Privatisation Versus Public Ownership

We Own It - 10 Reasons why Privatisation has failed & will always fail - https://weownit.org.uk/privatisation 

Harvard Business School 1991 - Does Privatisation serve the Public Interest? - https://hbr.org/1991/11/does-privatization-serve-the-public-interest

What emerges are three conclusions:

1. Neither public nor private managers will always act in the best interests of their shareholders. Privatization will be effective only if private managers have incentives to act in the public interest, which includes, but is not limited to, efficiency.

2. Profits and the public interest overlap best when the privatized service or asset is in a competitive market. It takes competition from other companies to discipline managerial behavior.

3. When these conditions are not met, continued governmental involvement will likely be necessary. The simple transfer of ownership from public to private hands will not necessarily reduce the cost or enhance the quality of services.

" It (Privatisation) has proven expensive for the public and a bonanza for comparatively few investors, often overseas". https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/22/the-guardian-view-on-privatisation-the-god-that-failed -

Who owned Britain in 2018? https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/index.html%3Fp=2472.html  You can bet that 5 years on the picture is even worse. How logical is it that Airports, the NHS, Social care, Public Utilities & Transport are privatised.

We have outsourced vital services. We have sold the "family silver". 

Billionairs control huge wealth & have massive power & influence. There are 25 UK billionaires with fortunes over £3 billion. Top 10 in 2024;-

1.1 1. Gopi Hinduja And Family - €35 Billion  -  Indian conglomerate with interests in the automotive, energy, and financial services industries.

1.2 2. Sir Jim Ratcliffe -€29.7 Billion - chemical industry / INEOS

1.3 3. Sir Leonard Blavatnik -€28.6 Billion - energy and media industries / Access Industries

1.4 4. David And Simon Reuben -€24.4 Billion - Real Estate

1.5 5. Sir James Dyson -€23 Billion - Technology

1.6 6. Lakshmi Mittal And Her family -€16 Billion - Steel / Acelor Mittal

1.7 7. George, Alannah, And Galen Weston And Their Family -€14.5 Billion - retail / Selfridges

1.8 8. Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken And Michel de Carvalho -€13.1 Billion - beer

1.9 9. Kirsten and Jorn Rausing -€12 Billion - packaging / Tetra Pak

1.10 10. Michael Platt -€11.5 Billion - hedge fund / Blue Crest

Money & Power - the two drivers of capitalism. Private companies "raison d'etre" is growth & profit. 

I wish someone could tell me in words of one syllable how Privatisation, Outsourcing & Capitalism is in the interests of the vast majority of people in the world. Consumerism & perpetual Growth seem to me to be at the root of so many of the problems we face today. The inescapable fact is that if public services are run for the profit of shareholders & senior management, then the people who use those services will have to pay more.

I can remember the 3 day week, the lights going out, riots in big cities, the miners & teachers strikes, the Cuba missile crisis....I thought that was as bad as it gets.

I was wrong. 

 

 

Politicians - Clowns or Champions?

This sort of message is harmful to democracy & people's confidence in politics. Yes, this government has failed on many fronts, been incompetent & actually lied. Yes, our "ya booing" commons is a disgrace. Several conservative politicians make me sick to my stomach. But there are many politicians who are trying to do a good job & are guided by decent values. People who mock should just think whether they would be able or prepared to try to run a country in these exceptionally difficult times. I wouldn't know where to start & I am very political. So we the public shouldn't be glib & make cheap jokes. We should try to do something positive to make democracy work better & support the good politicians.

What do UK MP's do?  

• Represent their constituents interests and concerns in the House of Commons. 
• Consider and propose new laws as well as raising issues that matter to you in the House. Including asking government ministers questions about current issues & those which affect local constituents. 
• MPs split their time between working in Parliament itself, working in the constituency that elected them and working for their political party.
• Some MPs from the governing party (or parties) become government ministers with specific responsibilities in certain areas, such as Health or Defence. They continue working for their constituency &, whatever their role in Government or Parliament, still hold regular surgeries to help their constituents.

When I hear MP's answering questions in the media I have 2 reactions - absolute fury when they don't actually answer at all but parrot what they have been briefed to say & admiration that they can remember accurately all the necessary facts & figures. Given the "churn" in ministers & senior politicians responsibilities & the complexities of running a department I simply don't understand how they do it. I sometimes also don't understand how they can live with the dissembling & avoidance of truth & fact. 

