The Daily Blog Open Mic – Wednesday – 4th December 2019

1. Many children are hungry and homeless in Great Britain.

   https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2019/12/03/children-are-homeless-hungry-and-cold-welcome-to-tory-britain/

2. A lot are here too Mosa, in fact the child poverty activist and
   ‘child poverty advocate’ (Jacinda in campaign mode) has actually managed to head a govt where the actual numbers have been increasing over last 2yrs….your point is?

   • An attempt to stomp on someone’s opinion with your own considered of more importance! And what was your point? It seems that you immediately jump to the conclusion that only home-grown problems should be considered. There are other ways of thinking about this.
     One is that many NZs like to help poor people overseas but don’t want to look close to home and do positive things to improve the conditions of our vulnerable people. The other is the need to be aware of overseas problems; the UK is a large wealthy country which we are encouraged to defer to, and their social conditions are dire, so they have nothing to teach us, quite the reverse. And the last thing – it shows a narrow mind to attack other commenters for an honest, straightforward observation. All you have to do is make your point as well, and that would be positive, not negative. Im right? No-one is right all the time.

     • I did make my point….NZ child poverty has increased under this PM, as has homelessness and welfare numbers has spiked. I know you don’t like to hear about it as it’s those nasty National govts that do that to the poor in NZ, have I made my point or you prefer to ignore NZ and concentrate on UK’s poor children?

   • My point is that the U.K is very similar to NZ in that both countries have neo liberal run economies and often have the same appalling outcomes as a result , widespread poverty being one of them.
     The U.K is in the middle of an election campaign where the left is desperately trying too show what eight years of austerity has done too a huge section of british society often ignored by the media ( unless it gives them a good headline ) and others and that it won’t be addressed by another Conservative government.

3. Some good points!

   http://werewolf.co.nz/2019/12/gordon-campbell-on-the-likely-role-of-ppps-in-labours-infrastructural-spending/

   And don’t forget in the UK they paid an absolute premium on PPP’s that have ballooned out well beyond what was expected.

   “UK PFI debt now stands at over £300bn for projects with an original capital cost of £55bn”

   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/30/pfi-britain-hospital-trust-debt-burden-tax

   roading

   This report: https://image.guim.co.uk/sys-files/Society/documents/2004/11/24/PFI.pdf

   found that PPP “contracts are considerably more expensive than the cost of conventional procurement”, resulting in higher returns for the companies running the PPP’s compared to their industry peers.

   While hard to compare because of the opaque nature of many contracts and large amounts of subcontracting out, it looked like the actual cost of capital of the PPP’s was 11% compared to Treasure borrowing of 4.5% i.e. 6.5% higher. This is supposed to represent the cost of risk transfer but in practice there was no risk transfer so it’s money for nothing.

   “In conclusion, the road projects appear to be costing more than expected as reflected in net present costs that are higher than those identified by the Highways Agency (Haynes and Roden 1999), owing to rising traffic and contract changes. It is, however, impossible to know at this point whether or not VFM (value for money) has been or is indeed likely to be achieved because the expensive element of the service contract relates to maintenance that generally will not be required for many years.”

   Overall, for both roads and hospitals they concluded there was no risk transfer and not value for money.

   “The net result of all this is that while risk transfer is the central element in justifying VFM and thus PFI, our analysis shows that risk does not appear to have been transferred to the party best able to manage it. Indeed, rather than transferring risk to the private sector, in the case of roads DBFO has created additional costs and risks to the public agency, and to the public sector as a whole, through tax concessions that must increase costs to the taxpayer and/or reduce service provision. In the case of hospitals, PFI has generated extra costs to hospital users, both staff and patients, and to the Treasury through the leakage of the capital charge element in the NHS budget. In both roads and hospitals these costs and risks are neither transparent nor quantifiable. This means that it is impossible to demonstrate whether or not VFM has been, or indeed can be, achieved in these or any other projects.

   While the Government’s case rests upon value for money, including the cost of transferring risk, our research suggests that PFI may lead to a loss of benefits in kind and a redistribution of income, from the public to the corporate sector. It has boosted the construction industry, many of whose PFI subsidiaries are now the most profitable parts of their enterprises, and led to a significant expansion of the facilities management sector. But the main beneficiaries are likely to be the financial institutions whose loans are effectively underwritten by the taxpayers, as evidenced by the renegotiation of the Royal Armouries PFI (NAO 2001a).”

   • Interesting about the PPPs savenz. You have done your homework! Could be good to drop in occasionally to other blogs even if with shorter pieces? And take note of I’m Right when doing future commenting as it appears there is little homework done there.

4. Hey Daily Bloggers. Check out this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJKuv6z8-B8

   Then think about muppet politcians espousing “growth”, “wealth creation” and so on.

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