The Government recently offered i’ts “final offer” on pensions. Danny Alexander stated that “the new pensions will be substantially more affordable to alternative providers. By offering transferred staff the right to remain members of the public service scheme, we are no longer requiring private, voluntary and social enterprise providers to take on the risks of defined benefit that deter many from bidding for contracts in the first place.”
Similarly, in his first letter of remit to the new chairman of the School Teachers Review Board, Michael Gove asked them to report on “how the pay framework for teachers should best be made more market facing in local areas,” with reference to the private sector.
It is not just education that is under attack. The same process is being carried out across all public services, as the recent passage of the high-profile NHS Bill shows. Against this background interest rates remain at 0.5 per cent which we all subsidise at the expense of savers and others.
We face not just savage austerity cuts, but a politically motivated attempt to completely restructure the British economy and effectively abolish the public sector. The economists continue to re- write their own history and talk gobbledegook. This helps to pave the way to move again to a private sector for all, which has been deemed a complete failure as has the capitalist system. And the rich get richer, while many suffer in poverty.
Ivor Timson 