But this is the system we have got. These are the people we voted in. We have chosen. Or we have avoided making a decision & not bothered to vote. 

Unless everyone wakes up to the dire situation the world & the environment is in & recognises that the choices & consequences of those choices will be very hard if we are to survive & have a world worth living in, our tomorrows will be worse. This is election year in many places. 2024 will be a crucial decider in what tomorrow will be for our children & grandchildren. 

Democracy isn't working. Our Public Services are at rock bottom, especially the privatised ones. Oligarchs, dictators & despots are winning. The United Nations isn't working. We need NATO to be effective more than ever. 

Don't imagine that someone else will sort this out for you. Your voice & your vote count. Use them wisely. Don't sit on your backside this year or you will reap the consequences.

 

Intelligence & Common Sense - Navalny's Death

Intelligence - the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. 

Common Sense - the ability to think and behave in a reasonable way and to make good decisions. Sound, practical judgement concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceive, understand & judge in a manner that is shared by nearly all people.

Oh boy, do we need more people to have both of these today.

We who are free to think, believe, speak, act, read, vote in free elections, need to use that gift effectively to stand up for those millions in the world do not have similar freedoms. 

Aexei Navalny is dead. He was 47 & had been held in “Polar Wolf” IK-3 penal colony in Russia's Arctic north. Conditions are unimaginable -  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68322113  The likelihood is that Putin authorised a final successful murder. Equally likely is that the body has not been released to the family because the state wants to delay any opportunity to examine the body for evidence of poisoning by Novichok or other agent. It is very difficult to detect.  https://www.rferl.org/a/everything-you-need-to-know-about-novichok/30964840.html

Navalny was one of many brave people who fight for the freedoms we take for granted. Russian dissidents make a very long list. Wikipedia lists 88, which may not be up to date - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Russian_dissidents 

People are rightly appalled by the total disregard for human rights. We cannot say we do not know. It is all over the press & media. It has only taken me minutes to research for this Blog Post using reliable sources. We clearly know what is happening in so many parts of the world. We cannot remain silent & do nothing. We must use our intelligence & common sense to try to change things for the better in places where conflict is destroying lives  https://geneva-academy.ch/galleries/today-s-armed-conflicts  Dictators & corrupt politicians must be made accountable & stopped. 

If we don't do that what is the point of us? What is the point of being intelligent & able to think?

 

Love & Kindness

Loving kindness - Metta, a traditional Buddhist concept, implies acting with compassion toward all sentient beings, with an awareness and appreciation of the natural world. Compassion literally means to suffer together. In simple terms to "Walk a mile in someones shoes" - before judging someone, you must understand his experiences, challenges, thought processes, etc.

 

I can't walk a mile in the shoes of the families & friends of the Israeli's killed & captured on the 7th of October. I can't walk a mile in the shoes of all the people killed, injured, disposessed & without all basic necessities in Gaza. I cannot envisage what it must be like to actually fight & suffer in a war. 

Hundreds & thousands of people in our world are suffering in ways I can see on my TV, read about in newspapers & listen to on the radio. Most of that suffering is actually man made. However hard I try I am unable to really imagine living in a constant state of fear & anxiety without anything that makes life comfortable & worthwhile. The desperation of trying to protect the very young & the very old is utterly beyond my capacity.

I have to try to comprehend in simple black & white terms. War never works & is morally totally unjustifiable. The arms trade fuels war for profit. Killing other people must kill something within the killer, making them less than the best human they could be. Destruction of infrastructure means waste of precious limited resources & our precious world. Once again generating profit for the rebuilders. Arguments & differences of opinion are normal. But violence never solved a problem. Violence always escalates. 

Each of us has the capacity for both sides of the coin - great good & great evil. Each of us has to make a personal choice about what we will do in the face of wrongdoing. Will we intercede & try to negotiate & help resolve? Will we stand by & do nothing because we don't want to get involved? Will we do our best?

Unless the balance scales tip in favour of love, kindness, generosity & personal involvement I don't see a future for the human race at the moment. "I'm alright Jack" just isn't going to solve the problems that face us. Neither is putting up walls & boundaries. They won't keep us safe  & they demean us.

The Power of Music

I'm listening to piano music. I love music. I think it in my head as it's playing, I know the tunes so well, I feel the rhythm in my body & have to respond physically. I used to play quite a few of the pieces. Sadly now my hands have lost their strength & mobility & my brain has forgotten much of what I learnt as a child & teenager. I used to love to dance too. 

