|
|
 |
| |
Is Haverstock now a business commodity?
BIT by bit too many public services are being allowed to slip into private hands, even though arguments that the free market is best – heard so loudly in the 1990s – are now being questioned.
Now, in Camden this week (page 1) comes news – uncomfortable to some – that the education system itself is at risk of being passed from one private company to another, all in the quest for profit.
When, despite criticism from many campaigners, the former Labour administration allowed a large Japanese company, Kajima, to rebuild Haverstock School under a private finance initiative scheme, who would have thought that within four years we would see partial ownership of the school quietly passed into the hands of one Britain’s biggest banks, the HSBC?
The idea that education should be a public service seemed unassailable to all political parties in the last century – from the Two Nation Tories to Labour to the Liberals.
Now we appear to be turning back the pages to the Victorian times and the possible end of our state education system.
This, of course, is an exaggeration of the Kajima-HSBC affair but it would be foolish to complacently believe the tectonic plates haven’t shifted.
Somers Town won’t roll over
FOR years the established political parties have lamented that interest in politics in Britain has died. Just look at how few people bother to vote in a general election, say the politicians. But last night’s public meeting in Somers Town, attended by well over 100 people packed into a small hall suggests that, given the right cause, ordinary people won’t roll over.
To them the need to build homes on the publicly owned site behind the British Library is beyond argument.
In these times of acute housing shortage what else – in all commonsense – should be built there? The meeting was the biggest in Somers Town since the 1980s.
It looks as if the people are beginning to stir. Are the Lib-Dems and Tories listening?
Proud to be ‘feral’
PRIVATE Eye editor Ian Hislop described investigative journalism as the “feral end of the media”.
That’s exactly how we see it. Today, far more than before, the only real opposition in Britain comes from the media, not the centre-hugging politicians.
Who questions those who wield power, if not the media? Who will watch over the politicos in Camden, if not the local Press.
We feel we are leading the
“feral” pack – and are proud of it.
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
