So, the emergency budget is going to deeply cut the public sector and the Daily Mail are churning out the propaganda supporting this:
‘‘Road to ruin’ lies ahead if spending cuts and tax rises are not carried out, warns Osborne‘
The picture being painted is clear: the reason the country is in debt and the economy is shafted is because the public sector is too large and the private sector too small. If we cut the public sector into pieces and destroy as much as possible the lovely private sector will step in and all will be right with the world. We’re all being sold the economic shock doctrine with the assertion that a painful wound now will heal our bodies faster in the long run.
Am I alone in thinking that we live in a pretty fucked-up world? I mean, the public sector (including the welfare state) – by and large – exists because it provides an end product to society. It treats the majority of us when we are sick, it educates our children and the private sector’s workforce for free, it puts out fires, polices our streets, locks up criminals, manages our local parks, towns, car parks, fixes our roads and so on. It does something, something measurable and something that largely benefits every member of our society.
Yet here we are being told that it does too much, that it is too expensive and that the private sector could do things better. Privatisation was the work of Margeret Thatcher – using the shock of the Falklands war to crush the unions and sell off state run functions – regardless of whether they were profitable or not. Our Telecoms, energy supplies, water supplies, railways and much more were sold off to private corporations because they could do things better. Yet have they?
It seems to me that we