...was because so often I feel that there's no hope but reading this today gave me hope. They shouldn't have done it but the authorities have admitted that they're scared. The level of protest that has been going on is starting to make the government think twice. They already seem to be turning around on student tuition fees and now they seem to be getting worried that they might have to do the same with the PFI.

So the message is, WE'VE GOT TO PUT AS MUCH PRESSURE AS WE CAN ON THE GOVERNMENT to finally give up on the whole PFI debacle - which not only has almost no support amongst the general public but which also faces growing hostility amongst those unfortunate troublesome people Labour calls its backbenchers.

I'd urge everyone to write to your local MP and urge them and encourage them to put pressure on the cabinet to reject the PFI.

WE'VE GOT TO TOPPLE THE PFI!!!

Ignore people who say that it's not worth trying. Nobody predicted how quickly the Berlin Wall was going to come down. Things can happen pretty quickly when the people mobilise themselves. As I say, the authorities alread seem to be caving in. The main danger is that we might get complancent. When I was about 6, whenever I was running in a race and winning, I always used to end up losing because I'd get complacent and slow down just as I got to the end. We've got to keep up that pressure and teach the government a lesson - that the people won't let it get away with enacting policies that no one believes in and that no one wants and that even its own advisers advise it against.

So click on that link and send a fax to you local MP. Even short ones are valuable.

To do this, all you need to do is click on the above website. FaxYourMP.com is a very useful website and we should all bookmark it.

...us organising some protests against the PFI and PPP.

Everyone should be getting involved in whatever ways they want. Send a fax or letter or postcard or email to your MP, or hold a demo, or get involved with your trade union if you have one, or any combination of these things.

Moreover, it's vitally important that we also TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT IT. Word of mouth is important. Tell people all about the PFI. Tell people about the WTO and GATS. Talk!

The key factor here to getting the public to understand is to talk to them about how it hurts their pockets over the longterm.

Print out the relevant sections of Captive State (I somehow don't think George would mind - I don' think he's a proponent of DMCA!! :) - show people what's really happening to our hospitals - show them the mess that is Coventry NHS, Dryburn in Durham, etc etc

Show them how a public one time cost of some 10 million squids turns into a fifteen year paybeck that costs 10 time as much for no gain.

What our populace has worked for for nearly 1.5 centuries now is being handed to private corporations for quick killings - whatever Mowlem says - look at Balfour Beatty, etc...

Above all tell them about GATS - piracy at its finest?

Here's the sort of stuff, IMO, you need to photocopy and hand around at community centres and libraries:-

---
Nick Cohen at:-
 http://society.guardian.co.uk/futureforpublicservices/comment/0,8146,504901,00.html
---
In June 2000, just after Kidderminister Hospital had been
wrecked, Blair opened the privately-built and managed
Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle.

'It seemed a Third Way triumph. Within weeks ceilings collapsed and operating theatres were flooded with sewage. Last month, surgery was cancelled after the wiring caught fire. 'If this is what Blair has in mind for the NHS, watch out,' Dr Paul Dyson, the chairman of the infirmary's medical committee, said. 'The developers always think of the bottom line. You have to hold a gun to their head to get them to repair anything.' The assumption at the hospital is that we will pay £500m over 30 years for a ramshackle building which would have cost £67m if Blair and Brown had kept it in the public sector.
---

Seems I was being too kind in my last post!

This rot has got to stop.

PFI/PPP is inextricably linked to the globalisation agenda. It is about forcing governments (or not needing to force them in the case of the UK) to privatise. It is not part privatisation - it amounts to full privatisation with guarnateed profits for the companies involved.

I think these companies should be hit directly. This can involve pickets of the local offices and HQs of all companies involved in these scams.
And not just them - the Labour Party is complicit in them. Labour MPs who support it should have their surgeries picketed. During the Poll Tax we never hesitated to attack the Tories who were implementing the hated tax, we should do the same with this government. Remember, barely 8 years after introducing it the Tories had been wiped out in Scotland. PPP for the Tube in London could see Labour go the same way - transport is the biggst single issue in London, and it affects the rest of Britain in that you're already having taxes raised to pay for the extra subsidy required by the worse than useless scumbags appointed by Brown and Prescott.