Monbiot: the NHS and the Fat Cats Protection League

This great free-market experiment is more like a corporate welfare scheme (from today’s Guardian)

This is a great article by George Monbiot about the tendency of the “free market” system to act as a cover for government subsidy, or preferential treatment, for big business. In the particular case cited here, the renovation of two hospitals in Coventry was scrapped in favour of building a new privately-financed one at what was originally predicted to be nearly six times the cost, but which proved by early 2007 to be nearly fourteen times that amount, on the outskirts of town (against the wishes of the people), resulting in closures of wards, job cuts and punitive charges to patients and their families – while the payments to the financiers are not negotiable. The purpose seems to be an attempt to cast an image of a “fiscally prudent” “Iron Chancellor” by postponing paying for public services to the future.