PPP... (2 Viewers)

[W.]

Shhh !!!! what if the SWP heard you ?? ... street theatre is it corm ? hmm i have a bag of hurleys .. .

 

[silo]

ok, pete.

'ppp' stands for 'public-private partnership', which is a form of privatisation.

privatisation is a process of reversed socialism whereby costs are socialised and profits are privatised, usually under with accompanying rhetoric about 'competition'.

one particular example would be dublin bus, where business and employer's groups have for years looked for the government to make a giant investment in the service (via our taxes - costs are socialised). now that they have, the business groups and their friends (notably the PDs) are clamouring for 'competition' in the market (profits are privatised).

the net effect is that the government provides the basic infrastructure and the private companies get the lion's share of the profits.

what's new is the term 'public-private', which only reflects what's really going on. the public sector has always been involved with privatisation, whether through this provision of infrastructure or through a few public employees at the top getting giant bonuses for 'management' in organising the sell-off.

the reason for using the term 'ppp' is mostly an ideological one, due to the fact that some of these terms don't go down to well with joe public. ppp is privatisation. privatisation is supply-side economics. supply-side economics is trickle-down economics. trickle-down economics is ppp. essentially, there is no difference; ask the 'beneficiaries' of ppp/privatisation in latin america, south america, the philippines, eastern europe, the former ussr and other places.

 

[Daveor]

I suppose the danger is of 'creeping privatization' a slow takeover.

or if not, does the following equation hold:

public(accountable,loss making, secure employment,inefficient)
+
private(non-accountable,profit making, non-secure employment,efficient)
=
PPP(accountable,profit making,secure employment,efficient)
???

The goal should be to provide an adaquate service at minimum cost to the tax payer.
minimum, but not necessarily zero.
The idea of seeking to make a profit (even within the more constrained arena of PPP) out of essential public services seems to me to be flawed, so I don't think it would be naieve or childish to protest against it. Blockading it though before it's had a chance to prove itself I'm not so sure?
Maybe a test case of a few years should be done, before rushing in and PPPing everything.


http://society.guardian.co.uk/ppp/

http://www.local-transport.detr.gov.uk/pppoffer/

 

[pete]

As i'm in work i don't really have time to respond properly, so please excuse any mistakes / oversimplifications:

I have to say that to my mind, PPP is not the same as privatisation.

Privatisation (to me) is akin to selling off the family silver for a short term financial gain.

Take for example - as stephen said - the Eircom sell off. This debacle resulted in a part of the national infrastructure (the physical telephone exchanges and lines etc which over the course of decades had been paid for by irish taxpayers) being sold to the private sector.

The irony here being that irish taxpayers who bought Eircom shares were in effect conned into buying something they'd already paid for...


PPP on the other hand, is the use of private sector finance for public projects. The Decentralisation scheme, where private companies designed & built new offices for government departments around the country, was a PPP scheme.

The government entered into a mortgage-style arrangement and paid back the cost+interest over 20 years. This is referred to as design/build PPP.

This was done because the state couldn't afford to pay for these new developments, but all decentralisation schemes bar one were bought out by the government a couple of years ago with celtic tiger tokens.


Another example would be the east and west link toll bridges. Both were privately funded and built on behalf of the state. The developers receive all tolls paid for 30 years (i think), at which point ownership reverts to the state. This is known as design/build/operate PPP.

There's an argument against this model that goes something like this: State infrastructure projects should be free to joe public at the point of consumption. Or rather, why should the public be expected to pay for services (in this case a piece of national infrastructure: a bridge) which the could reasonably expect to receive for free.

I look at it slightly different. I can't / won't drive a car. Unless I'm a passenger in someone else's vehicle, I will never need to drive over a toll bridge. With the design/build/operate model, over a period of time, the people who actually benefit from it being there end up paying for it. Which seems fair enough to me.

 

[Stephen]

pete (28 Sep, 2001 02:38 p.m.):
I look at it slightly different. I can't / won't drive a car. Unless I'm a passenger in someone else's vehicle, I will never need to drive over a toll bridge. With the design/build/operate model, over a period of time, the people who actually benefit from it being there end up paying for it. Which seems fair enough to me.

But pete do we all not pay taxes for this?
Are we not paying the government to run the country?
Are we not paying them to provide basic services which everyone needs and benefits from?

