"...the people of Skye must pay a fee to an American bank every time they want to go to or from their island, despite the fact that most of the costs of the bridge have already been met by the taxpayer. The bridge was built with the assistance of a loan illegally obtained by the government. It was 60% over-financed and, thanks to commercial confidentiality, no one knows how profitable it will be. [...]The government had no need to use the Private Finance Initiative to build the Skye Bridge. Not only has it spent almost as much public money on this private development as it would have done if the project were a public one, but, as Skye lies within a regional development area, it could also have asked the European Union to provide nearly all the money required for a toll-free crossing. [...]Far from Westminster and the offices of the national newspapers, out of sight, out of mind, Skye was the ideal location in which to launch a corrupt and unpopular initiative, in which private companies were granted monopolistic control over public works."

The PFI is the instrument of social torture in the next chapter as well. Here, Monbiot looks at the new hospital build programme that Labour is so proud of. Again, if you look closely you'll find that the positive image of these programmes belies the fact that we are, in fact, seeing the overall state of care in this country going backwards. Private tender is now required for many public works, under the PFI. Private companies need to see an advantage to undertaking a project - this, of course, is why power provision, and transport, and water cannot seem to operate for the public benefit while corporate greedheads (with shareholder greedheads to keep sweet) control them. The hospital build programme has highlighted a number of instances where the government, and, sometimes, local councils, have bent over so far to accomodate prospective corporate allies that the overall cost to the public purse (directly and indirectly) has been greater than if it were public project all along.

Once, Coventry had five hospitals. Thirty years on there are only two - both are rundown and need some refurbishment. The plan is, however, to demolish the central Coventry & Warwickshire site, so the financiers of work at the other site can build some nice profitable housing in town. The Walsgrave Hospital, on the edge of town, and, therefore, less easy for much of the population to get to, will be demolished and replaced with an all new hospital. But it will be small and understaffed (as proper staffing would detract from the small pot of cash allocated to cover the new equipment). So much for a nice cheap refurb. But, afterall, what money is in it for a private construction company if that is all they get to do. To make the job attractive, the authorities, who are obliged to utilise the PFI if they wish to 'develop' any services, had to come up with a more lucrative proposition for any possible 'partners'. In Edinburgh similar PFI induced problems have arisen. Here, the city loses 200 beds and 890 staff, in a plan which would have cost, from the public purse, £180M - but will in fact allow the consortium contracted to undertake the work a whopping £990M! The 'savings' to private industry will result, according to a BMJ report, in an average 31% less beds in privately financed hospitals; and, according to the BMA, a 10-20% decline in the nursing budget - "every £200M spent on privately financed hospitals will result in the loss of 1,000 doctors and nurses." These incursions are generating real health care problems for all who cannot afford full private health care (and those too, as future governments must maintain debts to these companies via all our purses).

"The Private Finance Initiative will reduce not only the number of Britain's hospital beds but also the number of Britain's hospitals. Most of the PFI plans involve the closure of all but one of a given trust's hospitals. In simple geographical terms, healthcare will become less accessible, especially for the 32% of British households with no use of a car. [...]The hospitals scheduled for closure, in order to find the money with which to build the new ones, are, in every case, at the heart of the towns or cities they serve." "[...]The corporate takeover of Briatin's National Health Service has begun."

    George Monbiot, as seen on the fly of The Captive State & on his Guardian web page.

Monbiot's third and fourth chapters, about the proposed demolition of Southampton's old district of St. Mary's in order to build a smaller shopping area with lots of nice profitable housing, and the role of backhanders, etc. in attaining planning permission, puts the focus on the local authorities role in the corporate takeover of Britain, and that of the DETR, the government department responsible for planning policy.

"Councils, as everyone knows, are always short of money. Increasingly they must rely on sources other than the council tax and government grants if they are to meet local people's needs. Individual councillors with political ambitions also discover quickly that the more wealthy and powerful allies they can enlist, the better they are likely to do. While local authorities can help make property developers a great deal of money, the developers, in turn, can render favours of various kinds, financial and political, to local authorities."

The local, and planning, authorities know when a plan will be unpopular, and have a nasty habit of beginning negotiations with particular companies long before the public are informed. When the inherent lack of competative tendering (which is really the least of it) is discovered, the authority usually claim that sorting things out by the backdoor saves public money. In the case of a planned housing development near Newbury, the government's planning officer rejected the proposal, but only because of the lack of effort (ie, none) in looking for alternative sites, not because of the compromised decsion-making process. The Department of the Environment, Transport & the Regions, however, cannot be relied upon to call in plans, almost regardless of circumstance. Sometimes this seems to have no explanation, but often it is incredibly obvious that they have had a different agenda to that which the public expects. Surely, it is the DETR's job to protect the fabric of the nation. John Gummer and John Prescott, both, have made seemingly bizarre decisions over planning consent. These decisions make sense, though, when it is recalled that as well as protecting the environment from depradation by lawless developers, they are responsible for furthering the interests of those very developers. And who can 'pay' more, a rare newt or a wealthy corporation? Certainly, things have progressed from bad to worse under Labour:

"[...]the Labour government has removed some of the few remaining safeguards designed to ensure that development responds to public need, rather than just corporate greed. In November 1999 John Prescott announced that 'for the first time the planning system will be required to promote competition'. The government, the Department of the Environment has announced, will 'speed up' the planning process in response to 'business need'. [...]'National policy statements' outlining 'the need for and benefits of major projects' would 'avoid unnecessary speculation and debate at subsequent planning inquiries... [so that] time is not wasted at inquiry going over issues which have been settled'. When issues are 'settled', of course, local people have no means of affecting their outcome." Monbiot highlights the plight of local people by reference to the proposal of 'red routes' in Kensington & Chelsea. A local woman, Linda Wade, and three others, went to court to stop the red routes, and lost:

