The outcry against super-injunctions on reporting private lives is about selling papers to make money

The newspapers’ outcry over the super-injunction against reporting which footballer had an affair has nothing to do with the public interest and everything to do with trying to sell papers and make money. Bank executives and footballers are over-paid and under-regulated, but knowing who they had sex with does nothing to sort that.

As I said in my last post (on the injunction taken out by banker Fred Goodwin) the appeals to the public interest are just playing with words. The public interest refers to things that affect the public’s interests – i.e which might harm them if they didn’t know them, or which they have a right to know (e.g because taxpayers’ money is involved). It does not mean whatever gossip some of the public might be interested in.

If newspapers win their battle to keep reporting sex gossip then the public interest will be seriously harmed as media coverage which should be about serious issues that do affect us all will go to who shagged who instead.

I’m pretty sure the original tweets on Giggs will have been sent by Sun or New of the World journalists who were looking to get round the injunction so they could keep publishing their grubby “investigations” of celebrities private lives to make money from them. The twitter users who then responded to the supposed threat to "online freedom" when Giggs tried to sue the original culprits were unwittingly helping out Murdoch and Kelvin Mackenzie and their kind. That's apart from the fact that there's no more moral right for anyone to make other peoples' private lives public online than there is anywhere else.

The press should be pushing for the lifting of some Ministry of Defence D-notices which have been used to cover up issues relating to torture and failure to equip troops properly and ‘commercial confidentiality’ clauses in PFI and PPP contracts which are used to prevent the public knowing how much of their money is going to PPP consortia.

No amount of sex gossip will prevent another financial crisis or reduce the unfairness that sees bankers and footballers paid millions while the average person in the UK earns around £20,000 per year, with many much, much worse off – unemployed, in poverty, or homeless.

Only re-regulation of the banks will prevent another financial crisis. This would have to include a legal ban on high street savings banks being involved in high risk investment banking, a ban on financial derivatives such as the CDOs which package good debt with bad – and a delay of say 10 years for receiving bonuses to force bank executives to look to the long term. The deregulation from the 80s on has forced them to prioritise high profits and high share dividends this quarter or else be replaced by someone who will.

To deal with inequality and unfair pay the minimum wage needs to keep rising above the rate of inflation; and there could be a 90% tax on individual income above £250,000 a year.

For either to work we need to close down the tax havens which allow the wealthiest and the biggest firms to both avoid tax and keep their financial dealings secret so that they can’t be effectively regulated by anyone.

Why cuts to the PFI 'Schools for the Future' programme should be welcomed

The BSF School building programme involves PFIs that lead to tax rises and cuts in the number of fully trained teachers, for the benefit of big companies - it's welfare fraud for the richest

A PPP built school - new and shiny, but over-priced by annual payments so high that it results in less teachers and less books being available

The cuts to the to the “Building Schools for the Future” programme are one public spending cut we should welcome.

The row over cuts to the programme has ignored the fact that every school and hospital built in the UK since the mid-90s has been funded by ‘Private Finance Initiatives’, invented by Conservative Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in the mid-90s and re-branded as ‘Public Private Partnerships’ by Blair and Brown (1). The costs are many times more than funding construction from taxation or loans, as Professor Allyson Pollock and others have shown. Only 30% of teachers surveyed by the EIS in 2007 said PPP provided value for money(2).

PFI means cuts in the number of fully trained teaching staff in the new schools and shortages of money for other government spending and so increased public debt, taxes or service cuts. It also usually involves maintenance contracts in which private contractors get to massively overcharge for so much as replacing a light –bulb (which cannot be replaced by staff under the PFI contracts) – and to take forever to do it as the various contractors and sub-contractors have to haggle over who has the right to do it.

Every school planned under the BSF programme is funded by PFI or PPP contracts (3) – (6). We should be welcoming the scrapping of this gravy train for the big firms who are the primary contractors in PFIs and PPPs and demanding that where the new government funds the building of new schools they from taxation or loans, either of which is much better value for money.

The question now is whether the Conservatives really cut the programme because it was bad value for money, or whether they’re planning to negotiate new ‘public private partnerships’ in which big firms’ donations go to Conservative party rather than Labour party funds in return for them getting to fleece taxpayers, including teachers and nurses.

If they’re really serious about saving on wasteful spending they could invest a bit in hiring lawyers and inspectors to look for breaches of contract in the short term in order to get us out of over-priced and under-performing PFI and PPP deals and save us a fortune in increased taxes and cut services in future.

