The Grumpy Vegan enjoys reading authors whose work he simultaneously agrees and disagrees with. It challenges ones thinking. George Monbiot is one of those writers as is Andrew Sullivan. Madeline Bunting is another.
Recently, Monbiot wrote a column in The Guardian, “This great free-market experiment is more like a corporate welfare scheme,” that I particularly liked. Here’s the beginning:
After my column last week, several people wrote to point out that the neoliberal project – which demands a minimal state and maximum corporate freedom – actually relies on constant government support. They are, of course, quite right. The current financial crisis, caused by a failure to regulate financial services properly, is being postponed by government bail-outs. The US federal reserve has reduced its lending rate to the commercial banks, while the Bundesbank organised a €3.5bn rescue of the lending company IKB. This happens whenever the banks suffer the consequences of the freedom they demand. But over the past week an even starker example has emerged.
In Britain the split loyalties of the major political parties have created a hybrid system of public provision. If it left public services intact, the party in power would be roasted by the corporate media, but if it attempted full-scale privatisation, it would be booted out of office. So the last Conservative government devised a plan that would keep both sides if not exactly happy, then at least totally bewildered. They called it the private finance initiative, or PFI. Corporations would build and run our schools, hospitals, roads and prisons, and rent them to the state. This, the Tories maintained, would enable costs to be cut, while ensuring that public services remained free of charge.
At first Labour opposed this scheme. Alistair Darling warned in opposition that “apparent savings now could be countered by the formidable commitment on revenue expenditure in years to come”. But as the 1997 election approached, Labour sought to prove that it was more sympathetic to business than the Tories were. Two months after the party took office, the health secretary, Alan Milburn, announced that “when there is a limited amount of public-sector capital available, as there is, it’s PFI or bust”. From then on, the only money the NHS could rely on for capital projects belonged to the private sector.
