PFI Deals and the NHS

'Private Finance Initiatives' are one of those scandalous realities that nobody except Private Eye seems to care about. With any luck more stories about it will appear in the mainstream media and people will notice. Take today's story on the BBC about how PFI firms will make a 23 billion pound profit from the NHS over the next 30 years. Think how many hospitals, operations and drugs could be bought for that much money... money which has come from the taxpayer to help the NHS, yet finds its way into the pockets of shareholders and CEOs.

While it is true that the current Labour government have increased NHS funding, most of the increase has been absorbed by private companies doing things much more expensively than they could have been done under a completely public NHS. PFI deals are great if you want to use figures from one particular year to impress voters, but they are much less impressive in the long term. If only the bigger picture was shown to the public then perhaps the madness would come to an end? The figures speak for themselves and are useful ammunition in the argument against involving the private sector in healthcare. While I am one of those absolutely opposed to it on moral grounds, it's always useful to have financial grounds to convince people who think with their wallets (or taxes).

I took the opportunity to sign-up as a member of Keep Our NHS Public. Let's hope this group gains some momentum and saves our public NHS before it's too late. Once it's all sold off then we face a greater struggle to get it back - just look at the railways...

Wind farms

Polly Toynbee's article in today's Guardian about wind farms makes interesting reading. NIMBYs are usually more of a bother than a benefit, since bad things (out of town supermarkets, nuclear power stations, airport expansions, etc) get pushed through anyway while good things get blocked. Wind farms are a case in point.

Being anti-wind farm is the default Tory position, whatever David Cameron may say. I've seen this effect myself with my parents. While naturally quite green, being paid-up Conservative members and reading the Telegraph and Spectator have taken their toll. They now have the strange flat-Earth style faith in bad science that Polly describes in the article. I guess it's inevitable if you just believe the right-wing press, but it bothers me that the Conservatives pretty much brainwash their members. 'Group think' and all that. Of course, the power of the right does come from ignorance and fear, but allowing this to help destroy the planet is going too far.

So, what are we to do? As the article says, a firm hand from Westminster is a good idea. It saddens me to see that some LibDem councils are just as bad and block wind farms too - they should be slapped-down for it. However, discipline from parties themselves doesn't go far enough. I think that wind farms and green energy in general should be made almost impossible for local councils to block. This sounds quite draconian, but let's face it, most people won't want one on their doorstep. It doesn't matter that they wouldn't want a nuclear power station either - those are so universally unpopular that they get forced through anyway. No, I'm afraid to say that where politicians depend on rural votes then there is a risk that they will block wind farms whatever they think of the environmental benefits. If they are forced through by the government then the council won't lose votes since they can't block them anyway. Problem solved.

While people are dithering about with tiny numbers of wind farms we're still killing the planet. It's time to get serious about building them on a massive scale. In the end, who cares what they look like if it means we are getting clean energy? Better that than global warming or a legacy of nuclear waste left for the next thousand generations.

Saddam Hussein

So Saddam Hussein was executed yesterday. I have my reservations about the trial itself and the fairness of it, although I wouldn't expect him to be found innocent of course. Whatever the outcome of the trial though, no society that wishes to consider itself civilised has any business condemning people to death. We are responsible for this really - the government hasn't been very vocal in its criticism of course, but apart from that, we generally have a policy of not turning prisoners over to countries where they may face execution. I believe that he was being held by the Americans, but in an ideal world we may have at least tried to influence them.

Objections to the death penalty aside, no good can come from this. A life in prison would have been a 'worse' punishment for him and wouldn't have turned him into a martyr. Also, there's bound to be knowledge that he had which has gone with him to his grave that we've lost - locations of graves, who helped him in certain crimes, and so on. Killing him is an act of vengeance rather than justice, just like every other execution.

Church and State

Hello, and sorry for the lack of posts recently. Normal service has been resumed.

The separation of church and state should be one of the fundamental objectives of anyone who supports democracy, so we should all take note when something happens that works against this goal. I noticed this story today about a couple of Christians campaining against homosexuals who have just received an out of court settlement from the police after getting into trouble for calling 'homosexual practice' morally wrong.

