PFI
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David Johnson
- Posts: 7844
- Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am
Re: PFI
Yep dodgy off balance sheet accounting that started with John Major, followed by Blair and Brown and carried on by Cameron and Osborne.
Blair and Brown made a rod for the Labour party's back when they realised that the only way they were going to get support from the 80%+ Tory press was to appear as Tory Lite which is what Labour did. That's why we heard nothing but "prudence, prudence, prudence" from Gordon Brown for the first years in power.
Given the undertakings that Brown had given to have any chance of getting elected, he couldn't then throw them out of the window so this dodgy accounting practice was used to repair the hospital infrastructure, for example, which the independent Kings Fund said was close to collapse.
Cameron and Osborne are in a similar position I suspect but for a different reason.
Osborne promised that cutting the deficit was the number 1 target and that he planned to balance the books in a parliament. He has already failed on that one announcing at the last budget that austerity will go on to 2017 at the very earliest. His whole plan was based on the concept of sacking hundreds of thousands of public sector workers which would then free the private sector to grow and use up the unemployed public sector workers. Needless to say this didn't work which is why he is having to borrow more as the tax take drops and unemployment bills go up.
He can't borrow the money to stimulate growth without buggering up Plan A which although it is already buggered up, he is still pathetically hanging on to it. Instead he is going down the PFI route having setup 40 contracts in March alone.
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Blair and Brown made a rod for the Labour party's back when they realised that the only way they were going to get support from the 80%+ Tory press was to appear as Tory Lite which is what Labour did. That's why we heard nothing but "prudence, prudence, prudence" from Gordon Brown for the first years in power.
Given the undertakings that Brown had given to have any chance of getting elected, he couldn't then throw them out of the window so this dodgy accounting practice was used to repair the hospital infrastructure, for example, which the independent Kings Fund said was close to collapse.
Cameron and Osborne are in a similar position I suspect but for a different reason.
Osborne promised that cutting the deficit was the number 1 target and that he planned to balance the books in a parliament. He has already failed on that one announcing at the last budget that austerity will go on to 2017 at the very earliest. His whole plan was based on the concept of sacking hundreds of thousands of public sector workers which would then free the private sector to grow and use up the unemployed public sector workers. Needless to say this didn't work which is why he is having to borrow more as the tax take drops and unemployment bills go up.
He can't borrow the money to stimulate growth without buggering up Plan A which although it is already buggered up, he is still pathetically hanging on to it. Instead he is going down the PFI route having setup 40 contracts in March alone.
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Arginald Valleywater
- Posts: 4288
- Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 2:40 am
Re: PFI
Partly why it costs nigh on ?50 to change a toilet roll in our local hospital!