It’s like when you need new shoes as a kid but your dad says he’s got no money but yet spends 4 nights a week in the pub and up grades his car every 3 months but he’s got no money for shoes🤯 Why does our government act like an abusive parent?? Because they don’t care about you!!
The fact that PFI deals are expensive for the taxpayer *is the point*! They are about a transfer of taxpayer cash to the wealthy, not about some sort of efficient way to fund public projects.
We have been brainwashed to accept that the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector. When the facts/statistics proved otherwise, we find excuses or accept illogical explanations for the people representing the interests of the private sector. Are we capable of being rational in the face of continuous Capitalist propaganda?
But those 'wealthy' do the same- most large companies sell and lese back their buildings. The difference is that the manage to lease/repair contract. Which government is rubbish at. The civil service cannot fail, so there is no incentive to do a good job.
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop Where is the incentive for a private water company to do a good job? Can we stop purchasing their products? Is there a row of taps in every home that we can choose from? If they do a bad job, can the government just shut them down? Or do we taxpayers have to pay off the debts and keep things going? Same applies to all essential utilities. If they win, they win, and if they fail, they HAVE TO BE bailed out, because their services are essential to life.
Look into the recent wind farm auctions. Guaranteed strike price of double current prices. Those auctions are a licence to print money, with absolutely zero risk involved to the investors. Anything the state runs is broken.... and yet we are increasing the size of the state every year.
@@paullegend6798 State ownership is not the issue. Corruption is. I'm glad we have a state run NHS, albeit underfunded. Look at the US health insurance system run by corporations for profit. It's killing people and bankrupting them at the same time. That's why Luigi Mangione is hailed as a hero. Just look at the privatised industries in this country: they are all f**ked because they put profit before people. There would be no problem with the state running things if they were truly accountable to the people. The fact is they are bought by corporate interests. Hence all the privatisation and weak regulation. Private companies and rich individuals have bought all our politicians (because in capitalism everything is for sale, especially politicians). The people need to take back control from corporations. That means ending capitalism and getting rid of the profit motive in public services. Why auction wind farms? The state could just run them for the benefit of the people, then there's no middle man milking us for profits. Easy.
Another question is, why are we buying back rather than simply taking back, given that the pfi rip off merchants have been fleecing taxpayer for 27 years?
Exactly! Or, could have paid 1 billion, or half billion, said take it or leave it. You know the answer. Because the money goes to line the pockets of the banksters and their mates. Corruption Corruption Corruption
@@tetraquark2402How is it worse than Putin? He is a practical man despite being a violent one. It is better than Putin as long as nobody "falls" out a window and it's all done legally.
You are doing that because your nation is not good enough to be an autarky of which the second you start nationalizing any company, every company is gonna shit themself and leave. Your nation cannot survive without the trade with others as you produce insufficient food, manufactured goods, and fuel to support yourself as a service economy. Therefore, just taking stuff will destroy your nation and impoverish millions as capital flight ruins you
Those of us working on PFI schemes in the late 1990's/early 2000's were amazed the then Labour Gov't continued with and expanded PFI's when they were known to give poor value for money in the long term.
That’s Labour for you (us) nothing learned. I can’t believe they are back in government after the Blair/Brown years. The Tories badly let us down too. Time for a change methinks.
@@user-qg2bt2qt9l Agreed but New Labour used it indiscriminately. I appreciate that lessons have been learned as a result of the pitfalls realised (Kings Fund etc) but there has been talk of using PFI for the planned Thames Crossing. We are still paying tolls for the Dartford Crossing as Gordon Brown would not allow the toll to be lifted after the project had been paid for.
Spot the clue in the words "long term" and don't just blame the Tories, Labour couldn't wait to spend noth sea oil revenues fast enough. Our sovereign wealth fund went down the welfare state toilet. Now we throw money around that we borrow, £100 billion interest a year isn't it? Don't spend it on Brits though, spend it on foreigners.
I was working as a quantity surveyor during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s on Property Services Agency was in charge of maintenance on these type of properties and many other government properties. The system was not perfect but worked reasonably well, although there was some embarrassing financial irregularities that I helped uncover plus any delays or poor work was blamed on the Government. This system had two very important failures as far as Margaret Thatcher was concerned, which was the growing power of the PSA, who as many government departments at the time spent as much time growing their departments as focusing on their remit, and this compounded by the fear of these irregularities and some poor work getting covered in the press. What better way to deal with it than disband the PSA and make the new system very attractive to private companies, both issues resolved at a stroke. I attended many meetings / seminars at the time where it was clear the costs would be significantly higher and the loss of control very damaging but the political benefit was considered much more important. There was an enquiry about the financial issues but it was well known the political issues were the real driver behind much of what took place. The first step in 1998 was making the PSA bid for work against private companies, and eventually in 1993 John Major abolished the PSA and introduced his raft of privatisations and other PFI schemes on the same premise. If the issues had simply been financial irregularities they could have been resolved by prosecutions and court cases but that wouldn’t have resolved the blame game and the political power plays. Its clear this hasn’t worked out well, but the politicians at the time knew it wouldn’t, but it did take the heat off the government for many years, until the problems that were obvious to people in the various industries at the time, have become too serious to cover up any longer.
The MOD don't take care of maintenance on their own estate assets. Vivo are the contractor and, guess what, they repair nothing and just take their cash
@@Zerpentsa6598 you actually got them to come out and change it? I've been waiting 5 months for them to repair two lights. My favourite recently was after the storms some subcontractor tree surgeons had to deal with a fallen tree and there were four Vivo worker in two vans sat watching them. I wonder how much they billed for that.
@@JSmith19858 Sounds like they are waiting for the annual lifecycle charge to the public department so they can charge under that rather than their own pocket similar to another different contractor under PFI that I've dealt with to paint rooms.
In other words, another wealth transfer. Western governments are privatising themselves out of existence. Parliament is a sort of Kabuki theatre's, that is all
Can we have a video on Bliar's PFI deals for new hospitals please. And why he's never been held accountable for wasting hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpeyers' money. Or put on trial in The Hague for war crimes.
@@chris.bcfc.keeprighton.5685 it's not a competition. They should both be questioned. I think the original point is 'why do we only blame one side' and you kinda proved it because of the stupid 'my team' thing people have fallen into.
@@chris.bcfc.keeprighton.5685so??? You’d expect it from the tories, it’s literally their manifesto What next - bent coppers should get a free pass cos they’re not quite as bad as the Mob?
Strangely, it is what most companies do. They sell and lease back their buildings. Because they can get better returns on that capital (ROI). Could it be that private companies are much better at managing maintenance contracts? Ahh, there lies the difference...
@@harrisonbergeron9746 It is normally done for two reasons. 1) The ROI in the building can drag on their numbers. They can employ that capital more efficiently elsewhere 2) It is not the focus of their business. Contracting out the elements of your business that is not focused on your products removes distractions. You employ one 'expert' person, the facilities manager, and he manages the contracts for all of this. Something the government (any government) is very bad at.
