Tuesday 20 March 2012

Lessons will be learnt - not!

During the 13 years of Labour government they managed to accumulate over £200 billion of Private Finance Initiative debt.*


From They Work For You..........


Now can we have 'Referism'?




*With acks to Douglas Carswell.

6 comments:

TomTom said...

Yes and than Banks just love it stashed away in tax havens offshore

Anonymous said...

Quaint.
But it was the previous Conservative government that initiated the PFI scheme/scam.
And then locked future governments into contractual obligations with respect to same.
I seem to remember that buying-out of these schemes/scams would be very costly, something in the order of hundreds of billions.
Of course, Labour continued the theme...so the present "coat-of-many-colours" government should perhaps not whine too loudly....they did, after all, start the scheme/scam to make their friends insanely wealthy.
Sauce for the goose ?

TomTom said...

locked future governments into contractual obligations with respect to same

Force majeure would unlock them....after all the Banks are a bit short of funding - though RBS was allowed to unload trains to Macquarie

Anonymous said...

Not allowed.
We're in many organisations now, the EU and WTO to name two. The contracts are legally enforceable through many routes. The contract terms would have to be paid, plus penalties and interest etc. Costs over term are in excess of 250 billion, and counting.

WitteringsfromWitney said...

Anon(1): As TT says.........

Anon(2): So? Did Iceland knuckle under to the demands made on them?

Anonymous said...

Of course, they could print money (something the banks have a current monopoly on at the moment) and buy out the contracts.
At the moment that would cost some 250 billion. Not pay ?
Lots of jobs involved here. Lots. And then the companies involved would still own the properties. And the elephant cowering in the corner is the EU, and what we're allowed to do in the EU. Nationalise them ?
Not by a conservative government, and even labour will not do that now.
Watch the news in a year or so. When the nhs bill passes into law ALL the contracts for ALL nhs services will HAVE to be put to tender over the ENTIRE EU. At the moment they do not. Watch some 70 billion pounds of service contracts depart to EU countries. And of course the current PFI companies will be able to sell their "stake" then...
The other pachyderm in another corner is that when GP commissioning is operating a whole rake of current GP-operated clinics, et-al, will be almost immediately ended or be contracted to commercial healthcare companies. When their 40-million-or-so allowance is gone, so are they.