The British Government has just signed away the largest privatisation deal in NHS history. [1] Despite the importance of this event, swathes of the press are more concerned with the Jeremy Clarkson case, Real Media says.
Kam Sandhu, spokeswoman for Real Media, said: “The 5 billionaires that own three-quarters of the press are not concerned about privatisation: they don’t use these services. It is these people and the rest of the 1% that are raking in money, hand over fist, buying up vital public services and turning them into financial assets.”
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is the largest and most audacious corporate trade deal to ever be attempted, and many NGOs believe it would only speed up the privatisation frenzy, containing mechanisms that could sanction states for not opening their public sector up for competition. TTIP has been described as an attack on democracy. [2]
TTIP is created in meetings between corporate lawyers and politicians, behind closed doors. We only know about this deal from leaks and whistleblowers – not least WikiLeaks who have broken more leaks than the entire mainstream press. [3] This shows how the corporate capture of information serves to protect the interests of the 1%, campaigners believe.
But they also remind that privatisation is nothing new: Private Finance Initiative was first rolled out in the early 1990s. [4] The scheme under which private companies finance, build and own infrastructure, then lease it back to the public sector has come under heavy criticism for years for being many times more expensive than public procurement. The scandal of PFI has gone underreported by the mainstream press.
Real Media also draw attention to who the government is selling our services off to. Not only is it back-door privatisation abhorrent, but contracts are being given to firms that often fail to meet the most basic expectations.For instance the fraud allegations against Serco [5] and Capita have such a poor reputation they have been dubbed ‘Crapita’.[6] Plus G4s, they are infamous for failing to live up to its obligations during the Olympics and detaining child prisoners in occupied Palestine.[7]
Campaigners also want to celebrate the many critical and independent journalists that have been reporting on the cronyism and inefficiency of these privatisation schemes among other things, and will be launching an aggregator website for alternative news in early April.
More Info: Real Media’s Anti-Daily Mail week focuses on the following themes:·
Monday 16th: corporate influence undermining democracy·
Tuesday 17th: climate change·
Wednesday 18th: austerity increasing inequality to record levels·
Thursday 19th: privatisation of healthcare and other public services·
Friday 20th: the arms industry’s interests driving the war on terror·
Saturday 21st: human rights
Further reading:[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-sell-out-tories-sign-largest-5323402
[2] https://rosalux-europa.info/publications/books/TTIP_EN/
[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_assange_why_the_world_needs_wikileaks/transcript [4] https://newint.org/blog/2013/05/15/pfi-schools-hospitals/
[5] https://rt.com/news/serco-uk-fraud-scandal-423/
[6] https://wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/crapita-comes-to-barnet-barnet-goes-to.html
