Ed Vaizey - "Let the Bookworms Gnaw His Entrails..."

For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy and let there be no sur-cease to his Agony till he sink in Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever and aye. 
— Curse Against Book Stealers 
Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona

The curse is pronounced against one who would steal a book. But what more torments might assail one who steals not just a book, but a whole library, or ONE HUNDRED LIBRARIES?

100 libraries have been closed down since the Con Dem "Culture Minister", Ed Vaizey, took office in 2010. As the Government has wielded its axe on public services across the country, our libraries have not been spared. At best, they might hope to survive in a twilight zone of "Information Points", where it is assumed that everyone now has access to the internet and is happy to download stuff to ipads or Kindles. Books? So last six millennia!

Yet this cultural Armageddon comes at a terrible cost and potential threat to our society. Ever since humans first gathered in the cities of Sumeria back around 2,600 BC, libraries have been a hallmark of civilised life, of access to knowledge and of the fostering of learning and citizenship. It was the loss of the great classical era libraries such as that in Alexandria that marked the decline of learning and reason that led to the superstition and persecution of free thinking during the Dark Ages of Europe. And it was the recovery of knowledge in libraries such as those of Islamic Spain and Renaissance Italy that set us on the path to the Enlightenment and the birth of the modern age. And Karl Marx of course constructed his mighty opus Capital on the tables of the British Library.

Cultural tragedy or real estate opportunity? The great
Library of Alexandria burns, c 30BC

But when times are troubled and resources scarce, the ruling class views knowledge as dispensable at best and dangerous at worst. If people know, they will question; and if they question, they might act. And so Mr Vaizey and his ilk, while decrying poor education standards and the collapse of community in their patronising "Broken Britain" strap line, are content to close libraries down in the name of efficiency savings. Google, it seems, is the way forward, copyright of the elite, monitored by their minions.

And so, as we head back to a world of superstition, half-truths and net-powered rumour, let me be the first to dust down the ancient book of curses and gladly heap them upon the brows of the morons who ascribe to themselves the custodianship of our culture.

May the worms bury deep...

VOICES FOR THE LIBRARY SITE: CLICK HERE

Strike, By Gove!

Education Secretary Michael Gove has today launched into a scathing attack on the beleaguered public sector workers who are due to go on strike on Wednesday across the UK. The strikes are to highlight plans to cut the pensions benefits and increase pension contributions of workers in schools, local authorities, and other public sector services. While the media and the Deputy Prime Minister have played up to myths about supposed "gold-plated" pensions in the public sector, the fact remains that the average pension paid out is around a paltry £5,600 p.a. - this is actually over £200 p.a. lower than the average private sector pension. The accrual rate is slightly better than the private sector, but it has long been a feature that lower pay in the public sector is compensated for by a slightly better set of pension arrangements than most private employers offer.

There is plenty of evidence the public sector pension pot is perfectly viable in the long run and stands to decline as a proportion of public spending. The Government however is determined to cut it and while claiming to still be negotiating, has essentially adopted a "take it or leave it" approach for some weeks now.

And so on Wednesday there will be a one day strike. It is likely to cause significant disruption around the country, although the nation will not be paralysed - but aside from anything else, the inconvenience caused might highlight to people just how much of the work carried out by public sector workers is not noticed - until it isn't there, when its vital role becomes very apparent.

Mr Gove however has lambasted strike leaders: "I am deeply opposed to this action, and the damage it generates," he has said, claiming the leaders of Unite and other unions are simply spoiling for a fight and keen for confrontation.


Mr Gove hasn't always felt like this. Like many Tories, it always a different matter when its his own wallet he is worried about.


Here he is on strike, trying to shut down his employer when he was a journalist back in 1989.


Sauce for the goose...

A kick up the 80s: Striking Gove - kneeling, on the left! (1989)

Fear and Loathing of Oliver Letwin

Old Etonian, Oliver Letwin, MP, the Cabinet Minister in charge of the Coalition Government's reforms of the beleaguered public sector yesterday went along to the head office of KPMG, a consultancy  firm that has ripped tens of millions of pounds out of state coffers providing "advice" on efficiency over the last two decades. With his hosts eyeing more cash as the quintessential Public Schoolboy of British politics gassed his way through a speech on how they have more work to do charging for yet more advice, Letwin declared that the public sector needs "some real discipline and some fear" among its staff to get them to work harder.

Britain's hardest worker busy instilling some fear

Oliver, a man who seems never to have held a real job in his entire life (although he does have at least one lucrative consultancy "arrangement" doubtlessly entirely in his spare time), went on to warn that without this, innovation and change in schools and hospitals just won't happen. Of course, he starts from an entirely impartial point of view, having stated in 2003 that he would rather "go out on the streets and beg" than ever have his children go to a state school.

This callous statement, made at a time when the public sector is already reeling from service cuts and job losses following the slashing of budgets to pay for the massive bailout of supposedly efficient private sector banks, misses a few obvious points.