Because, given modern monetary theory, taxation is primarily a form of social control. Friendly reminder that Labour and Conservative are equally part of the military-pharma-industrial complex establishment who need war and sickness to continue expansion. If you frame government in traditional terms of them trying to benefit the populace, their policies and actions seem bizarrely incompetent, where the reality is that the UK government have already transitioned to become an arm of a system of global stakeholder capitalism. The people are simply not stakeholders in this system and the gloves are off for exploitation. Basically, we are all Africans now.
I am rather concerned that you might be into something there! However, Africa is a very big place and some African countries are set to do a lot better than we are moving forward.
I agree. To break that IMO requires a government to re-enforce its own control and stop pretending that it is at the mercy of financiers. It isn't. It can achieve that via its central bank or it can use existing process of gilts, but lower bases rates and require institutions to hold those gilts at certain ratios.
@xueya2188 exactly 👍 we are being farmed by psychopaths that will ever see you as human beings but rather like cattle to be milked for every penny you can produce for them.
We were also paying for the maintenance, on top of all the rent. This makes more financial sense than selling them ever did, and more than keeping the rental agreement..
The full story to your comment is they were sold by the Tory government to private equity for £1.6 billion who, since 1996, have charged the government a total £6.5 billion in rent under that 1996 PFI contract. Simply closing down a very bad deal.
I’m right with you Richard 45 years of privatisation has not and will not work. The country is poorer for it, but the powers to be still pursue this line just take water off wall which is a branch of the government has granted the water authorities to raise the bills to pay, and I don’t think it’s to pay for infrastructure projects ring fenced as I said, I think it’s to continuously pay high salaries to CEOs and shareholders. Instead of taking it all back in the house. Privatisation does not work and the proof is there.
It could have worked but for the greed of Capitalists/politicians who thrive on the System which do not hold them accountable. Do we need a revolution to put an end to this?
@@adamiskandar5107it could never have worked. The very idea behind privatisation isn't for it to work, it is for the owning class to extract money from the working class. ...but as such it's been a roaring success.
Mrs Thatcher famously said "there is no government money". Truth is there is only government money. The government can change laws and produce the sovereign currency.
There is no government money. What there is, is government wealth which brings power A pound is worthless to an American in france Get euros by selling car part manufacturering to france. A trade agreement with an american to give them euros in exchange for dollars is worthwhile
Yes but it needs to pull that money back through tax. Because the tax system is fundamentally unfit for purpose, sterling has lost 98% of its value since 1950. Dishonest politicians have been listening to the advice of fools.
There is no government money means the government doesn't produce anything, it only takes what private citizens and companies have produced and redistributes it. Money is a commodity used as an intermediary in most transactions which has alternative uses, currency is just a unit of account.
Yes it stands out a mile, anyone can see the government can get money when ever they need it and waste it on things of no benefit to the public. You have explained the mechanics of how its achieved, great and easy to comprehend explanation, thanks. It will be back to business " we got to get the deficit down" and " we just put 6 billion aside for Ukraine " it all makes sense now.
For the Newbie if you are actually trading in the crypto space and you don't have a sound mentor. Then you are certainly going to get liquidated in 90% of your trades. Yeah that's sad truth. I remember when i just got into crypto back in 2019 but later in 2020 i ended up selling it because i have lost alot trading all by myself without a guide. Got back into crypto early in 2024 with $20k and I'm up with $232k in a short period of time
Yes true, I have been in touch with a brokerage Advisor. With an initial starting reserve of $75k, my advisor chooses the entry and exit commands for my portfolio, which has grown to approximately $550k.
@@davideyres955 But they're making money by doing this: The cost associated with borrowing the money will be less than the money saved by bringing the houses back under government control.
This needs to be done in the NHS and in military for things like recruiting. For some baffling reason recruiting is done by a private firm and has not once hit it's target for the number of recruits. Simply because they take so lomg to process them more than half drop out of the process. Yet they make hundreds of millions a year for being failures
Nicely done Richard nicely done. If only we could put this to them in a way they cannot wriggle away from it and they have to listen to the people and I would say listen to somebody like you
Not only is government managed and owned cheaper because of lower interest rates as you state but also there is no need for profit as is required in the private sector. PFI stinks.
I could scarcely believe it when Starmer said the quiet part out loud and actually BRAGGED about doing deals with Black Rock; one of the most notorious asset strippers on the planet. Rotten PFI and PPP deals have saddled NHS hospitals, schools and other public projects with billions of pounds worth of debt for years to come. Every one of these needs to be unwound. Will it cost a lot? Very likely, but it needs to be done! These deals are insanity. They're just a ruse to take public debt off the books to make the figures look good, but if these projects were done with public money in the first place, they would have worked out a helluva lot cheaper! Now we have hospitals drowning in debt because of dodgy PFI loans. As I understand it, once the loan is paid off, those that loaned the money effectively owns the hospital, school...whatever! Is that correct? I'm fairly sure it is. Neoliberals have such an aversion to the idea of public funding (at least they pretend to) they come to insane ideas like this.
I don't think so. But not for the reason you think. It can't do that because it's bad PR. The curtain would be drawn back and the whole truth of the matter would be exposed. The route to that end has to be circuitous and obfuscating so that 'normal' people do not realise what's going on. Especially because the vast majority of people think governments run economies like their own household budget. So, every time the government said "there's no magic money tree" - it was actually lying. Not only is it magic but it's the greatest illusion on earth. Problem is all economies rely on energy. And we are using up the earths resources faster and faster. In fact we are in overshoot. See "Staving Off the Coming Global Collapse"
@downshift4503 Exactly meaning they can buy all idle labour. So the rate of unemployment is a policy choice. As the British government can buy anything for sale in its own currency. Which is a lot contrary to what you imply with the word only.
@@taipizzalord4463 I agree, but I am sympathetic that the available skilled labour might not be available to achieve their goals. You probably saw recently published how many builders, roofers, etc are required in order for this (I assume) council house building target to be met. The answer is right in front of the governments nose. Housebuilders have already built houses for sale. It doesn't need to compete against the house builders for resources. If the priority is social housing then buy the new build houses that are for sale and rent them out. It can even implement long term "right to buy" if it continues the exercise and drip feed new properties into the private sector via the public sector.
One can always find any amount necessary when one has a fiat currency system and can create one's own money. The cost is borne elsewhere in the system, almost completely unseen.
The original deal was struck in 1996 when the Conservative government sold 55,000 houses for an average of £27,000 per property. The MOD then rented them back in a bid to save money. The 1996 deal is estimated to have cost taxpayers £7.8b with many houses in unliveable conditions. The Conservatives started the buy back process in 2022, labour are just finishing the deal. It will actually save money by not having to pay rent to a private foreign company and will allow housing standards to be raised.
So what your saying is Labour will claim credit for something the tories did and knock a big hole in there claim to have created one and a half million homes in five year
I'm sorry but you can expect labor to undo every injustice commited within this country given they only have a limited budget. They'll try and deliver on their current manifesto and campaign promises and when they run again in the next election cycle they can deliver justice for waspi women. Its weird how everyone expects labor to do the impossible with f**k-all finances (especially given they started with 22 billions less that what's they expected). You were complicit when the tories pillaged the country but now act smug when Labour are actually trying to scrape things together
They can always go to the City, but what happens when the City loses confidence? Wasnt this the situation in Spain, Greece & Italy and Germany had to bail the whole lot out because the Money Markets said No?
