would have learned their lesson by looking an Enron... but since when have facts gotten in the way of a good story?" I'm not sure what you meant by this, can you explain further?
- fooster 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis Overall this crisis, imo, was caused by the pro-privatization advocates arguing for deregulation. The wikipedia article addresses this to some extent.
pjc50 10y ago
The population is quite against it, but that makes little difference when politics and the media are as dysfunctional as they are at the moment.