You Cannot Run a Public Service Like a Business, and Here’s Why…

Thanks for making this point, Scriptonite…

Scriptonite Daily

One of the greatest myths of our time is that public services can be made more efficient if we run them as businesses.  The commercialisation of our public services has been a manifest failure, and the response offered by the mainstream parties is that we simply haven’t commercialised them enough. What they fail to understand is that a public service and a business are inherently different beasts and asking one to behave as the other is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle.

What is a Public Service?

The primary aim of a public service is to provide a service to the public.  This service exists to avoid negative social impacts and protect crucial social utilities from the instabilities of capitalism.

Within living memory it was considered basic common sense that essentials like food, water, energy, access to health services, housing, sanitation and sewage, social care and core…

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Mums ‘selling sex to feed their children as benefit cuts hit Hull’s poorest’

Benefit tales

WOMEN are turning to prostitution to feed their children as welfare reforms hit the poorest and most vulnerable families in Hull.

Staff at the Lighthouse Project, a charity supporting street workers in Hull, have seen a increase in women turning to prostitution as unemployment rates soar and benefit cuts take hold.

Humberside Police is about to launch a new campaign to help the women after recognising the problem, Anne Dannerolle, chair of trustees at the charity, revealed they are now giving out food parcels to the women selling their bodies for sex. She said:

“We have started to see women who are literally starving and they are out there to feed themselves.”

“Often, that is because of benefit cuts or sanctions, when their benefit cuts are taken away from them for a couple of weeks. I have a real concern about that. “If they have no one to turn to…

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Another Angry Voice on the Tories’ Response to the Death Stats: Axe the Stats

We demand stats about deaths caused by govt policy

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

This is another important piece from the Angry Yorkshireman over at Another Angry Voice. Mr. Voice reports a leaked government report recording a 5 per cent increase in the death rate. Faced with such further evidence of the devastating consequences of Conservative policies on the vulnerable, the response of the Health Minister, Jeremy Hunt, is in line with that of his party comrade, Ian Duncan Smith: shout loudly that the statistics should not be used to discredit government policy without further information, and then close down the collection of such statistics. It’s not just the response of a spoilt child sticking their fingers in their ears and saying ‘la la la’, when faced with a situation they don’t like. They also want to stop others hearing the stats for themselves. So we’re back to the old doctrine of killing the bearer of bad news.

The article begins

‘In August…

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Social landlords are financially rewarded for evicting the bedroom tax tenant

Do As I Say, Not As I Do Says Workfare Hypocrite John Sentamu

the void

“Millions of people across the country will get up today, leave their families and travel to work to carry out jobs that we all depend on. They will care for people, serve us food, clean the spaces that we all use and share. They will do more than a fair day’s work, but they won’t get a fair day’s pay.”

So said the Archbishop of York John Sentamu, writing in The Observer yesterday.  What the Bishop didn’t mention is that some of those people will not receive any pay at all.  In fact they could even be working – under threat of benefit sanctions – for the YMCA, the organisation of which he is the president.

Despite the Bishop condemning poverty pay, the organisation he heads uses workfare at both a national and local level.  Throughout the country people are mopping floors, stacking shelves and serving customers in YMCA…

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