If only people didn’t vote against Brit interests in 2016 we would still be part of a particular group of countries where we wouldn’t have a problem sending those people back to France
I worked in Queens Dock, a Government building built by the government at tax payers expense, on a prime river front location. They then SOLD the building and rented it. Eventually HMRC were kicked out of it and it was turned into Riverside apartments.
Way back in time I was part of a group being consulted about the proposed PFI deal for the QEHB and we were invited to a presentation at Warwick Uni to have PFI explained to us. The main reason we were given for PFI was to keep the spending off the public borrowing requirement. Taking it off one pot and putting it in another. At the end of the day I was asked what do I think of PFI? I replied it is like paying your mortgage with a credit card. Meaning, just as you point out here, paying a lower cost loan with a more expensive one. I heard this repeated back to me on a TV discussion on PFI when I had never heard it before then. PFI is and never will be a good way to finance anything.
To add insult to injury, the MOD will spend vast sums of money for the supposed upkeep of the properties. The MOD knows how to waste vast sums of money!
The reason this 6 billion was possible is because it is backed by the value of the assets purchased. That is a problem of services vs asset. They could use this to buy other assets like rail networks, power companies and so on.
You are close to the core issue in politics - almost nobody, nobody, knows what money actually is. And if you can't define money, you cannot understand politics. Every time the government says there is no money, it is lying, tricking people into believing money is a resource (it is not) or that a country´s economy is comparable to a household economy (it is not).
PFI is indeed bad vfm, although the alternative isn't necessarily "govt borrowing". Govt can engage overt monetary financing because it issues the currency. "Borrowing" is a misnomer because they're simply selling bonds, that can easily be redeemed via a few key strokes on a treasury computer. It's really a form of corporate welfare.
You've completely missed the obvious point here. The government changed borrowing rules in the budget to include assets as well as liabilities in their calculations. This deal increases government assets while reducing liabilities, so it's actually a net gain in the government's books. That's why their spending rules allow them to open up this £6bn. If they were to spend that £6bn reducing child poverty, they would not increase their assets, but they would take on £6bn of liabilities, making it a net loss for the government under their new rules
I missed nothing. That was not talked about. And changikng the rule also changed nothing. In itself it just created excuses. I was talking about substance.
I should imagine that because of the scale of this buy back and borrowing, this whole deal has been in-train for some considerable time and probably before Labour came back into power.
There is a difference between one off investments such as buying our PFI contracts and day to day spending such as child benefits. But I fully agree about PFI. It is like putting a mortgage on the credit card - utterly nuts.
The Winter Fuel Allowance was not allocated efficiently or effectively. Efficient use of tax receipts doesn't give money to those who don't need it. So any government should ascertain a civilised standard of living for pensioners and people on benefits, and those who are above that standard should not get it. The problem is that the government standard of living for pensioners is too low. And that's an inherited problem, that can't be fixed anytime soon. The Cost of Living in the UK is going up strongly, and pensioners are not all loaded, but some are. And it unfair just to discribute limited funds willy-nilly. The basic living needs for pensioners needs to be addressed in a way that is clear and understandable. Nobody understands pensions at all. That's why the winter fuel allowance was poliiticised and paid as a bribe, but a serious number of pensioners were still needing to choose between heating or eating, whilst those who didn't need it, were getting it anyway. That should not be the case. That the state pension is still to low to live on, is another inherited situation, and pension Credit is still too low. That's the real issue, and for that you can blame a long line of givernment back to Thatcher who fiddled the National Insurance Fund and broke the link with wages. Google 'The Rape of The National Insurance Fund" by the late Tony Lines, and you'll see why pensions and the NHS ended up being squeezed for cash. The report is still online, and it ties into the Waspi Women as well. And the amount lost if adjusted for inflation are eye-watering. The fact is, the problem is too big now for any quick and easy fix, and it's only going to get worse. Political opportunism is only possible where people don't know what's really happened over nearly 5 decades. And labour can't fix it, because the accumulative problems has wrecked the potential for real growth in the UK.
@CuriousCrow-mp4cx perhaps a little precis would have sufficed...and would have been improved by addressing the question I posed. I will rephrase to see if you catch my drift. You granny doesn't charge your mum to look after you. Your mum doesn't have to pay a commercial nursery. The government benefits bill goes down accordingly. With me so far? Now, you won't hear that any more than you will hear that your mum was the person putting in the hard labour on your birthday, or that she was Santa. The expectation that women will sacrifice their time and effort without thanks is endemic. You couldn't afford to pay a granny the hours she has dedicated to get a grandchild, so it is ignored. Until now. Whilst the money is given to house their grandchildren destined to be used as cannon fodder. Five decades my arse. Men have been at this patriarchy lark for thousands of years. Tickety tock. Gen X is retiring.
Great video and discussion. Just wondering if there’s a risk reward factor in borrowing too much from the city to mitigate against the government having to print more money to honour its debts which could presumably lead to the value of the pound falling ? Or is it the city are happy to lend against tangible assets like property but not so keen on none tangible assets like winter fuel allowance etc ?
When I was a young man back in the early 80’s I worked for The Midland Bank, I seem to remember that they lent a lot of money to African and South American governments on the basis that they would always be able to repay the debts, by raising taxes if necessary. It turned out you can only squeeze people so far before they overthrow their governments and default on said debts. One of the main reasons there is no longer a Midland Bank.
@ yeah, as I remember (it was a long time ago), they had to repay in Sterling or Dollars so they couldn’t just print that, as I stated the prevailing economic theory at the time was all governments could always increase taxes if necessary. Perhaps there is a moral to this story that our Government should listen to.
@@stevelongden7368 "The Financial Curse" is an interesting read and I recall covered the Midland Bank of that era. Sounds like you have first hand experience of it.
@ unfortunately yes, they also bought an American bank (Crocker?) without seemingly doing any due diligence and it turned into a money pit that they had to sell at a massive loss not long after. The sale to HSBC soon followed
Great questions! As a forces child, my family lived in a series of RAF houses throughout all my childhood, most on which were in not very good nick. The government did not manage to find the money or the desire to make good. Similar with the trains and the utilities. Why now privatise Royal Mail, while taking rail companies back into Government control - far more people use the post than can use trains.
Sorry, but where have you been for the las13 years? Royal Mail was privatised in 2011,under the Coalition Government of the Cons and the Lib Dems. Vince Cable, has a lot to answer for.
Because they tell the bank to print it , why do you think inflation is so high ? The only factor that raises inflation is government spending which lessens the value of pound …in so raising prices and receiving less
One problem is that the government doesn’t have the experience, expertise or skills to do the jobs (like maintaining buildings). So what they will do is to buy the buildings back off the PFI company saying “we can do it cheaper ourselves”, then they will look around their resources and discover that they don’t have any crown servants to do the maintenance and don’t want to recruit any more, so they will then set up a competition inviting private companies to do maintenance. So all that this will achieve in the end is the continuation of the rip-off but in a different way under different contracts.
