A comment that is worthy of a post

Edward Spalton, commenting on an earlier post about the Forensic Science Service, made remarks which are worthy of repitition.

"PRIVATISATION is the outcome of an EU-inspired policy known as "The Enabling State". That is, the state commissions services to be run by private contractors, competing in an EU-wide "market" for every possible type of service.

It is now about 4 years since the East Riding of Yorkshire outsourced all its administrative services to a German-owned company, Arvato, which is part of the Bertelsmann group.

The obvious outcome of this is that most of the vital infrastructure of every member state will be infiltrated by foreign-owned companies (which themselves can be sold on to other companies). The companies will owe a sort of allegiance to the EU for creating the "market" for them and be in a position to report on the internal workings of everything from District Council upwards.

One result to date is that the freehold of many British government offices have been sold off to private providers, registered in tax havens. The Inland Revenue was one of the first to do this! (I kid you not. You could not make it up!).

This is not, of course, private enterprise in the Adam Smith, free market tradition. It is a welding together of political and market power. Its proper name is corporatism and Mussolini (who knew as much as anybody about it) said it was the basis of fascism. It doesn't need the fancy uniforms, shiny boots and silly salutes.They were just window dressing to display apparent dynamism. Common Purpose (with its emphasis on "leadership" - aka the Fuehrerprinzip) provides the ideology for the lounge-suited storm troopers of the New Order. Cameron's "Big Society" is another aspect.

It is infinitely corruptible, as demonstrated by the "revolving door" by which politicians and officials leave public service and return again as directors and consultants of the firms to which they awarded contracts.

The idea is to let the gravy train run sufficiently far so that there is a adequately large, powerful politico/business class to suffocate any possible rebellion.

And the system is so opaque and diffuse that people do not know who or what to attack. The mixture of private and public functions makes it near impossible to tell 't'other from which."