First, given the massive amount of public services already tendered out to private providers or totally denationalised, like the railways and bus services, where are the supposed efficiencies and improvements the private sector ethos supposedly brings? Public subsidies to the rail industry, for example, have more than doubled since privatisation, leaving the much-derided state company British Rail as a paragon of good service and value for money by comparison. And with social care effectively privatised, we have in the last few weeks seen the Southern Cross care company go bust, although its clearly useless directors have walked away with millions of pounds each in their greedy, grasping pockets having capitalised its property for rent-back a few years ago - the source of their financial crisis.

Likewise, KPMG and its ilk have enjoyed literally thousands of contracts for providing consultancy advice and even running contracted out services over the last two and a half decades (since Ollie was working in Mrs Thatcher's Policy Unit) - how come they have evidently made so little progress in spite of all the invoices? Any ideas? Because Oliver Letwin's certainly don't hold up at all.

BUT Oliver does know all about public money himself - he made jolly good use of the £2,145 he claimed from our taxes to fix a leaking water pipe under his private tennis court. Of course, the poor chap had to pay it all back...when he was found out. He did keep the cash for cleaning out the septic tank - how appropriate.

Private Sector Efficiency? Tell me another one...

There is an oft repeated assumption, not only among the neoliberal right, but among many in the centre and Nu-labour infected centre-left, that two legs good, four legs bad. Or should I say "public sector waste, private sector efficient."?

The theory goes that, if maximising profit from your activities is your main focus and sole objective, you will find ways to become ever more "efficient" and "effective". At what precisely? In the final analysis, at extracting as much excess cash from your customers as possible over the actual cost of producing the service or goods you are selling. It's not exactly a particularly edifying or trustworthy nostrum, nor does it in fact follow that you will provide the best conceivable service - rather you will provide the one that gives you the best financial advantage.

The Tories' willingness to embrace this goes without saying. But why have even many of those who supposedly believe in public service been seduced into turning to the private sector to find ways to improve services to taxpayers? Whether in the form of the huge contracting companies like PWC and Crapita, which have ripped hundreds of billions of pounds from the public sector in return for poorer services (including abandoning one contracted-out Education Authority mid-contract); or in the form of consultants charging massive fees to identify savings; or whether in the form of the new owners of privatised state industries requiring ongoing government subsidies to carry out their role, as in the case of the nuclear power industry, private enterprise has in fact very little to recommend it as a guru of efficiency. Somehow, however, private effectiveness is taken as fact, in spite of the very substantial lack of evidence.

British-owned private companies on average take far more out of their profits as shareholder/owner dividends than almost any other major economy - fifty per cent more on average than US companies and nearly three times the rate of Japanese firms. meaning that other countries regularly re-invest more and consequently outperform us. In spite of poor business performance, British Boardroom salaries have rocketed to phenomenal amounts, with bonuses proliferating far beyond the banking sector alone, just as ordinary workers have been told to tighten their belts. Greed is good, it seems, if you've already supped greedily enough.

The railway industry is a case in point. By the end of the second world war, the private rail companies that ran the British rail system were more or less bankrupt, with tens of millions of pounds in accumulated debts. In 1946, the Labour Government nationalised them and turned them into British Rail, but, critically, made this new state company liable for the ongoing debts of its private predecessors. Consequently, although BR ran at an operating profit from 1947 to 1962, its requirement to pay the debts of the old owners meant it ended up making losses which had to be subsidised by the Government. After a while, with investment in new rail held back because of this, BR ended up requiring constant, ongoing public subsidies.

In spite of this, an integrated, modern, electric rail network was created. By the 1980s, a steady decline in passengers had reversed and massive investment began in the Channel Tunnel project, which was completed just before BR was split into 24 regional and network franchises and sold off to the private sector in 1994. The Conservative Government claimed that by doing this, the magic wands of the profit-seekers would drive forward ever-better rail services and cut costs, so that the taxpayer would no longer be out of pocket (albeit because of the original losses of the private sector way back in the 1940s).

But nothing could be further from the truth - rail services are no more efficient that before privatisation. Customer satisfaction has declined although transport requirements mean more people have to use the service. Our fares are among the highest in Europe. And the public subsidy at today's prices has risen from £2.3 billions in the last year of BR to £5.2 billions in 2008/9 - an increase of 126%. This has been cut in the current financial year, but will still stand at nearly 110% more than the cost of BR to the public purse.

So, with the Tories eying up more private involvement in the NHS even after the revision of the health bill, as well as seeking to widen private contracts in government as some sort of panacea for every problem, the Left need to reassert that it is not just on the basis of ethics and ideology that we want to see the state running our public services; it is also because keeping things in the public sector makes plain good business sense.

London to Wakefield service last week: nearly 20 years and £48 billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies after privatisation, East Coast railways and their rivals are still using decades old British Rail rolling stock.

Pay Up or Burn Up!

Two incidents today, separated by thousands of miles and the Atlantic Ocean, and on the face of it totally unconnected.