You omit to consider the effect of efficiency driven by the motivation for profit and the inefficiency once it is publicly owned! Also there is not a single PFI type of contract, as with all contracts there are good and bad versions written and administered.
PFI is privatization for rentiers and conveniently does away with overheads and capital outlay, or, privatization of profits, nationalization of costs.
PFI Schemes are the equivalent of taking out a mortgage to buy a single meal. PFI Schemes need to scrapped with existing PFI Schemes converted to design, cost and build only with maintenance, running the buildings and ownership transferred to the public sector.
UK National Debt in 1998 [Brown] £350Bn by 2020 [Sunak] £2.10Tn - it's accelerated under all Tory chancellors. Tories always borrow more and pay back less. In 1997 Labour inherited a deficit of 3.9% of GDP (not a balanced budget) and by 2008 it had fallen to 2.1% nearly 50% reduction. The Tories last administration increased the national debt more than every Labour government combined. What is also conveniently forgotten is that Labour ran a surplus between 1998-2002 an achievement almost unparalleled in modern history in the UK.
People have short memories, you willl always pay more tax when the Tories are in power, don't swallow the tory propaganda that Labour are the party of high taxes !!!
In my very early twenties I learnt the important lessons. #1. Don't live on credit. #2. Treat people the way you want to be treated. #3. You can forgive a person you know for a transgression against you, once and only once. Everyone else had best behave, or else. #4. Never get involved in a land war in Asia. #5. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
*BAN PRIVATE LANDLORDS* do exactly the same with every privately rented house over the next 10 years...!!! Freez rents and let the money go INTO the economy and not INTO the bank accounts of PE and wealthy pensioners...!!!
It was borrowing that was seen as unsustainable that made investors nervous causing the pound to crash that brought the Truss government down. Perhaps Starmer sees this as a necessary evil and are holding back from borrowing in order to prevent a similar outcome. After all, if the Tories gets back in, they're just going to sell assets off again. Is what I think.
Richard makes it sound as though the financial markets are financing the governments spending but that is not what happens at all when the government borrows. Borrowing is only an accounting procedure inside the Bank of England. The government cannot borrow back its own currency and then spend it again, it always has to spend new currency.
Will that be them buying back the MoD houses they flogged off cheap ten years ago for a vastly inflated price? I wonder who sits on those boards. Follow the money.
Rachel Reeves has been quite clear that borrowing is reserved for investment and that taxes should pay for ongoing costs. If you borrow x billion this year to pay for things like the winter fuel allowance, you will need to borrow that every year, while still paying back last year's loan. Now the houses have the been bought, they don't need to be bought again, and the proposed savings for owning them directly will be offset against the cost of the loan repayment (in principle anyway, I am sure its all a lot more complicated.)
Excellent clarity of message , now it would be very interesting to put actual names with these deals , you have named the defence minister who has done a sensible thing and we know Starmer comes over all giggling girl when dealing with Blackrock etc . When ghoul’s like Mandelshon get yet another chance to knoble the UK , I think how masochistic can the British people be. Keep up the important work.
If we had any investigative reporters left with a shred of integrity, they would be all over this. They would also be asking why the Chagos Islands deal was so important to Labour, so soon after gaining power when there were so many more important problems to address. There is a whiff of rodent rising in the Indian Ocean. Come on ICIJ pull your fingers out.
It’s like when you need new shoes as a kid but your dad says he’s got no money but yet spends 4 nights a week in the pub and up grades his car every 3 months but he’s got no money for shoes🤯
Why does our government act like an abusive parent??
Because they don’t care about you!!
Or the people who go to the food bank covered in tattoos in 150 quid trainers and a 200 pound coat.
@@TheCornish123456What an idiotic remark.
@@TheCornish123456
How many have you seen that ere like that and do people's circumstances not change?
@@ruthguthrie1099 more than a few.
@@TheCornish123456you clearly don’t work at food banks.
The fact that PFI deals are expensive for the taxpayer *is the point*!
They are about a transfer of taxpayer cash to the wealthy, not about some sort of efficient way to fund public projects.
Exactly this.
We have been brainwashed to accept that the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector. When the facts/statistics proved otherwise, we find excuses or accept illogical explanations for the people representing the interests of the private sector. Are we capable of being rational in the face of continuous Capitalist propaganda?
But those 'wealthy' do the same- most large companies sell and lese back their buildings. The difference is that the manage to lease/repair contract. Which government is rubbish at. The civil service cannot fail, so there is no incentive to do a good job.
Used extensively by Bliar to channel taxpayers' money to his cronies.
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop
Where is the incentive for a private water company to do a good job?
Can we stop purchasing their products? Is there a row of taps in every home that we can choose from?
If they do a bad job, can the government just shut them down?
Or do we taxpayers have to pay off the debts and keep things going?
Same applies to all essential utilities. If they win, they win, and if they fail, they HAVE TO BE bailed out, because their services are essential to life.
It's because the debt on the PFI doesn't go onto the balance book immediately. It makes some numbers look better than they truly are.
Yeah! A PFI agreement is a contract, it's not a debt, so doesn't appear in the deficit but it still needs paying!
Why is Labour still doing bad PFI deals? Corruption. These deals will benefit their rich donors. Simple.
Look into the recent wind farm auctions. Guaranteed strike price of double current prices. Those auctions are a licence to print money, with absolutely zero risk involved to the investors. Anything the state runs is broken.... and yet we are increasing the size of the state every year.
@@paullegend6798 State ownership is not the issue. Corruption is. I'm glad we have a state run NHS, albeit underfunded. Look at the US health insurance system run by corporations for profit. It's killing people and bankrupting them at the same time. That's why Luigi Mangione is hailed as a hero. Just look at the privatised industries in this country: they are all f**ked because they put profit before people. There would be no problem with the state running things if they were truly accountable to the people. The fact is they are bought by corporate interests. Hence all the privatisation and weak regulation. Private companies and rich individuals have bought all our politicians (because in capitalism everything is for sale, especially politicians). The people need to take back control from corporations. That means ending capitalism and getting rid of the profit motive in public services. Why auction wind farms? The state could just run them for the benefit of the people, then there's no middle man milking us for profits. Easy.
No. The contracts cost more to buy out.
Another question is, why are we buying back rather than simply taking back, given that the pfi rip off merchants have been fleecing taxpayer for 27 years?
Exactly! Or, could have paid 1 billion, or half billion, said take it or leave it. You know the answer. Because the money goes to line the pockets of the banksters and their mates. Corruption Corruption Corruption
Under some circumstances, I would agree with that statement but how is that any better than what Putin does.
@@tetraquark2402How is it worse than Putin? He is a practical man despite being a violent one. It is better than Putin as long as nobody "falls" out a window and it's all done legally.
I would say that the most likely reason is that it's illegal. Do you want the government to behave like the Mafia?