Take the bin charges for example: here's a blatant double tax. We pay the government a tax to provide us with basic services and then they ask us to pay them to provide the service we have already paid for. Also water charges where the fuck do these things fit in?

They make the lead up to the government privatising these services allot easier to take.

 

[pete]

Well I don't think council service charges for removal of bins (the "polluter pays" principle and all that jazz) can really be compared with building bridges / office blocks.

Bin and water charges are questionable, but they have nothing to do with Public Private Partnerships.

but i digress

The point of me posting those questions was purely to see if people were actually aware of what it is they're being called upon to protest against, that's all.

Like someone else said, it's very easy to throw "government", "globalisation", "capitalism" & "privatisation" into a sentence.

It doesn't necessarily mean anything though.

 

[W.]

http://www.ppp.ie

 

[Dan]

I really don't want to sound like some capitalist faschist,etc., but whats being said about private companies being unaccountable isn't necessarily true. Any factory I've worked in, including the one I'm in now is audited very strictly on a regular basis. Somebody from outside goes through practically every piece of paperwork in the place to check for things that don't add up. This may ring hollow after all the tribunals and Denis O'Brien(who I person want to see go down), etc. , but bear in mind that most of these scandals occurred in semi-state or ex semi-state companies where the mums the word attitude lingers on.

As far as private sector jobs being less secure..most companies in this country are unionised and I've seen it - if an employer even looks at employee the wrong way they'll be hearing from the union.

Anyhue, gotta go, off to my boss for my 20% raise.

 

[pee pee]

pete (28 Sep, 2001 02:38 p.m.):
As i'm in work i don't really have time to respond properly.

i'd hate to see how much you'd write if you had a bit of spare time on your hands...

 

[pete]

peepee (01 Oct, 2001 01:56 p.m.):

pete (28 Sep, 2001 02:38 p.m.):
As i'm in work i don't really have time to respond properly.

i'd hate to see how much you'd write if you had a bit of spare time on your hands...

Actually work is where i have all my spare time - i'm a civil servant, don't you know....

 

[Spudmonkey999]

cormy i gotta disagree with you there, saying that peaceful protest is only for wnakers is a bit fucking harsh. I do like the idea of street carnivals , street theatre and creative subversity but since when did these things become a form of non peaceful protest. Since when has street theatre become a form of violent protest.

Direct action is good under some circumstances but for the large part it does alienate a lot of onlookers who will never even try to understand the meaning of any protest if all they see is clones throwing bricks at cops. Direct action can be a form of peaceful protest so dont forget it.

 

[pete]

Spudmonkey999 (01 Oct, 2001 03:08 p.m.):
Since when has street theatre become a form of violent protest.

Some street theatre i've seen should never have been inflicted on anyone.... it should be banned by the geneva convention, if you ask me.

 

[yojimbo]

One problem the government in Britain had with PPP was that once hospitals had been built by private contractors the government found itself paying back the money at pretty high interest rates, so that they'd have been better off if they'd just borrowed the money from a bank. If I had the book I read this in to hand I'd give you figures and all but you get the idea.

Plus, PPP often includes the private company managing the facility or hospital or whatever. Even though it's public money that's ultimately paying (over the odds) for it.

Basically it seems to me that PPP offers governments a short-term easy way out of their obligations which, as always, they jump at.

 

[pete]

yojimbo (01 Oct, 2001 04:22 p.m.):
One problem the government in Britain had with PPP was that once hospitals had been built by private contractors the government found itself paying back the money at pretty high interest rates, so that they'd have been better off if they'd just borrowed the money from a bank. If I had the book I read this in to hand I'd give you figures and all but you get the idea.

With the decentralisation scheme here (a design / build PPP) it worked something like a variable-rate mortgage, as the construction companies assigned their loans to banks which the Government then made the repayments on. (To this untrained eye it all seemed to be a very complicated mechanism to ensure that the costs of these developments didn't show up as a loan taken out by the Government, but there you go.)

The interest was then calculated annually using the DIBOR (that's the Dublin Inter-Bank Overnight Rate - I believe it's the rate at which banks loan money to each other) on the anniversary of the initial payment.

