Spotlight on the Public Services Industrial Complex

Channel 4 News is running a very useful series of reports exposing the big players in privatisation and highlighting a lack of public accountability in procurement processes. http://www.channel4.com/news/do-you-know-who-runs-your-world

APSE calls for evidence of success before rushing into cooperatives or mutuals for public service delivery

This piece in today’s Guardian highlights the lack of evidence available to demonstrate that coops or mutuals can be effective ways to deliver public services. In fact the APSE research highlights that rather than equitable outcomes for service users and employees those claimed as a ‘success’ have relied upon the staff co-optees cutting their own terms and conditions to sustain the model.

Accountability is best assurance of political integrity - Gregor Gall

Gregor Gall, writing in the Morning Star, draws lessons from the fate of those Labour MPs disgraced in the Parliamentary expenses scandal: ‘Their Achilles' heel in regard of their expenses seemed to be that they started to operate as independent MPs who just happened to be elected on a Labour ticket, and once they got to Parliament they could go off down their own merry little road’:http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/101521