In Britain, Lord Browne, former CEO of the BP oil company, where he enjoyed a remuneration package of over £5 million per year latterly, delivered a report on funding support for students in Higher Education. In summary, he recommended a reduction in public support to students from £3.5 billion per annum to just £0.7 billion. On top of that, university fees will be uncapped and the average fee will need to at least double to £7,000 p.a. with some universities already indicating a likely charge of £10,000 p.a., and Oxbridge touting the idea of three times that amount. Given that the additional income earned by graduates is now estimated at around £100,000 in their entire working life, other than among those with wealthy and willing parents, or confident of high earning employment, University education will become simply unaffordable.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary claimed this afternoon that the Browne proposals would be driven forward by economic necessity. This although the UK's national debt was almost double what it currently is back in the 1960s when the Robbins report advocated free, universal higher education.

In the United States, there was this bizarre and sad story - in rural, bible-belt, God-fearing Tennessee, firefighters stood and watched a house to burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn’t paid a $75 fee. Even when Gene Cranick pleaded with the 911 operator to let him pay the fee, they refused him, turning up only to protect neighbours who had coughed up previously.
 
Last year, when the health proposals put forward by President Obama in America were being characterised as "Nazi Communism" (!), I was one of 23,000 people who joined the ironically titled Facebook group "One Million Strong Against our SOCIALIST fire departments". Starting from the premise that universal public provision of a fire service for was taken as read by everyone, the group sought to show that extending such protection to health was eminently proportionate. A number of neoCons posted to criticise the group as ludicrous on the grounds that of course fire brigades are a public service! Not even they would argue against that - at that time.

History first recorded a fire service being established in ancient Rome around 90BC by Marcus Licinius Crassus. As the Eternal City grew in size as its empire burgeoned, it's cramped space, filled with wooden buildings, was repeatedly plagued by devastating fires. Crassus bought himself some 500 slaves and gave them the  reassuring brand name of the "Familia Publica" (The Public Family). When fires started, the FP rushed to the scene and immediately set about negotiating a fee with the property owner. If a deal was struck, they would put the fire out; if not, the buildings burned.

The Romans established the first
public fire service.

Eventually, the Emperor Augustus recognised that this set up was inefficient, abolished private fire brigades and in their place set up the "Vigiles urbani" (The City Watchmen), hundreds of public servants on permanent patrol, complete with pumps, ladders, buckets and a public water system ready to extinguish fires. With the exception of the devastating conflagration of 64AD, this worked well for five centuries until the collapse of the Empire. Nothing comparable was to emerge in Europe until the 19th century.

Now, the story from Tennessee is not one of privatisation - but fees are charged separately from other local taxes and this hypothecation extends to the provision of the service. If you want the service, you pay, regardless of the consequences of non-payment. It is, quite seriously, called "pay to spray". That is disturbing in itself - but even more disturbing is the willingness of firefighters and public officials to stand idly by while the Cranicks' house burned to the ground; and the enthusiasm of right wingers to subsequently praise their inaction. Although the $75 fee was not part of an insurance scheme, but a flat charge, they refused to let Mr Cranick pay on the spot - something that not even old Marcus Licinius Crassus would have done!

So what's the connection here between British students and a house-fire in Tennessee?

It is the decline in the concept of universal public services, provided to all citizens. Although in material terms both countries, even in these recessionary times, are richer than they were 30 years ago, services that were taken then as a given are in real jeopardy. From Thatcher and Reagan onwards, it has become an implicit assumption that the private sector is inherently more effective than the public. Motivated by profit, it is argued, people in the private field will deliver a better service. The notion that you might want to work in the public services because you want to deliver a decent service to the public without trying to maximise your return from their wallets is scornfully dismissed as the delusions of idealists or the excuses of lazy folk unable to hack it in the world of free market competition.

Is there any proof of this being anywhere near a correct approach to what society needs?

Never mind the poor Cranicks' torched home. What about those other collapsing houses - houses of cards like Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Northern Rock and RBS, private companies whose unlimited pursuit of greed presaged the economic collapse that only record public spending prevented from turning into financial chaos?

Or the hundreds of millions of pounds ripped from the pockets of the British public by huge "service organisations" like Serco and Crapita, who have taken on government contracts in almost any sector you care to mention - schools, cleaning, construction, hospitals, railways - at utterly massive profit margins in return for pisspoor services? Or with the grossly misnamed "public-private partnerships" that have mortgaged public assets for decades into the future? Or the "regeneration" of Iraq, where billions of dollars of American and Iraqi citizens' money was sequestrated by a wide range of grasping private contractors?

Western politics are build on a dangerous lie.  Denying all the evidence of the recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, or the continuing devastation of the Indonesian rainforest - the "lungs of the world" - by private logging firms, or the successful lobbying by the nuclear industry in the UK for £1.7 billion a year of tax money to clean up its radioactive mess; we are told repeatedly that this is the best, indeed the only, way to do things. There is no alternative.

Really? Tell that to the young people in Britain now facing either decades of debt or lives denied the opportunities and fulfillment of higher education - things enjoyed in the past by the Cabinet of Millionaires who now say such luxuries can no longer be afforded.

And tell that to the Cranick family as they search the ruins of their destroyed home for the charred remains of their three dogs and cat.