But I don't think this would be the case if a property developer were in a position to finance the whole development themselves - they could agree on a high interest rate for the term of the agreement, but if interest rates in the market were to fall then yes, the government would have been better off borrowing from a bank.

I think.

Plus, PPP often includes the private company managing the facility or hospital or whatever. Even though it's public money that's ultimately paying (over the odds) for it.

It should be noted that a private sector company managing what would 'normally' be a public sector thing is not an inherently bad thing, in exactly the same way that public sector management is not always perfect....

Basically it seems to me that PPP offers governments a short-term easy way out of their obligations which, as always, they jump at.

But short term easy way out can also mean the most economically advantageous solution for the end user / customer (and the tax payer) too...

 

[yojimbo]

Damn, if I'd known my argument was going to be picked apart like that I'd have backed it up with, y'know, facts.

Having read a little more on the subject last night (in [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0141000163/qid%3D1002022320/026-2473800-8685253]this[/url] book) an important factor in deciding whether it's worthwhile to go with PPP seems to be whether the government can afford to borrow by itself or not, ie how much debt does it have in proportion to GDP. In Britain they didn't really need to go with PPP because they had a low debt/GDP ratio, but they went with it anyway because it fitted with New Labour's neurotic yearning to be seen as 'business friendly'.

That said, I'm very bad at researching similar figures for Ireland, and you seem to know this kind of thing. Maybe it's completely different over here.

 

[snap-apple]

d'ya think somewhere like dear old TCD here counts as PPP? is this a bad thing? does that make me a civil servant? ultimately goverment controlled but run by private parties? now children, how many other examples of existing PPP can you think of...

 

[Pantone247]

Conor (02 Oct, 2001 01:37 p.m.):
d'ya think somewhere like dear old TCD here counts as PPP? is this a bad thing?

yeah its a bad thing!!!

trinity is full of wankers.

(hardy har)

 

[Cormy]

Spudmonkey999 (01 Oct, 2001 03:08 p.m.):
cormy i gotta disagree with you there, saying that peaceful protest is only for wnakers is a bit fucking harsh. I do like the idea of street carnivals , street theatre and creative subversity but since when did these things become a form of non peaceful protest. Since when has street theatre become a form of violent protest.

Direct action is good under some circumstances but for the large part it does alienate a lot of onlookers who will never even try to understand the meaning of any protest if all they see is clones throwing bricks at cops. Direct action can be a form of peaceful protest so dont forget it.

Peaceful protest is specifically walking around with signs, singing obsolete "workers unite" type songs, and thinking it'll somehow have any impact...street theatre (what I'm talking about isn't "theatre on a street", it's just the easiest way of referring to it), etc, is just a more creative and interesting way to voice your protest and bring attention to what you're protesting against...

Non-peaceful protest doesn't mean violent protest, e.g., blockades, civil disobedience, etc are all non-violent. Likewise Direct Action isn't simply "throwing bricks at cops". Direct Action isn't specifically peaceful protest, it may not be violent (what is & isn't to be considered violence is completely relative and a different debate altogether), but by definition it has to be physical and possibly confrontational...which excludes it from being "peaceful" protest.

 

[Dan]

No, I got a better one Cormy.

Instead of comparing peaceful and non peaceful protest, try this:

Protesting against something I know something about and I think is wrong

Vs

Protesting for the sake of it and being completely clueless about what I'm protesting against and well, basically doing it because I want to get myself some more credibility as a punker.

I personally, plus I would imagine most people on this site, normally know what we're protesting against when we do it.

 

[yojimbo]

Direct Action isn't specifically peaceful protest, it may not be violent (what is & isn't to be considered violence is completely relative and a different debate altogether), but by definition it has to be physical and possibly confrontational...which excludes it from being "peaceful" protest.

Oh yeah? What about the Velvet Revolution then? That was definitely a peaceful protest, but it felt pretty direct to all the people involved, and it had a far bigger effect than a few Chumbawumba fans with bongos (sorry, 'street theatre') could have.

It's completely misleading to characterise peaceful protest as pointless "walking about". With the support of lots of people (and remember that the idea of building a protest is to attract more people, not turn them away), peaceful protest can be massively succesful. Street theatre, though it's undoubtably a lot of fun (like that kick-about in O'Connell St last week), doesn't draw in sympathetic people in large enough numbers to ever be effective on its own.