You are doing that because your nation is not good enough to be an autarky of which the second you start nationalizing any company, every company is gonna shit themself and leave. Your nation cannot survive without the trade with others as you produce insufficient food, manufactured goods, and fuel to support yourself as a service economy. Therefore, just taking stuff will destroy your nation and impoverish millions as capital flight ruins you
Those of us working on PFI schemes in the late 1990's/early 2000's were amazed the then Labour Gov't continued with and expanded PFI's when they were known to give poor value for money in the long term.
That’s Labour for you (us) nothing learned. I can’t believe they are back in government after the Blair/Brown years. The Tories badly let us down too. Time for a change methinks.
@@arthurdixon5890PFI was a Tory initiative - all parties are going to use it irrespective?
@@user-qg2bt2qt9l Agreed but New Labour used it indiscriminately. I appreciate that lessons have been learned as a result of the pitfalls realised (Kings Fund etc) but there has been talk of using PFI for the planned Thames Crossing. We are still paying tolls for the Dartford Crossing as Gordon Brown would not allow the toll to be lifted after the project had been paid for.
Spot the clue in the words "long term" and don't just blame the Tories, Labour couldn't wait to spend noth sea oil revenues fast enough. Our sovereign wealth fund went down the welfare state toilet. Now we throw money around that we borrow, £100 billion interest a year isn't it? Don't spend it on Brits though, spend it on foreigners.
I was working as a quantity surveyor during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s on Property Services Agency was in charge of maintenance on these type of properties and many other government properties. The system was not perfect but worked reasonably well, although there was some embarrassing financial irregularities that I helped uncover plus any delays or poor work was blamed on the Government. This system had two very important failures as far as Margaret Thatcher was concerned, which was the growing power of the PSA, who as many government departments at the time spent as much time growing their departments as focusing on their remit, and this compounded by the fear of these irregularities and some poor work getting covered in the press. What better way to deal with it than disband the PSA and make the new system very attractive to private companies, both issues resolved at a stroke. I attended many meetings / seminars at the time where it was clear the costs would be significantly higher and the loss of control very damaging but the political benefit was considered much more important. There was an enquiry about the financial issues but it was well known the political issues were the real driver behind much of what took place. The first step in 1998 was making the PSA bid for work against private companies, and eventually in 1993 John Major abolished the PSA and introduced his raft of privatisations and other PFI schemes on the same premise. If the issues had simply been financial irregularities they could have been resolved by prosecutions and court cases but that wouldn’t have resolved the blame game and the political power plays. Its clear this hasn’t worked out well, but the politicians at the time knew it wouldn’t, but it did take the heat off the government for many years, until the problems that were obvious to people in the various industries at the time, have become too serious to cover up any longer.
The MOD don't take care of maintenance on their own estate assets. Vivo are the contractor and, guess what, they repair nothing and just take their cash
Vivo charges the MOD, i.e. taxpayers over £500 to change a light bulb.
@@Zerpentsa6598 you actually got them to come out and change it? I've been waiting 5 months for them to repair two lights. My favourite recently was after the storms some subcontractor tree surgeons had to deal with a fallen tree and there were four Vivo worker in two vans sat watching them. I wonder how much they billed for that.
@@Zerpentsa6598 can that be true?
@@JSmith19858 Sounds like they are waiting for the annual lifecycle charge to the public department so they can charge under that rather than their own pocket similar to another different contractor under PFI that I've dealt with to paint rooms.
In other words, another wealth transfer. Western governments are privatising themselves out of existence. Parliament is a sort of Kabuki theatre's, that is all
Can we have a video on Bliar's PFI deals for new hospitals please. And why he's never been held accountable for wasting hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpeyers' money. Or put on trial in The Hague for war crimes.
It is true that Blair embraced PFI financing. However, the tories wasted more money on them than Labour did.
@@chris.bcfc.keeprighton.5685 it's not a competition. They should both be questioned. I think the original point is 'why do we only blame one side' and you kinda proved it because of the stupid 'my team' thing people have fallen into.
@@chris.bcfc.keeprighton.5685so??? You’d expect it from the tories, it’s literally their manifesto
What next - bent coppers should get a free pass cos they’re not quite as bad as the Mob?
Thank you so much, for expressing simply & logically, what so many of us intuitively knew.
Thanks Richard. PFI stinks doesn’t it? And always has. Always.
Strangely, it is what most companies do. They sell and lease back their buildings. Because they can get better returns on that capital (ROI). Could it be that private companies are much better at managing maintenance contracts? Ahh, there lies the difference...
Used by Bliar to defray taxpayers' money to his friends for decades.
And always will
@@Tensquaremetreworkshop or maybe they do that to 'avoid' paying tax, maybe?
@@harrisonbergeron9746 It is normally done for two reasons.
1) The ROI in the building can drag on their numbers. They can employ that capital more efficiently elsewhere
2) It is not the focus of their business. Contracting out the elements of your business that is not focused on your products removes distractions. You employ one 'expert' person, the facilities manager, and he manages the contracts for all of this. Something the government (any government) is very bad at.
Because, given modern monetary theory, taxation is primarily a form of social control. Friendly reminder that Labour and Conservative are equally part of the military-pharma-industrial complex establishment who need war and sickness to continue expansion. If you frame government in traditional terms of them trying to benefit the populace, their policies and actions seem bizarrely incompetent, where the reality is that the UK government have already transitioned to become an arm of a system of global stakeholder capitalism. The people are simply not stakeholders in this system and the gloves are off for exploitation. Basically, we are all Africans now.
I love the fact that you equate ordinary UK citizens to Africans. It should provoke people to rethink their priorities.
I am rather concerned that you might be into something there! However, Africa is a very big place and some African countries are set to do a lot better than we are moving forward.
I agree. To break that IMO requires a government to re-enforce its own control and stop pretending that it is at the mercy of financiers. It isn't. It can achieve that via its central bank or it can use existing process of gilts, but lower bases rates and require institutions to hold those gilts at certain ratios.
Feudalism by another name
@xueya2188 exactly 👍 we are being farmed by psychopaths that will ever see you as human beings but rather like cattle to be milked for every penny you can produce for them.
Sold them for 1.6 billion, bought them back for 6 billion, good job we got people like these ,to look after our money!!!!!!!!!!
We were also paying for the maintenance, on top of all the rent. This makes more financial sense than selling them ever did, and more than keeping the rental agreement..
The full story to your comment is they were sold by the Tory government to private equity for £1.6 billion who, since 1996, have charged the government a total £6.5 billion in rent under that 1996 PFI contract. Simply closing down a very bad deal.
@@onandon-nq1zw Now now, don't you go ruining a good echo chamber with facts.
Take note ... Sold by the Tories for peanuts !!!
@@onandon-nq1zw And Labour will fill them with illegal migrants so still a bad deal.
I’m right with you Richard 45 years of privatisation has not and will not work. The country is poorer for it, but the powers to be still pursue this line just take water off wall which is a branch of the government has granted the water authorities to raise the bills to pay, and I don’t think it’s to pay for infrastructure projects ring fenced as I said, I think it’s to continuously pay high salaries to CEOs and shareholders. Instead of taking it all back in the house. Privatisation does not work and the proof is there.
It could have worked but for the greed of Capitalists/politicians who thrive on the System which do not hold them accountable. Do we need a revolution to put an end to this?
