Privatising profit, nationalising loss: the secret policy of the Tory liars
Hard hat, soft head: but Michael Gove must think we’ve gone soft in the head if he thinks we don’t understand that he is privatising profit and nationalising loss in the housebuilding industry.
The decision to lift the cost of mitigating the harmful effects on rivers of housebuilding near them and force it on the public is more proof of a secret Conservative government policy: privatising profit and nationalising loss.
It’s a very simple tactic: if a private business or a privatised utility is in danger of losing profit (not of going out of business, notice) because of statutory rules it must observe, then the government passes the cost of those rules on to the public purse in order to allow shareholders to enjoy profit without responsibility.
It makes a nonsense of the primary reason the Tories gave for electing them into office in the first place, back in 2010. They had claimed that they would reduce the UK’s national debt by cutting spending – but partly because they kept piling the costs incurred by failing privatised utilities onto the Treasury, they have more than doubled that debt.
We have seen it in action multiple times – and now we are seeing it brought to housebuilding:
Taxpayers will pick up the bill for pollution by housebuilders, government officials have admitted, as rules on chemical releases into waterways are scrapped.
The government has said it will double Natural England’s wetland funding to £280m in order to show it is trying to meet the requirements of its legally binding Environment Act.
This extra £140m will come from the public purse, the government confirmed. When asked by the Guardian whether this meant the taxpayer was now picking up the bill for pollution caused by developers, a government official responded “yes”
It is Tory policy. They make the rich richer by making the poor poorer. And they are doing it by forcing the hardworking many to shoulder the responsibilities that should be borne by the idle few.
That is, privatising profit and nationalising loss.
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One wonders how much two £50,000 donations to Gove from a property developer last year factor into this.
Where’s the evidence, please?
Yes. Capitalism fails to deliver to such a degree that it regularly requires subsidising by the state to maintain its high dividends and privileges. A “socialism” for the sole benefit of the wealthy class, while everyone else is systematically impoverished through depressed pay, high taxation and minimal public services.
Speaking of tax, I note that Starmer and Reeves say they do not plan to tax the rich to achieve a fairer society. One way they may think they can make this work is if they sdopt Blair’s recent think-tank ideas of targeting benefits etc. to individuals accurately using modern technology and AI.
I think this approach might mean that universal benefits, maybe some pensions, would be replaced by (much fewer) individually-targeted benefits. This would crack down on the amount paid out in benefits, pensions etc, and so wealth need not be taxed further to pay for it. But then I’m just trying to make sense of Labour policy, which otherwise doesn’t add up.
Mike, what is your policy on comments on your site? I don’t find other left sites to be as exclusive, when I have something to say. Thanks for any guidance on this.
No extreme language. Never attack other commenters. Discuss topics of conversation in a civil way.
That’s about the size of it.
I can’t say I’ve seen many comments by you before, though. Will check the trash to see if you’ve been auto-dumped by WordPress.