(1) = Guardian 08 Jul 2010 ‘Public anger grows over scrapped school-building programme’http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/08/schools-building-michael-gove-public-anger

(2) = Herald (Glasgow) 08 July 2007 ‘School PPP scheme a 'catastrophe' for pupils’,http://www.heraldscotland.com/school-ppp-scheme-a-catastrophe-for-pupils-1.827201

(3) = The PPP Journal, Issue 58, September 2007, http://www.publicservice.co.uk/pub_contents.asp?id=277&publication=The%20PPP%20Journal&content=2931&content_name=Education/Building%20Schools%20for%20the%20Future

(4) = Guardian 27 Jan 2009 ‘Government may have to take on risk of PFI deals’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jan/27/pfi-deals-bsf-government-underwriting (covers BSF programme involving PFIs)

(5) = Balfour Beatty Press Release 21 Jun 2010 ‘Balfour Beatty appointed preferred bidder for £231 million Derby Building Schools for the Future project’, http://www.balfourbeatty.co.uk/bby/media/press/2010/2010-06-21/

(6) = European Services Strategy Unit,  ‘Building Schools for the Future’, http://www.european-services-strategy.org.uk/outsourcing-library/building-schools-for-the-future/

The future business, the big society and efficiency savings – political euphemisms and what they actually mean

Morlocks - Is Gordon Brown's policy of only travelling forwards through time ignoring the seriousness of the Morlock menace?

Listening to the party leaders’ election campaign speeches reminds me of great euphemisms from the near and distant past, like “strategic interrogation” and “tactical questioning” (both used as euphemisms for torture by Coalition forces’ press officers in briefings to journalists in Iraq).

“The Future Business”

Good to hear that Gordon Brown is “in the future business”. That’s lucky because as yet no means of travelling backwards in time has been discovered, though it may risk losing him the Dr. Who vote.

I also have a policy of travelling linearly through time - and solely in a forwards direction.

It’s hard to imagine that any candidate or party leader is likely to say “No – i disagree – we should go backwards into the past as fast and as far as possible and damn the inconvenience, the dangers, the costs and the sheer impossibility of doing so –it’s the only way to counter the Morlock menace, which the other parties and candidates are dangerously complacent about”.

What Gordon is really saying is “don’t judge us on our record in government, judge us on what we promise we’ll do in future.”

“The Big Society”

David Cameron’s Big Society policy of encouraging volunteer work would be great if he was suggesting it as an addition to well funded public services rather than as a replacement for them. (Volunteers do some amazing work and are often as good as professionals at it – sometimes better).

The reality of the Conservative ‘encourage volunteering’ policy though is that the wealthy and well educated will be allowed to set up their own schools and run their own local services. Having done so are they likely to be willing to pay enough tax to fund public services for others which they won’t use themselves, but are for people who aren’t so fortunate? I doubt it. The usual conservative ideology is to ask why those struggling in poverty or on low incomes don’t do everything for themselves.

As a result state schools and hospitals will become hugely over-stretched and under-funded – like those in America, while those who can afford it get private care or run their own schools – a two tier health service and a two tier education system.

‘Big society’ in this case is just a euphemism for ‘small, underfunded public services, which most of the well-off but selfish people i represent don’t want to pay for so unwashed oiks can use them’.

To be fair Alastair Darling has also said that if Labour are re-elected there will be a 25% cut in public spending, cuts, in his own words, bigger than those under Thatcher. So neither main party can be trusted not to cut vital public services.

“Efficiency Savings”

While talking a great deal about necessary cuts and efficiency savings none of the leaders of the three biggest parties – Labour , Conservatives or Liberal Democrats – have said a word about scrapping Private Finance Initiatives or Public Private Partnerships, which are the equivalent of hugely over-priced hire purchase schemes, resulting in increased costs along with service cuts.

None of them have suggested renationalising the railways, nor even ending massive public subsidies to the privatised rail companies.

Nor has there been any suggestion of cracking down on huge cost over-runs on British Aerospace contracts for the Ministry of Defence, nor of ending the ‘Export Credit Guarantees’ which ensure that if BAE sells arms to a foreign dictatorship which then doesn’t pay for them taxpayers foot the bill.

No “efficiency savings” in the world could save taxpayers as much money as scrapping these three main areas of waste. Every government and opposition in history has claimed it could save huge amounts of money but running public services more efficiently – what happens in practice is some cuts and un-necessary reorganisation which merely causes temporary chaos.