jeffs post
Today's Counterpunch has a very interesting piece by Ken Surin giving his selective impressions of New Zealand. Throughout the article he calls the country by its Maori name, Aotearoa, and part of the article is about the poverty and marginalisation that is particularly experienced by New Zealand's indigenous people and Pacific Islanders. He begins the article with his reminiscences of on-pitch violence by the county police and county farmers' teams when he played university rugby back in the '60s. This has a tenuous connection to the rest of the article as two of his team mates came from the country. He then goes on to discuss the effects of neoliberalism on New Zealand. Reading his article, I got the impression that New Zealand did not suffer as much as other nations from the neoliberal agenda of privatisation, wage restraint, welfare cuts and rampant deregulation. But at the same time, he argues that it hasn't done as much as it could either to stop and reverse it.
From this side of the Pacific, one of the most interesting pieces of the article is his description of the way privatisation wrecked the New Zealand electricity network when it was introduced, leading to a power outage, or outages, lasting five weeks.
Aucklanders of a certain age remember the Great Power Outage, symptomatic of their country’s dalliance with neoliberalism, that lasted for 5 weeks from late February 1998.
New Zealand’s electric industry had been deregulated, and the company running Auckland’s grid, Mercury Energy, had been formed in 1992. Mercury promptly downsized its workforce from 1,411 to 600, and skimped on cable maintenance to boost profits. At the time of the Great Power Outage, Mercury Energy was also busy trying to take over another electric utility, again to enhance revenues.
One of several assessments of the handling of the Outage by Mercury Energy and the city’s administration described their response, somewhat charitably, as “ad hoc”. They predicated their responses throughout the crisis on best-case scenarios, and were flummoxed when none materialized.
Practical preparation for worst-case scenarios costs money— duh! – and thus erodes profit margins.
Auckland’s electricity was/is supplied by 4 poorly maintained mega-cables (there have been five serious outages since the 1998 crisis), which failed in quick succession.
Traffic lights stopped working, ventilation systems broke down in the southern hemisphere summer, people were trapped for hours in elevators, food rotted in supermarkets, hospitals had to cancel operations, emergency services were put under extreme pressure, workers had to hike up 20 floors in high-rise buildings to get to their offices, and giant generators had to be flown in from Australia to tide the city over while the mega-cables were repaired over the course of the 5 weeks.
Harsh jokes were made about Auckland’s Third World electricity grid. One example: what did Aucklanders use before candles and oil lamps? Answer: electricity.
The mayor, whose city was becoming a laughing stock, and whose competence was questioned as the crisis dragged on, lost his bid for reelection soon afterwards, while Mercury’s CEO died of a heart attack at his desk.
Neoliberalism can be death-dealing, even for its beneficiaries and overseers..
And other economists have pointed out that neoliberalism has been no more successful elsewhere. The American author of Zombie Economics, a Harvard economist, has pointed out that privatisation has not brought in the investment the electricity industry has needed, and resulted in worse performance than when they were state owned.
The Tories and corporate apologists for private industry like to go on about how terrible the British nationalised industries were in trying to put people off voting for Jeremy Corbyn and Labour, who have promised to renationalise electricity and the railway network. A few days ago the I newspaper in their selection of quotes from elsewhere in the press had a paragraph from the Spectator's Karren Bradey banging on about this, before stating that Corbyn was a 'Communist' who was hanging on to an outmoded theory because of 'weird beliefs'. Which I would say is, with the exception of the term 'Communist', a fair description of most Conservatives and other cultists for the free market. They are indeed continuing to support a grotty, failed ideology long past its sell-by date for their own weird reasons. This is an effective rebuttal to their claims.
Posted by jeffrey davie on 15 December 2017
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jeffs post
Changes to the state pension age for women were introduced in Acts of Parliament in 1995 and 2011 and mean that, by 2020, 2.6 million women will have to wait until they are 66 before receiving their pension.
Mr Opperman, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said: “People living and staying healthier for longer is to be welcomed, but the Government must not ignore the fact that it also brings enormous financial and demographic pressures. The key choice that a Government face when seeking to control state pension spend is to increase the state pension age or pay lower pensions, with an inevitable impact on pensioner poverty. The only alternative is to ask the working generation to pay an ever larger share of their income to support pensioners.
“In July 2017 the Government published their first review of the state pension age, which set out a coherent strategy targeted at strengthening and sustaining the UK state pension system for many decades to come. It accepts the key recommendation of John Cridland’s independent review which was to increase the state pension age from 67 to 68 between 2037 and 2039.