Blame Thatcher for this, she started the ball rolling.
It wouldn't be any better if thengov owned everything, it would just cost more and still be a crap service
@@adamiskandar5107it could never have worked. The very idea behind privatisation isn't for it to work, it is for the owning class to extract money from the working class.
...but as such it's been a roaring success.
@@billB101the idea was they would have to make a profit if not nationalised. So they put prices up and closed things down making people jobless!
Mrs Thatcher famously said "there is no government money". Truth is there is only government money. The government can change laws and produce the sovereign currency.
There is no government money. What there is, is government wealth which brings power
A pound is worthless to an American in france
Get euros by selling car part manufacturering to france.
A trade agreement with an american to give them euros in exchange for dollars is worthwhile
Yes but it needs to pull that money back through tax. Because the tax system is fundamentally unfit for purpose, sterling has lost 98% of its value since 1950. Dishonest politicians have been listening to the advice of fools.
All tax is derived from the private sector . Public sector jobs effectively pay no tax .
There is no government money means the government doesn't produce anything, it only takes what private citizens and companies have produced and redistributes it. Money is a commodity used as an intermediary in most transactions which has alternative uses, currency is just a unit of account.
It is money laundering from public to private pockets.
We don't need told in Scotland how bad PFI is and it was Labour who forced it on us.
Your argument and explanation is one that most sane people would agree with, unlike Lamont and Major who started this ripoff.
Ken Clarke the chief Architect apparently 🤩
@GBPaddling
Was he now, but it was Lamont and Major who put ppi into operation to keep spending off the books
Great video Richard;-) The problem is we have Red Tories or Blue Tories both are the same shite
Blue Labour, Red Tories seems more apt, they park their tanks on each other's lawns and laugh at the dumb Sheeple.
Yes it stands out a mile, anyone can see the government can get money when ever they need it and waste it on things of no benefit to the public. You have explained the mechanics of how its achieved, great and easy to comprehend explanation, thanks.
It will be back to business " we got to get the deficit down" and " we just put 6 billion aside for Ukraine " it all makes sense now.
Labour just found over £20,000 a day in to pay for the new Labour peers' daily expenses claims.
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How come Labour can find money when it wants to?
But in the video he stated they didn’t, they went to the city of London. Something that will cost us more in the long term.
@@davideyres955 But they're making money by doing this: The cost associated with borrowing the money will be less than the money saved by bringing the houses back under government control.
They don't need to print money when they pay a rental - stealing from the future.
Across the board, contractors overcharge on public sector contracts. It's culpable fraud on both parties.
They can always find money when they want to, especially for projects in London.
Thank you for explaining this so concisely.
This needs to be done in the NHS and in military for things like recruiting. For some baffling reason recruiting is done by a private firm and has not once hit it's target for the number of recruits. Simply because they take so lomg to process them more than half drop out of the process. Yet they make hundreds of millions a year for being failures
Nicely done Richard nicely done. If only we could put this to them in a way they cannot wriggle away from it and they have to listen to the people and I would say listen to somebody like you
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How come all governments can always find money for wars ?
and foreign aid
Not only is government managed and owned cheaper because of lower interest rates as you state but also there is no need for profit as is required in the private sector. PFI stinks.
It can create as much money as it needs it doesn’t need to find it we are no longer on the gold standard !!
As you have been repeating many times, the government never has a black hole.
I could scarcely believe it when Starmer said the quiet part out loud and actually BRAGGED about doing deals with Black Rock; one of the most notorious asset strippers on the planet. Rotten PFI and PPP deals have saddled NHS hospitals, schools and other public projects with billions of pounds worth of debt for years to come. Every one of these needs to be unwound. Will it cost a lot? Very likely, but it needs to be done! These deals are insanity. They're just a ruse to take public debt off the books to make the figures look good, but if these projects were done with public money in the first place, they would have worked out a helluva lot cheaper! Now we have hospitals drowning in debt because of dodgy PFI loans. As I understand it, once the loan is paid off, those that loaned the money effectively owns the hospital, school...whatever! Is that correct? I'm fairly sure it is. Neoliberals have such an aversion to the idea of public funding (at least they pretend to) they come to insane ideas like this.
PFI, government contracts, rail franchises, etc its easy money 💰 for the corporate donating classes
Excellent as always Richard.
So the government can spend an unlimited amount of money... If only that was taken to its logical conclusion.
I don't think so. But not for the reason you think. It can't do that because it's bad PR. The curtain would be drawn back and the whole truth of the matter would be exposed. The route to that end has to be circuitous and obfuscating so that 'normal' people do not realise what's going on. Especially because the vast majority of people think governments run economies like their own household budget. So, every time the government said "there's no magic money tree" - it was actually lying. Not only is it magic but it's the greatest illusion on earth. Problem is all economies rely on energy. And we are using up the earths resources faster and faster. In fact we are in overshoot. See "Staving Off the Coming Global Collapse"
they can only use that £ to buy things that are for sale.
@downshift4503 Exactly meaning they can buy all idle labour. So the rate of unemployment is a policy choice. As the British government can buy anything for sale in its own currency. Which is a lot contrary to what you imply with the word only.
@@taipizzalord4463 I agree, but I am sympathetic that the available skilled labour might not be available to achieve their goals. You probably saw recently published how many builders, roofers, etc are required in order for this (I assume) council house building target to be met. The answer is right in front of the governments nose. Housebuilders have already built houses for sale. It doesn't need to compete against the house builders for resources. If the priority is social housing then buy the new build houses that are for sale and rent them out. It can even implement long term "right to buy" if it continues the exercise and drip feed new properties into the private sector via the public sector.
The real truth is what sort of government you wish for. The one that is accountable to the people or the one protecting the rich elites?
Because they will have friends in certain institutions doing the work , is my guess , and a little bit of cake may fall off the table .
One can always find any amount necessary when one has a fiat currency system and can create one's own money.
The cost is borne elsewhere in the system, almost completely unseen.
The original deal was struck in 1996 when the Conservative government sold 55,000 houses for an average of £27,000 per property. The MOD then rented them back in a bid to save money. The 1996 deal is estimated to have cost taxpayers £7.8b with many houses in unliveable conditions. The Conservatives started the buy back process in 2022, labour are just finishing the deal. It will actually save money by not having to pay rent to a private foreign company and will allow housing standards to be raised.
So what your saying is Labour will claim credit for something the tories did and knock a big hole in there claim to have created one and a half million homes in five year
selling houses at the bottom of the market, major was as bad as the gordon brown bottom in gold
For exactly the same reason politicians can find money when they need to spend it.
that money isn't for the people it's for the riches war.
Could have done this for the WASPI women!
Why, they was given enough notice,
Exactly what I thought...
@@xlp3t3r exactly
@@Darren-i1w Then why did Rachel Reeves campaign to do exactly that?
I'm sorry but you can expect labor to undo every injustice commited within this country given they only have a limited budget. They'll try and deliver on their current manifesto and campaign promises and when they run again in the next election cycle they can deliver justice for waspi women.