My point is that music puts me in a wonderful calm place. A place where I feel happy. A place where I can remember years playing the piano & enjoying an eclectic selection of different music. Mostly I remember walking to my piano lessons with a wonderful spinster whose name I have forgotten. A woman who made me love getting lost in the music. Without her I doubt I would love classical music so much. I remember practising for hours in the unused front room - too hot in the summer with the windows open & freezing cold in the winter. My parents weren't well off. I don't know how they afforded the lessons. But they gave me a truly wonderful gift that I can never repay.

Music still means a lot to me. I have got a Kursweil piano. Although it has weighted keys & a full 7 octaves, it isn't anything like the feel of a real piano. So I don't persevere. I don't practice to get my skills back. I didn't expect it to be so hard. I thought muscle memory would kick in. I always wanted a baby grand, but that's an excuse.

Music therapy relaxes you & lifts your emotions. It can help reduce anxiety and depression, help maintain speech and language, is helpful at the end of life, enhances quality of life and has a positive impact on carers. In dementia it can decrease a patient's agitation and improve communication. 

My grandsons go to clubs & dance to music that is completely different to the music I know. It's electronic. It's remixed by the DJ's. It's very percussive. There are dozens of types. It seems to me that it's the beat that matters more than an actual tune. The combination of the beat, & the dance synchs with heartbeat. There is some really interesting research into the effects of music on the body. Music & dance is beneficial.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1050173821000700#sec0016

Music is the best medicine for the soul. I wonder if dictators listen to music. If they did, would they start wars? Would they be cruel?

Acknowledgement, Apologies & Forgiveness.

No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. There are always different perceptions & ways of looking at things. Sometimes we say & do things in the heat of the moment, or thoughtlessly, that we wish we hadn't. If you don't think that applies to you then you are seriously misguided, deluded even.

Some of us are quick to acknowledge when we have made a mistake. Sometimes it may take a while to realise a mistake has been made. Ultimately it is important to understand that we have been wrong in thought, deed, or inaction. When that happens, not only should we acknowledge it to ourselves, but to others if they are involved. Trying to escape responsibility for our words, actions or inactions helps no one, least of all ourselves. It is important to recognise our own fallibility.

I do wonder about apologies though. Yes, I do tend to apologise for my mistakes & misdemeanors. I find the thought that I may have done something wrong, or worse, hurt someones feelings, difficult to deal with. But more & more I wonder whether the currency of apology has been devalued. It seems to me that sometimes apologies are glib, not genuine, just a way to take the heat out of the moment. On the other hand occasionally, when all that is needed is a genuine apology, one is withheld. I'm thinking, for example, about NHS mistakes. The fear of law suits means that medics are told not to apologise. For an apology to be meaningful It has to be genuine so that the recipient can accept it. 

We all have that inner bullshit detector. We tend to know when someone is evading responsibility or being honest.

When someone makes a real apology we have to find a way to genuinely accept it & forgive. It's a two way street with obligations on both parts. All of this is a problem because our emotions are involved. Emotions tend to blur reality & sometimes lead to irrational behaviour. If something has hurt us physically or emotionally we have to try to overcome that in order to accept that a mistake was made & the perpetrator is sorry. It's a big deal on both sides. I would argue that it shows the best of humanity.

 

Anger gets us nowhere. Anger changes nothing for the better. Anger hurts the angry person more than the person they are angry at. Anger is a bitter pill to swallow. 

Humanity has made huge progress, but unless we can learn to acknowledge, apologise & forgive we are still living in caves of our own making.

 

Philanthropy & Generosity

Does the "philanthropy" of the wealthy redistribute wealth & do good? No, not really. 

"A lot of elite philanthropy is about elite causes. Rather than making the world a better place, it largely reinforces the world as it is. Philanthropy very often favours the rich". 

"In the US, which statistics show to be the most philanthropic of nations, barely a fifth of the money donated by big givers goes to the poor. A lot goes to the arts, sports teams and other cultural pursuits, and half goes to education and healthcare." Elite institutions benefit most from elite giving. The global 1% only give away 2.5% of their net worth.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-the-super-rich

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2022/09/27/the-forbes-philanthropy-score-2022-how-charitable-are-the-richest-americans/?