"In February 2000 they were handed the bill. The council had costed the work of its legal department at £120 an hour, and added a 36% 'handling charge'. The residents had also been forced to hire lawyers, who, among other tasks, had to dissect the 700-page document the council had submitted to support its case. Linda and her three colleagues were handed bills amounting to £150,000. The council warned them that, if necessary, it would send in the bailiffs to recover its money. [...]Going to court might appear foolhardy, but it was the only means the residents possessed of influencing a decision which would have a major impact on their lives. The planning system in Great Britain, which at first site looks orderly, well balanced and fair, is thoroughly rigged."

This is not merely a selection of examples chosen to bolster some bolshy fellows thesis, however. Monbiot is well aware that this is endemic in our system, and that, if the DETR will not allow proper planning inquiry in the first place, or will not call in for public inquiry plans that it has its own political agenda for seeing realised, there is little that any individuals and communities can do about it. There are a couple of other examples, not mentioned by Monbiot. The first relates to the proposed building of large municipal incinerators all over the South-east (which I will talk about next week).

The other example is that of Twyford Down. Possibly everyone in the UK is aware of the offensive chalk cutting that now bisects the downs near Winchester, due to the high profile of the 'grunge' element at (late in the day - the proposals had been hanging around for twenty years) very public protests on the Downs. All power to Road Alert, etc. for trying, but the Winchester Bypass is a nasty example of planning consent being out of all local community control - and, in the end, seemongly out of all local and central government control! The book Twyford Down: Roads, Campaigning and Environmental Law, by Barbara Bryant, at that time a Winchester Conservative councillor (E & FN Spon, 1996), is an outrageous expose of the planning and decision-making process in this country. Quite how Bryant remained a Tory through her twenty year struggle to stop the bypass is a mystery, since it is hard to see how anyone can retain any faith in the established order in this country, amongst whom the Conservatives, until New Labour, were surely the epitome. Like Linda Wade, Bryant had to find large amounts of cash to fight her increasingly Quixotic campaign. Indeed, she had to remortagage her house (twice, if I remember correctly). The Twyford Down episode saw: Winchester College quash a relatively sensible bypass proposal on the grounds that their land was sacred (due to their influence); the other 'sensible' proposal of a tunnel quashed on grounds of expense (I bet the PFI would have sorted that out though!); and, in the end, the demolition of SSSI's and archeological remains to make way for an unecessarily large and unsightly cut through what had been outstandingly beautiful downland.

The last part of The Captive State that I will look at this week is Monbiot's chapter on the Supermarket chains ability to build where they please, town centre or green belt. The supermarkets bring a few jobs at the expense of many jobs, and at the expense of the fabric of community itself. They destroy small businesses in the high street, enjoy economies of scale that net them huge profits, and utilise the international free market to underprice all competition and hammer the viability of indigenous producers. Of course, as is so often the case, the 'free market' means free from restraint, but not free from incursion. The Russian 'freedom' used to mean 'free from'... starvation, unemployment, etc... (at least in theory). This form of freedom often allows no freedom to do anything. The American (and Thatcherite) conception of 'freedom' means 'free to'... do what you please with no-one able to restrict you by making you behave ethically in any way. This denies the underdog the freedom from oppression at the hands of those with greater clout (whether physical or financial).

The post-war settlement in the UK sought to balance these freedoms. This balance has been all but destroyed, by, for the most part, the rise of free market philosophies in international trade. Supermarkets use their freedom to trade without intervention to quash all smaller companies ability to indulge in free trade. One of the instruments they use to do this is, disgustingly, the very authorities that are supposed to be our protection against them. Even with the high profile of green issues today, the supermarkets still get to define 'green' and to off-load environmental expenses onto anyone but themselves. This is quite opposed to the trends proposed by the Rio Summit or the Brundtland report. If they need a new road they get one - bugger the environment. And who pays for the road? Often the local authority, not the supermarket.

If, say, a small bakers 'threatens' superstore business, the BIG 4 will coalesce into a semi-legal effective monopoly, (yes, they do talk to each other - & between them they "shift 74.5% of all groceries sold in the UK!") reducing the shop price of bread to well below the production price. If they need to group products, say, apples, into a large central warehouse, in order to benefit from 'economies of scale', and this requires them to move produce from a mile from a store that will sell it to a warehouse hundreds of miles away and back again, they will not be liable for any of the indirect environmental costs of transportation. Nor will they be, even if they have to import from New Zealand (during our apple season, no less). There are good arguments for applying value to environmental costs (see, for example, The Green Economy by Michael Jacobs - Pluto, 1991), but we do not do so, and so the supermarkets and corporations can and will destroy our environment and our health without ever having to meet any of the costs incurred. The government sees it's job as being to aid them in this, whilst we see its job as being to protect us - what is going wrong?

Just to ram home the iniquitous nature of business in this country:

"The chairman of La Fornia, a firm that sells bread to one of the superstores, has revealed that when the chain he sells to is asked to make a donation to a charity, it will turn to him or one of its other suppliers and instruct them to hand over the money in the superstore's name. The charity takes it in the belief that it had been provided by the superstore, and the grateful disabled children, cancer patients or injured pets are pictured in the local papers with the superstore's beaming manager."