As an illustration of what the Thatcherite privatisations of the 1980s now mean, you could not have a better example than the London super sewer. It costs £4.2bn, and you might expect that Thames Water, the privatised company that controls the whole of its length, should obviously be expected to pay for it. Not a bit of it. They will fund just a third of it only, and the rest will be met by a team of investors which will own, manage and finance the projedt during construction and then supply sewerage services to Thames Water on a 125-year concession! But that’s just the start. Unusually for a construction project, the investors will receive an income from the first day, paid for by Thames Water’s 15 million customers. The surcharge on London water bills is likely to be £80 a year in perpetuity. Continue reading
Posted in Infrastructure
The politics of Tory pledge-breaking
Political gravity is starting to assert itself on the Tories’ ridiculous manifesto. You will recall that this gang of scaremongerers, who spent the entire election trading on economic competence, getting the deficit and public sector debt down, and “strong leadership” promised £28bn in unfunded spending commitments – presumably with the view that they’d never get chance to implement them because coalition negotiations, etc. There’s a lesson there: one should avoid tempting fate. You may also recall the fright UKIP gave the Tories all throughout the last parliament, the one that gave CCHQ willies enough to make a rash in/out referendum pledge on European Union membership. It’s been fewer than 50 days since the general election, so let’s take a look at how our overlords are doing. Continue reading
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Scandal of 100,000k properties covering 1/2m acres owned in tax havens
The Eye has done a remarkable service in exposing the magnitude of offshore ownership of the UK’s historic country houses and of the huge swathes of the British countryside that they control. Using FOI applications and extensive analysis of other data, it has found that since 1999 titles to no less than 97,500 properties covering 490,000 acres have been acquired by companies vested in tax havens. With much land already acquired by offshore companies before that date, it is likely that the total area acquired could be a million acres or more. Continue reading
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What can we expect from renewed austerity?
The new Tory government will renew its austerity offensive shortly with the publication of an ‘emergency Budget’ on July 8. It is simple to demonstrate that the previous austerity programme caused the economy to grind to a halt (and with it the improvement in government finances).
Supporters of austerity like to claim that austerity led eventually to recovery. But this is logically impossible. A force applied from one direction, the downward pressure on the economy, cannot sequentially have the effect of lifting the economy. Most children learn these cause and effect relationships through play at the ages of 2 to 4, with marbles, wheels and water. Continue reading
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Putting people first : Venezuela builds 700,000 new homes
Despite facing many difficulties, Venezuela’s latest achievements in housing are a timely reminder of why our solidarity with Venezuela remains so important, writes Matt Willgress
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro recently inaugurated the 700,000th house built under a state-led initiative called the Great Housing Mission to provide housing to all Venezuelans, continuing the impressive results of a public housing program began in 2010 under late President Hugo Chavez, which has continued to deliver for Venezuelans despite the economic difficulties the country has faced in recent years. Continue reading