The least well off donate 4.5% of income to good causes. But we need to dig deeper into what is really a "good cause". Charity law goes back to the 1601 Charitable Uses Act. There are 4 categories of charity, relief of poverty, advancement of religion, education and other benefit to the community. I can't help feeling this is past it's sell by date & should be reviewed. The world has changed in 423 years. For example I cannot understand how independent schools can justify their charitable & tax status. Labour have backtracked about removing this & say they would be able to enforce the same tax obligations by simply mandating that private schools pay VAT and business rates.This removes having to go through the onerous process of changing the law to take away their charitable status.

Wealthy donors get tax breaks for their "generosity". Many also make sure that everyone knows how "generous" they are. Most obviously in the arts & sport. For example The Neubauer family make very sure that you know they sponsor the Met opera live streaming.

For all these reasons it is arguable that charitable giving by "ordinary" people is far more generous, better supports charities with real need, & re-distributes wealth, far more than elite giving. "Children in Need" for example has raised more than £1 billion for disadvantaged children & young people between 1980 - 2023.

Some British charities are very good at arranging fund raising spectaculars.

https://tfn.scot/lists/the-UKs-25-biggest-fundraising-events 

My issue with this is that it is hugely biased. The top 4 are Cancer charities. 15 of the 25 charities are Cancer charities. Only 5 are for children & young people. Only 4 are other health charities. For this reason I never give to cancer charities. I try to give to smaller niche charities. Direct debits help them to plan knowing they have an income stream. Big donations can help charities deal with emergency situations. 

 

The US is 6th. The UK is 8th.

I also think it is important to know how much a charity spends on overheads & how they raise money. I personally object to "Chugging" - persuading people to fill in direct debit forms so that they can make monthly donations to a charity. I never give, whether its in the street or on my doorstep.

 

  

 

Refugees & Population Movements

Homo Sapiens began their migration out of Africa about 60,000 years ago. That should make us think on many levels. For a start we are obviously all descended from what were, presumably, black Africans. So racial discrimination seems rather silly & pointless. At that time there were no borders. There was just land & hunter gatherer people. Borders are a human construct. The first border was established in 1278 for Andorra. Our present system is only 350 years old. The British and French drew the modern borders of the Middle East, the borders of Africa, in Asia after the independence of the British Raj and French Indochina and the borders of Europe after World War I as victors, as a result of the Paris treaties. 

Now we build walls & have armed soldiers on border crossings. We spend vast amounts of money trying to keep people in or out. People have always moved around to try to improve their life chances. People are aspirational & often brave. Trying to stem the tide of population movement, for whatever reason, goes against an inherent instinct in people. If life conditions are bad, we try to make them better. We don't just accept. It's a survival instinct, not just for the individual, but for the generations to follow.

If you accept my premise, you have to seriously consider the validity of what countries & governments are doing today in the face of population movements due to war, dictatorships, climate change, famine & lack of the basic necessities of life. We must find a way to deal with this equitably because it is going to get worse. The world is more unstable than for a very long time. Instability due to War, Famine & Climate Change is not going to go away. Some places on earth are going to be uninhabitable.

I have no faith in the United Nations ability to deal with this for two main reasons. Firstly there is a worrying amount of corruption in the UN. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/jan/22/united-nations-development-programme-undp-bribery-claims-iraq-aid-project  I also think that the fact that countries like Russia & China have the power of veto means that decision making is flawed & voting always results in compromise & inaction. Not particularly happy about the USA veto either.

I'm not a politician. But I think I'm reasonably intelligent. It seems to me that the present course of action is unsustainable & will ultimately cause even more death, destruction & upheaval. Maybe that is desirable to some? Are we, individually, going to tolerate living with the impact of that on other people who want the same good life that we have? Personally I can't.

I don't know if my solution is viable. But for what it's worth, this is it.

I think that trying to get a truly international agreement about dealing with population migration in a humane & equitable way is impossible. So I think we should focus on getting an agreement in Europe. Our lives are ruled by algorithms. Surely it is possible to consider factors like habitable land mass, population size, demographics, infrastructure, wealth & resources and come up with a plan for the assimilation of migrants in a fair way. Each country should take the number of migrants as determined by the calculation. Some countries, like Germany, need migrants because of their demographics. Some countries, like the UK have a relatively small land mass & are islands, so goods have to be imported.

We need fresh thinking. Now. Before this extremely difficult problem results in civil unrest or worse.