|
|
 |
| |
Answers
coming?
WHAT lay behind Councillor Heather Johnson’s
decisions to (a) take part in a debate over the contentious
Regent’s Park tower block scheme and (b) then make the
crucial casting vote to allow it to sail through the council’s
planning committee?
We may soon discover the answers to these questions following
a decision by the Tories to ask the Standards Board to investigate
Cllr Johnson’s performance on that fateful evening a month
ago when she chaired the committee.
At the moment, however, the Standards Board is a leaking vessel.
Its recent controversial decision to suspend Ken Livingstone
from office has been sidelined to make way for a judicial inquiry.
Then last week it grovelled miserably before Islington council
for the way it handled a misconduct case against its chief executive
and sundry councillors.
Confidence in such an unelected quango is at a low ebb among
local authority circles.
But if not the Standards Board, who else?
Undoubtedly, the Tories – and everyone else who are concerned
about the ill-conceived scheme in Euston Road – will be
hoping a reinvigorated Standards Board will solve the mysteries
of the council’s planning committee.
Solving the debt
FACED with frightening debts what does the average person
do?
Sell off assets to meet them.
Disposal of properties, in particular, is usually a short cut
to solvency.
And that is University College London Hospital’s master
plan as it struggles to control its spiralling deficit now coasting
well over the £30m mark (See page 12).
But once asset stripped, what then? In a competitive market
– that is what the National Health Service has become for
Foundation Hospitals like the UCLH – will it be able to
generate enough revenue every year to meet the enormous annual
payments unleashed by the hospital’s Private Finance Initiative
scheme?
Schools will face a similar quandary in the brave new world
now being ushered in by Tony Blair’s Education Bill.
For decades Britain enjoyed a mixed economy of public utilities
and private enterprise.
Today – encouraged first by Mrs Thatcher, now by Tony Blair
– private companies, often transnational conglomerates,
are slowly taking over the public sector.
However, this shift in the tectonic plates will not be halted
unless the private companies themselves are harnessed by restrictive
legislation. In today’s climate of political apathy this
is not a likely scenario. |
|
|
|