“The review is clear about increasing life expectancy and the challenges it poses. People are living longer. Almost 6,000 people in the UK turned 100 in 2016, compared with 3,000 in 2002. By 2035 there will be more than twice as many people over 100 as there are now.”
It was while he was saying these words that the WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) representatives in the public gallery stood up and, at first, turned their backs on Mr Opperman, before shouting “Shame on you!” and staging a mass walkout.
This Writer can sympathise. Not only was Mr Opperman quoting inaccurate statistics about longevity – people have started living shorter lives since the Conservatives came to office – but he was also wrong about an increase in the amount working-age people would be asked to spend on pensions – the National Insurance fund for Great Britain was in surplus by nearly £21 billion in October last year, while the Northern Ireland fund was half a billion pounds in surplus, and there is no reason to believe that the transitional arrangements being requested would put that fund into deficit.
One particularly strong argument in favour of transitional arrangements is the fact that the women who are being affected were not given sufficient warning of the change and will suffer considerable financial difficulty as a result.
So the WASPI women were right; Mr Opperman should be ashamed.
The debate served a useful purpose – the Commons agreed to call on the Government to publish proposals to provide a non-means tested bridging solution for all women born on or after April 6, 1950, who are affected by changes to the State Pension age in the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts.
No doubt the miserly Tories will refuse the request – they would rather provide useless tax breaks to bankers, after all – but their response will undoubtedly provide another nail in the coffin of the arrogant and incompetent minority Conservative government.
Posted by jeffrey davies [82.9.81.48] on 15 December 2017
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Jef's posts
This year's wildfires in California have been devastating. But even as these fires and the drought that fuels them rage on, Nestlé continues to remove and bottle tens of millions of gallons of water from California’s San Bernardino National Forest. What's more, as firefighting budgets run dry, Nestlé takes this water for free.
This week, we expected to hear the results of a state investigation into Nestlé's shaky claim to this water. This ruling could make or break the company’s operations in the forest, and we were told it would be released days ago—but we’re still waiting...
The Water Board’s investigation would not have happened without the dogged dedication of local water defender Amanda Frye, as well as the Story of Stuff Community, which demanded1 earlier this year that Nestlé prove its water right. But until we hear the results of the investigation, we can’t rest.
think all those asking for two three pounds to keep that well open when this mammoth takes water and sells it back to you
Posted by jeffrey davies on 14 December 2017
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jeffs posts
If the process by which Virgin Care won the contract to provide Lancashire’s ‘Healthy Child’ programme was transparent, it would be useful to examine the information that was provided to councillors, to see exactly what prompted their decision.
It is easy to suggest that a Conservative-run council is supporting a Conservative government policy to push health services into the hands of companies that are more interested in profit than care.
Virgin is one such company, as the lawsuit it launched after it lost an £82 million contract for children’s services proves.
And Lancashire has been bleeding health services into the private sector for a considerable period of time.
How well are those services provided?
Is the private sector really offering better, more cost-effective care?
Or are the people of Lancashire merely being cheated into giving their tax money to another gang of boardroom bandits?
All things considered, the answer seems clear.
A County Hall decision to award a £104m healthcare contract to the private sector instead of the NHS has sparked a storm of protest in Lancashire.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Care company has beaten Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust in the tendering process to run the county’s 0-19 Healthy Child Programme for the next five years.
The furious Labour leader on the county council branded the decision “privatisation by the back door.”
Preston MP Mark Hendrick said… “This is not privatisation by the back door, its privatisation by the front door.”
The programme, which covers services such as school nurses and health visitors for children and young people, is worth up to £20.8m a year.
The deal is now in a legal “standstill” period to allow the unsuccessful bidders to lodge a formal appeal.
Tory leaders today defended the process as “open and transparent”.
Source: Lancashire County Council award £104m NHS contract to Virgin Care – Lancashire Evening Post
Posted by jeffrey davies [82.9.81.48] on 12 December 2017
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do you point out
Relatives took Heather Slade, pictured, to Pink & White nails where they said they were told the salon would not give manicures to ‘disabled or ill people’ [Image: BPM Media].
“We don’t serve your kind in here.”
When people are saying that openly to people with long-term illnesses and/or disabilities, those people are no different from those who shunned the Jews in Nazi Germany, or who treated Afro-Caribbean people as an underclass in the USA – even after the civil war.
And that’s the point – it’s about creating an underclass. “Othering” people. Treating them as less-than-human.
Believing that nobody will speak out against it.
The only way to stop it is to name names and make it clear: This is not acceptable.
The Metro story quoted below states that Pink & White Nails have not responded to repeated requests for a comment. Perhaps that is an admission of guilt. In fairness – perhaps not
Posted by jeffrey davies on 12 December 2017