Its weird how everyone expects labor to do the impossible with f**k-all finances (especially given they started with 22 billions less that what's they expected). You were complicit when the tories pillaged the country but now act smug when Labour are actually trying to scrape things together
They can always go to the City, but what happens when the City loses confidence? Wasnt this the situation in Spain, Greece & Italy and Germany had to bail the whole lot out because the Money Markets said No?
The crime syndicate works in mysterious ways.
😅😅😅
Becuase politics is full of cronies ? Eg 32 billion track and trace .
Yet Wes Streeting said he wants more PFI in the health service.
They always find money when it comes to funding foreign wars
Funding foreigners full stop.
PFI made chaps in the City very rich
If an individual did a deal like that they wouldn't be accused of incompetence they would be accused of corruption.
Yep. That's exactly what it is: a Kleptocracy!!
I'm sure these will be converted into temporary migration accommodation in quick succession.
If only people didn’t vote against Brit interests in 2016 we would still be part of a particular group of countries where we wouldn’t have a problem sending those people back to France
My thoughts as well
Presumably the City would not have loaned on the building program in Rwanda so this will be cheaper ?
Why do journalists not challenge this? Or are they mostly all financially illiterate? Thank you for explaining so clearly.
Thank you, for putting it so clearly.
The government always finds a way to help rich people
They take it from their £22Billion Stash!!!!!
I worked in Queens Dock, a Government building built by the government at tax payers expense, on a prime river front location. They then SOLD the building and rented it. Eventually HMRC were kicked out of it and it was turned into Riverside apartments.
Way back in time I was part of a group being consulted about the proposed PFI deal for the QEHB and we were invited to a presentation at Warwick Uni to have PFI explained to us. The main reason we were given for PFI was to keep the spending off the public borrowing requirement. Taking it off one pot and putting it in another. At the end of the day I was asked what do I think of PFI? I replied it is like paying your mortgage with a credit card. Meaning, just as you point out here, paying a lower cost loan with a more expensive one.
I heard this repeated back to me on a TV discussion on PFI when I had never heard it before then.
PFI is and never will be a good way to finance anything.
They can ALWAYS find money when they want to. Just NOT for their people - and definitely never for pensioners.
To add insult to injury, the MOD will spend vast sums of money for the supposed upkeep of the properties. The MOD knows how to waste vast sums of money!
The reason this 6 billion was possible is because it is backed by the value of the assets purchased. That is a problem of services vs asset. They could use this to buy other assets like rail networks, power companies and so on.
I found 50p down the back of my sofa once.
Brilliant video. It would be great if the wider population were provided this information in this format. Keep going 👍
Well said Richard. I have always said that PFI's are dearer than the government financing projects itself.
what about the pfi schools and hospitals, championed by new "labour"?
You are close to the core issue in politics - almost nobody, nobody, knows what money actually is. And if you can't define money, you cannot understand politics. Every time the government says there is no money, it is lying, tricking people into believing money is a resource (it is not) or that a country´s economy is comparable to a household economy (it is not).
PFI is indeed bad vfm, although the alternative isn't necessarily "govt borrowing". Govt can engage overt monetary financing because it issues the currency. "Borrowing" is a misnomer because they're simply selling bonds, that can easily be redeemed via a few key strokes on a treasury computer. It's really a form of corporate welfare.
Follow the money and you will find the answer.
You've completely missed the obvious point here. The government changed borrowing rules in the budget to include assets as well as liabilities in their calculations. This deal increases government assets while reducing liabilities, so it's actually a net gain in the government's books. That's why their spending rules allow them to open up this £6bn. If they were to spend that £6bn reducing child poverty, they would not increase their assets, but they would take on £6bn of liabilities, making it a net loss for the government under their new rules
I missed nothing. That was not talked about. And changikng the rule also changed nothing. In itself it just created excuses. I was talking about substance.
Do you consider investing in your children when they are young and can't take care of themselves a liability in the long run?
The government can create any rules it likes to pretend it has private sector constraints, which it doesn't.
I cannot understand why Labour are going in for PFI and worse its with the most cut throat of American businesses!
What HM Govt has failed to address, is who is going to occupy the newly purchased properties, as if we didn't already know.
I should imagine that because of the scale of this buy back and borrowing, this whole deal has been in-train for some considerable time and probably before Labour came back into power.
Thats doesnt matter its all labours fault, everything is labours fault now, when the tories get back in, it will be there fault
So was Waspi compensation, and todays scandal the blood products compensation.
They should never had let these properties into the private sector, shocking waste of money
There is a difference between one off investments such as buying our PFI contracts and day to day spending such as child benefits.
But I fully agree about PFI. It is like putting a mortgage on the credit card - utterly nuts.
Moreover, who is going to fill these houses, and what inferences can be drawn by the comparison between pensioners and military personnel?
The Winter Fuel Allowance was not allocated efficiently or effectively. Efficient use of tax receipts doesn't give money to those who don't need it. So any government should ascertain a civilised standard of living for pensioners and people on benefits, and those who are above that standard should not get it. The problem is that the government standard of living for pensioners is too low. And that's an inherited problem, that can't be fixed anytime soon. The Cost of Living in the UK is going up strongly, and pensioners are not all loaded, but some are. And it unfair just to discribute limited funds willy-nilly. The basic living needs for pensioners needs to be addressed in a way that is clear and understandable. Nobody understands pensions at all. That's why the winter fuel allowance was poliiticised and paid as a bribe, but a serious number of pensioners were still needing to choose between heating or eating, whilst those who didn't need it, were getting it anyway. That should not be the case. That the state pension is still to low to live on, is another inherited situation, and pension Credit is still too low. That's the real issue, and for that you can blame a long line of givernment back to Thatcher who fiddled the National Insurance Fund and broke the link with wages. Google 'The Rape of The National Insurance Fund" by the late Tony Lines, and you'll see why pensions and the NHS ended up being squeezed for cash. The report is still online, and it ties into the Waspi Women as well. And the amount lost if adjusted for inflation are eye-watering. The fact is, the problem is too big now for any quick and easy fix, and it's only going to get worse. Political opportunism is only possible where people don't know what's really happened over nearly 5 decades. And labour can't fix it, because the accumulative problems has wrecked the potential for real growth in the UK.
@CuriousCrow-mp4cx perhaps a little precis would have sufficed...and would have been improved by addressing the question I posed. I will rephrase to see if you catch my drift.
You granny doesn't charge your mum to look after you.
Your mum doesn't have to pay a commercial nursery.
The government benefits bill goes down accordingly.
With me so far?
Now, you won't hear that any more than you will hear that your mum was the person putting in the hard labour on your birthday, or that she was Santa.
The expectation that women will sacrifice their time and effort without thanks is endemic.
You couldn't afford to pay a granny the hours she has dedicated to get a grandchild, so it is ignored.
Until now.
Whilst the money is given to house their grandchildren destined to be used as cannon fodder.
Five decades my arse.
Men have been at this patriarchy lark for thousands of years.
Tickety tock.
Gen X is retiring.
