The Labour Party is a Tragic Farce

I have never made any secret of the fact that Westminster and the personnel within it disgusts me. I consider the political class in the UK both intellectually bankrupt and morally corrupt. There is not one Westminster politician that I would invite into my home or spend a convivial night with. I was reminded about this when I was listening to the farce that poses as the Labour Party Conference. Listening to their great plans for the Health Service I was driven into a rage when that grotesque parody of a politician, Andy Burnham was waxing lyrical about how the health service could only be saved under Labour's stewardship.

This is the man who was responsible for 221 Private Finance Initiatives (PFI's) when he was in government. A PFI is an arrangement where private companies build and operate social facilities such as schools, hospitals and prisons, and then lease them to the state on long-term contracts. As I have written in previous posts, neoliberalism considers raising personal taxation, principally income tax, as the ultimate sin. What a PFI delivers is a social provision such as a school, paid for by private industry, then rented to the public sector thus allowing the government to get new hospitals and schools etc. without having to raise taxes in the short term. Under the last Labour government 103 hospitals were built under PFI contracts worth £60billion. We will be paying for these PFIs for the next 30 years. In 2007 Burnham told us that they were “the right schemes and offer value for money."
These schemes have been a disaster and are costing the taxpayer a fortune. They are a good example of the licensed gangsterism that is Labour's relationship with the private sector and is exploited ruthlessly by the Tories. An example of a contract is the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich in London who have to pay for 64 visits from pest controllers even if there are no pests to control. The Central Middlesex Hospital paid contractors £210 to install an electric socket.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper revealed in January 2011 that official figures gained through the Freedom of Information Act showed that over the terms of PFI contracts, capital projects that cost £56billion to build and maintain, will cost the British taxpayer £229billion. Several of the PFI contracts will run for 60 years, long after the projects themselves will last, with private contractors expecting profits of 71% on some of the PFI projects. The Telegraph revealed that one company that specialises in PFI contracts, Innisfree, owns or co-owns 28 NHS hospitals, 269 schools, the Headquarters of the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall and a Welsh jail (a growing PFI initiative is to build portable jail cells on sites and lease them to the police). A PFI was used to build a hospital for the NHS in Bromley at a cost of £118million under a contract that will see the taxpayer pay the PFI owners £1.2billion. So much for the cost saving efficient use of the market and private enterprise. The PFI provider Innisfree owns four-fifths of a school in Clacton which, at the time the article was published in early 2011, was already closed. However, despite there being no school any more, the British taxpayer is contracted to pay £1.4million per annum until 2035. The Telegraph noted that in 2010, the PFI provider Innisfree made 53% profit on its turnover compared to a highly successful FTSE company such as Tesco who expect to make 6%.

Burnham, who was in charge of 221 of such PFI projects at least admitted that “we made mistakes.” So that’s all right and we can tell our children that we mortgaged their future to legalised gangsters because in the constantly repeated mantra of the Labour government and all its apologists “it was the right thing to do” as well as “there is no alternative” even though they now acknowledge it as a mistake. This is an example of the complete failure of parliamentary accountability, the refusal of the legislative branch of parliament to hold the executive to account. It is a powerful example of deregulation and the refusal of a ruling elite to be held accountable to parliament, the electorate or anyone else. It is also a glaring example of the fraud that is being perpetrated on the British public under the guise of ‘the free market.’ Of course the fault really lies with the British public for letting them get away with it. This is what Scotland voted for when they told us we were Better Together. This is the Labour Party that tells us they can be trusted on the issues of fairness and accountability. What a pathetic joke. You have been warned and don't blame me,I voted Yes.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat