Here in Britain there has been a massive erosion in government-led services. This began with Margaret Thatcher in the nineteen eighties - one of whose famous phrases being, “There is no such thing as society”- and continued at an even greater pace by Anthony Blair, leader of the Labour Party that introduced the ‘Welfare State’ in the late Forties.

We have seen widespread privatisation of almost all Public Utilities, including telephones, gas and electricity, water, transport (rail, road and air), social care, pension funds, people’s banks and building societies (most of which are now in private hands), a number of gaols, much of higher education, while basic health care and public education are being rapidly ‘transformed’ into private sector operations. Much of local government responsibilities have been transferred to NGO’s (for example, local enterprise companies) by which taxpayers money is channelled into the private sector.

The sad thing about the Blair apostacy (if he ever was leftwing, that is) is that he was elected in a landslide of public opinion that was heartily fed-up with ‘Thatcherism’. Blair had the ‘gift of the gab’ and cloaked his underhand policy shifts with clever weasel words. First there were ‘transitions’, followed by much more radical ‘transformations’ as public became private, albeit camouflaged with verbiage about still being ‘public’, but with greater efficiency.

It is now possible to see quite clearly how NGO’s have been used to propagate capitalist imperialism on the international stage (as explained so well by Yves Engler) and privatisation within the national and more local stages.

What is particularly depressing about many of these government -initiated schemes for back-door privatisation is that taxpayers money is being channelled into private companies to carry out a public service. The only competition in these arrangements is for lucrative government contracts. As far as I can see, this is a copper-bottomed way of making huge profits without risk: a capitalist paradise! It also opens the way for corruption as companies jostle for these contacts. The supply of arms to Saudi Arabia, along with generous ’sweeteners’, is a case in point even though the British government has vetoed investigation of possible corruption.