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SKYE TOLL BRIDGE VICTORY. Britain's 1st PFI scheme defeated!

Ozymandias | 22.12.2004 17:58

Well, kind of.

Tax-payers money was used to buy up the remainder of the contract. But this was on terms which were not totally favourable to the companies involved - it's the result of a long drawn out legal battle and a long grass-roots based campaign.

One local resident said he'd paid out about £10,000 over the last decade in extortionate charges for the use of the bridge.

The Isle of Skye was the guinea pig for the Tory Party's new big idea - the Private Finance Initiative.

The PFI was bitterly opposed by New Labour until they won the election in 1997, when they decided that they'd continue the PFI and accelerate its expansion throughout the country especially for building hospitals.

PFI is total rip-off for the consumer and the tax-payer and a juicy profit-earner for the greedy corporations growing fat of our public services. And the PFI is totally corrupt, as exposed in George Monbiot's book Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, which is a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, regardless of one's opinion of his recent ideas about having a world parliament.

Er... well this whole Skye thing was on the news on tv last night and it's been in the papers today.

Do a Google Search to find out more info, but I thought I should write something on indymedia as no one else has yet.

Keep up the fight against the PFI. And let's properly start to mobilise against GATS and the Bolkestein Directive that will hand ever more power to corporations. Power is far away enough from the people when vested in the state, let alone the corporations. Let's bring power back to the people.

PS anyone feel like writing an article about the Bolkestein Directive? It has MASSIVE implications and yet we don't really seem to know much about it.

Ozymandias

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