The article does not give a few key details, such as where the couple wanted the leaflets displayed. We can assume that it was a council property though, hence them asking Wyre Borough Council permission. It is therefore completely correct that the council refused, since it is not their place to help any church distribute its propaganda. The leaflets that the couples were objecting to were simply informing gay people of their rights, and were therefore exactly the sort of thing that the council should be distributing.

Let's leave aside for a moment the fact that the views of these people is bigoted, unpleasant, and down to some deeply objectionable beliefs. What we should be concerned with is the fact that they felt that they had to 'counter' a leaflet explaining someones rights with one containing their bigotry, which doesn't help anyone at all. Even worse, they expected facilities run by the council (and therefore at the tax payers expense) to aid them and their religion. This is fundamentally wrong, and the council were correct to refuse. I would argue that the police involvement went too far since free speech is important, and this ended-up being counter-productive. However unfair this may have been though, the state has no business distributing religious propaganda. I would encourage anyone living in Fleetwood to remind the council of this.

For a while now the public have seemed strangely happy with the fact that 'suspected terrorists' can be held without charge for an increasing amount of time. The government would like us to think that three months is reasonable. This has resulted in the somewhat scary ability of the government to lock anyone up as they feel like it without even having to say why. That's a power I can't see being abused, oh no.

This is all bad of course, but consider the poor Americans for a minute. The government there can lock you up on a whim indefinitely of course, thanks to their handy secret CIA prisons and popular Cuban bases. That was bad enough, but now they're about to pass a law that will allow them to torture you too. Granted, they won't be chopping off your hands, but they'll do pretty much everything else that doesn't leave a mark. Reading the linked article might well make you angry with the disgusting things some of their politicians are saying, but the scary thing is that they say them at all. Yeah, Democrats voting against this are 'helping the terrorists' by saying the government shouldn't torture people are they? Well, good on them. Not that the Democrats are much better of course, but at least they're not quite so obviously keen as fascism as the Republicans.

The fact that a 'cilivilsed' society is changing the law (and the Geneva Convention) to allow torture is appalling. Torture obviously doesn't work - you'd admit to anything if you were subjected to enough pain. Not only that, but if the US do it, there's the green light to all of their enemies to do it too. They've lost any high ground they may have had. As someone on Digg has said: "The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes." If you remember nothing else from that article, remember this.. And one more wise comment: When you allow your government to take away the rights of one group, you are destroying your own rights. If you believe this is a good thing then you do not deserve those rights.

Meanwhile, if you're a Christian and a terrorist, hey, it's ok, no torture or secret prisons for you!. Nice to see the same standards apply to everyone, isn't it?

Planes

Nobody can have escaped the news this morning about the 'disrupted terror plot'. Apparently 21 people have been arrested over a plot to destroy 10 planes bound for the US with explosives hidden in drinks containers. The immediate result is that lots of flights have been cancelled, and security on those that have flown as been tightened (no hand luggage, etc).

Of course nobody has actually been charged yet, so please forgive me if I'm slightly cynical of todays events. It's a good thing they've put our brand-new 'alert level' up to 'critical' isn't it? That's the highest it can go of course - I'm not sure what they'd do during an actual attack. Also, I don't know about you, but I'm so glad that those alert levels are there. I mean, I was thinking of going to the shops later, but at 'critical' alert level I think I'll just cower in my bed under the duvet. What a load of nonsense! These alert levels are simply a tool for scaring the public and keeping them under control.

Is it a massive coincidence that John Reid talked about 'imminent' attacks yesterday, and how we may be 'forced to give up our freedoms? This seems like a good way to make people accept it doesn't it? Of course, Reid knew what would happen today when he gave that interview, which is handy. It's good that these things crop up when public disquiet over real events and our governments complicitness in them, such as Lebanon and Iraq, start getting tricky for the government to ignore. It's almost like it's deliberate isn't it?

Galloway on SkyNews

I have mixed feelings about George Galloway. He doesn't spend enough time in parliament (last time I checked, only one MP had a worse voting record - Tony Blair) so I would feel slightly robbed if he was my MP. His Big Brother appearance was also ill-advised. However, his position as an MP does get him a platform, and his views really do need to be heard in these days when public figures shy away from having opinions, especially if they are the truth.

Have a look at this interview he did on Sky News. All credit to Sky for letting it play out I suppose, but nearly every point he makes is excellent. The last few seconds are especially good and are an excellent point.