Neo liberalism, see NHS thread in news for more details. Wizzy seems to think I invented it though, or it doesn't exist.
When the Carillion signboards began to appear on building sites in the Blair era, I suspected something fishy was going on. Carillion wasn't a real word.
It wasn't anyone's name and it didn't mean anything. And it probably wasn't really a company either.
I knew I was supposed to believe that the Thatcher era had begun a new age of freedom, but it looked to me more like a new age of money-making, in which nobody was really responsible for anything any more.
And so it is. Complain to the BBC about one of its biased programmes, and your complaint is actually handled by an outfit called Capita. I say handled. I mean stonewalled.
I am not sure if any of the responsible people at the BBC ever even find out that a complaint has been made against them. They certainly don't change their ways.
Somehow the same outfit is also in charge of the great failure which is Army recruiting.
And I think this versatile body pursues the parents of children who play truant from schools.
Ah, yes, schools. They are mostly 'academies' now, run by mysterious 'trusts' and financed by a government office which is almost impossible to find or question.
As far as I can see, when a school becomes an 'academy', the first thing that happens is the head teacher buys a big new house – in the same way that directors of privatised rail-operating companies often seem to acquire villas in the Caribbean.
Rivers of public gold can be poured quite legally into the pockets of people who do not seem to do anything especially good in return for the huge payments they attract.
What is so good about all this? I'm sick of hearing about how long it took to get a telephone in the days of nationalisation.
So it did, but that was partly because it was just before new technology allowed a huge expansion in phone lines.
And have these people tried getting anything out of free, privatised BT? If you want any formerly public service, it's now always an agency or a service company or a call centre.
Actually, I like the public sector, the old sort, of town clerks, coal boards and men in peaked caps.-----------
I put the above up in news and asked wizzy if was more lefty fantasy. He declined to respond so I'll reveal the author here.
PETER HITCHENS: Oh, for our lost world of town clerks and men in peaked caps where everything workedhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... -caps.html