Great video and discussion. Just wondering if there’s a risk reward factor in borrowing too much from the city to mitigate against the government having to print more money to honour its debts which could presumably lead to the value of the pound falling ? Or is it the city are happy to lend against tangible assets like property but not so keen on none tangible assets like winter fuel allowance etc ?
When I was a young man back in the early 80’s I worked for The Midland Bank, I seem to remember that they lent a lot of money to African and South American governments on the basis that they would always be able to repay the debts, by raising taxes if necessary. It turned out you can only squeeze people so far before they overthrow their governments and default on said debts. One of the main reasons there is no longer a Midland Bank.
problem there is that those countries are likely borrowing something that they can't create. Not the same here in the UK, USA etc.
@ yeah, as I remember (it was a long time ago), they had to repay in Sterling or Dollars so they couldn’t just print that, as I stated the prevailing economic theory at the time was all governments could always increase taxes if necessary. Perhaps there is a moral to this story that our Government should listen to.
@@stevelongden7368 "The Financial Curse" is an interesting read and I recall covered the Midland Bank of that era. Sounds like you have first hand experience of it.
@ unfortunately yes, they also bought an American bank (Crocker?) without seemingly doing any due diligence and it turned into a money pit that they had to sell at a massive loss not long after. The sale to HSBC soon followed
Free free the British people from this 2 straight decades of mess.
Because he/they are corrupt
Gordon Brown should not have used PFI but he did lots of times.
They haven't ended the 2 child cap because people should pay for the children they can afford.
NOT the children they expect the rest of us to pay for.
Labour are an absolute disgrace!
Join Reform UK
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Sign the Four major Petitions!!
👍🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
Look there! Is that a rubber dinghy full of brown-skinned people?
Great question, but don't forget about all those freebies given to Starmer and his team; neither the BoE nor the City could compete with that.
£69 billion for Council Reset £59 billion for the national Grid ..a further £300 million to repair pot holes in the roads ...where is all coming from?
Great questions!
As a forces child, my family lived in a series of RAF houses throughout all my childhood, most on which were in not very good nick. The government did not manage to find the money or the desire to make good.
Similar with the trains and the utilities.
Why now privatise Royal Mail, while taking rail companies back into Government control - far more people use the post than can use trains.
Railways are part of a wartime infrastructure.
Sorry, but where have you been for the las13 years? Royal Mail was privatised in 2011,under the Coalition Government of the Cons and the Lib Dems. Vince Cable, has a lot to answer for.
Because they tell the bank to print it , why do you think inflation is so high ? The only factor that raises inflation is government spending which lessens the value of pound …in so raising prices and receiving less
One problem is that the government doesn’t have the experience, expertise or skills to do the jobs (like maintaining buildings). So what they will do is to buy the buildings back off the PFI company saying “we can do it cheaper ourselves”, then they will look around their resources and discover that they don’t have any crown servants to do the maintenance and don’t want to recruit any more, so they will then set up a competition inviting private companies to do maintenance. So all that this will achieve in the end is the continuation of the rip-off but in a different way under different contracts.
You omit to consider the effect of efficiency driven by the motivation for profit and the inefficiency once it is publicly owned! Also there is not a single PFI type of contract, as with all contracts there are good and bad versions written and administered.
Excellent video. I would love to see you on Navarra media or Owen Jones's channel. Your content would be really useful in educating those audience.
PFI is privatization for rentiers and conveniently does away with overheads and capital outlay, or, privatization of profits, nationalization of costs.
PFI Schemes are the equivalent of taking out a mortgage to buy a single meal.
PFI Schemes need to scrapped with existing PFI Schemes converted to design, cost and build only with maintenance, running the buildings and ownership transferred to the public sector.
UK National Debt in 1998 [Brown] £350Bn by 2020 [Sunak] £2.10Tn - it's accelerated under all Tory chancellors. Tories always borrow more and pay back less. In 1997 Labour inherited a deficit of 3.9% of GDP (not a balanced budget) and by 2008 it had fallen to 2.1% nearly 50% reduction. The Tories last administration increased the national debt more than every Labour government combined. What is also conveniently forgotten is that Labour ran a surplus between 1998-2002 an achievement almost unparalleled in modern history in the UK.
But the government doesn't need to balance the books, and certainly doesn't need a surplus.
@@helenheenan3447 Where did I say it *needed to* ?
@@helenheenan3447 My point is that there is a popular misconception that the Tories are good for business. Only if you are in their club.
People have short memories, you willl always pay more tax when the Tories are in power, don't swallow the tory propaganda that Labour are the party of high taxes !!!
In my very early twenties I learnt the important lessons.
#1. Don't live on credit.
#2. Treat people the way you want to be treated.
#3. You can forgive a person you know for a transgression against you, once and only once. Everyone else had best behave, or else.
#4. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
#5. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
*BAN PRIVATE LANDLORDS* do exactly the same with every privately rented house over the next 10 years...!!! Freez rents and let the money go INTO the economy and not INTO the bank accounts of PE and wealthy pensioners...!!!
It was borrowing that was seen as unsustainable that made investors nervous causing the pound to crash that brought the Truss government down. Perhaps Starmer sees this as a necessary evil and are holding back from borrowing in order to prevent a similar outcome. After all, if the Tories gets back in, they're just going to sell assets off again. Is what I think.
Borrowing to invest vs borrowing to spend. If it is one off costs it is much more sensible than costs that will occur every year.
They long term borrowing cost for the UK is now above what Liz Truss’s budget caused (plus the Bank of Englands actions)
Private sector should be nowhere near public services. They are poor value for money with low quality outcomes.
Richard makes it sound as though the financial markets are financing the governments spending but that is not what happens at all when the government borrows. Borrowing is only an accounting procedure inside the Bank of England. The government cannot borrow back its own currency and then spend it again, it always has to spend new currency.
Will that be them buying back the MoD houses they flogged off cheap ten years ago for a vastly inflated price? I wonder who sits on those boards. Follow the money.
Rachel Reeves has been quite clear that borrowing is reserved for investment and that taxes should pay for ongoing costs. If you borrow x billion this year to pay for things like the winter fuel allowance, you will need to borrow that every year, while still paying back last year's loan. Now the houses have the been bought, they don't need to be bought again, and the proposed savings for owning them directly will be offset against the cost of the loan repayment (in principle anyway, I am sure its all a lot more complicated.)
Excellent clarity of message , now it would be very interesting to put actual names with these deals , you have named the defence minister who has done a sensible thing and we know Starmer comes over all giggling girl when dealing with Blackrock etc . When ghoul’s like Mandelshon get yet another chance to knoble the UK , I think how masochistic can the British people be. Keep up the important work.
It's because they just say any old thing when asked about budgeting- 22 billion black hole, 200 billion black hole, 2 trillion black hole
If we had any investigative reporters left with a shred of integrity, they would be all over this. They would also be asking why the Chagos Islands deal was so important to Labour, so soon after gaining power when there were so many more important problems to address. There is a whiff of rodent rising in the Indian Ocean. Come on ICIJ pull your fingers out.
The Skye Bridge was a ridiculous PFI contract. £5.20 to cross each way until the Scottish Government came along and bought it from Bank of America.