As a result of last night’s storms, 900,000 tons of raw sewage…I’ll say that again: 900,000 tons of raw sewage…poured into the Thames and the London streets, killing massive numbers of fish and generally filling the place up with, well, shit.
The last time this was a news headline was in the middle ages. So why’s it happening now ?
Another question: why is our postal system no longer the envy of the world (as it was 10 years ago when Michele first arrived), and instead the laughing-stock of the world ?
Here’s another one: why is British public transport worse now than it has ever been…well at least since the invention of the train ?
What about the health service – why is it so crap these days (a value judgement that I can back up wih some pretty bloody convincing stats ) ?
Well, I don’t know. But one piece of evidence that is common to all of the problems is…privatisation.
Let’s just take the floods/sewage.
Never in my life have I heard anything like this. The reason is that, until privatisation, the job of the water board (as was), was to make the water system work properly. Now, it’s to ensure that the share-holders make an ever increasing profit. How do you keep increasing your profits ?
- Pay your workers less
- Don’t be so meticulous with the “day to day” jobs (like cleaning storm drains, fixing rail tracks etc etc
- Make your business more efficient – (by sacking the overly heavy management layers…oops no, sorry, even though they are paid an order of magiture higher than the skilled people on the front-line, they are worth far more…probly)
- Ditching all of these luxurious things like holidays with pay for workers and contracts
- Not making “environmental” concessions to sate the liberal lefties (tree hugging tossers). You can’t stop progress. The needs of the planet (and its inhabitants) should be secondary to thos of a healthy free market. Oh wait, we are inhabitants of the planet…fuck us, we are expendable in the name of business…but not the liberal, commie, “planet”.
