Bill on privatisation

Bill

17 May 2012 at 10:17 am

Take an institution….welfare, education, prison service or any number of public services. Reduce…maybe ‘reduce’ is the wrong word…reconfigure their functions to accommodate formulae that are ‘business friendly’. (Y’know, formulas that lend themselves to being viewed in terms of simplistic ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ so that costs and potential profits can be discerned.) Then privatise.

*Up-date: Bill adds this to the debate:



"Bill

17 May 2012 at 12:07 pm

Increasing the class sizes is a primer for privatisation. Once privatised, some schools would be in a financial position to decrease class sizes again. (Note, that it’s an economic decision and not an educational one.)

Those that failed to achieve a financial position that would allow them to cut class sizes would , in conjunction with other contributory factors coming into play, find themselves constituting the second tier of a two tier eductation system.

Of course, there is every reason to believe that those schools who would fail to achieve a high enough economic performance would be spotted by would be private concerns, avoided and remain as state schools. deliberately underfunded and second rate in a (data collected, numbers crunched and scores allocated) comparison to private ones.

Water privatisation

This, from Indymedia, is what we need to be guarding against. I've grabbed a sizable chunk of their article, but it's so well expressed. The remainder can be read here. Essential reading.

" On Tuesday 4 May 2010 the Local Government Amendemnt Bill passed its first reading in New Zealand Parliament. One aspect of the Bill deals with water. While the government is denying this, the Bill allows councils to privatise water. They will be able to:

• enter into contracts with private companies to run water services for up to 35 years (the current limit is 15 years)
• allow private companies to own and control water infrastructure for the duration of these contracts (the current legislation requires councils to retain ownership and control of water)

The long-term leases the Bill allows for are the dominant model of water privatisation in the world. It is very rare for councils or governments to sell off the water asset entirely. Long term leases work in private companies favour as they can make profit from water while the public sector retains long-term costs and responsibilty. Internationally the model that has been proposed is shown to lead to higher water costs, less accountability and reduced services."

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