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National treasures 'under the hammer' as campaigners auction off public services

Cat Hobbs | 23.09.2011 15:21 | Health | Public sector cuts | Social Struggles | Oxford | South Coast

Protest against the government's plans to sell off ALL our public services. Meet outside Westminster tube station (opposite Big Ben) in London at 1pm this Saturday 24 September. (Ring Cat Hobbs for more information or to join the protest 07817 885 131.)

This Saturday 24 September from 1pm, anti-cuts campaigners will symbolically ‘auction off’ public services across London. Oxford Save Our Services and other groups from around the country will be protesting against the government's plans to open up public services to the private sector.

Fifty people, dressed as bankers, will ‘sell off’ famous services, government departments and monuments from St Thomas's Hospital to Nelson’s column.

The government will finish consulting at the end of September on its Opening Public Services white paper.

David Cameron has said that he wants to introduce ‘a presumption’ that private companies and charities can run all public services.

The campaigners say that this amounts to ‘selling off all public services’ and that the government wants to repeat the 'disastrous' Health and Social Care Bill for all other departments.

Protester Manishta Sunnia said
‘First the government wants to ‘open up’ the NHS to be bought up by big American health care companies. Now the government plans to sell every service to private companies, from hospitals to schools to culture. Whenever public services are sold to the private sector they get worse and service users suffer. Look at the railways, or at Southern Cross care homes, which recently went bust.’

Protester Adam Ramsay said
‘In Margaret Thatcher’s wildest dreams, she never decided to sell off every public service. This would mean a US style system which nobody told us before the election. People should ask themselves is this what they voted for, and is this the kind of country they want?’

TUC Secretary General Brendan Barber recently called the policy 'classic nasty party stuff', calling the plan a 'naked rightwing agenda that takes us right back to the most divisive years of the 1980s'.

The campaigners have already coordinated an open letter from 50 groups and said that groups across the country would symbolically sell off local public services across the country for a ‘week of auction’ starting on 29th October, in protest.

Cat Hobbs
- e-mail: catrionahobbs@gmail.com
- Homepage: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-the-sell-off-of-ALL-public-services/267457589932750