Government Sell-Offs - Coming Your Way

Government Sell-Offs  Coming Your Way EXPRESS http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/657770/Land-sell-off-property-UK-Land-Registry-privatisation-petition-public-ownership extracts Land sell-off is a disgrace, says Neil Clark IT is the public body that anyone who has bought property in England and Wales will have had dealings with. By Neil Clark PUBLISHED: 08:57, Sun, Apr 3, 2016 | UPDATED: 09:25, Sun, Apr 3, 2016 The Land Registry was established in 1862 and has been serving us quietly and efficiently for more than 150 years. Now though, a dark cloud hangs over the body that registers land ownership and maintains the documentation of almost 24 million titles. Just before Easter, Business Secretary Sajid Javid announced plans to privatise the Land Registry. “The preferred model is a contract between government and a private operator, with all the core functions transferred out of the public sector,” said the statement. ... None of the old arguments in favour of state sell-offs made by the Thatcherites in the 1980s apply. The Land Registry is no loss-making drain on the public purse. Last year it paid the ­Exchequer more than £100million in dividends and has made a profit for the taxpayer in 19 of the past 20 years. It has done this while reducing its fees to the public. ... If it were privatised the Land Registry would not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act and it would be easier to conceal who owns land. The Government claims privatising it would allow it to become “even more efficient and effective” but it is hard to see how the Land Registry could improve. Every time I’ve had to contact it the staff have been very helpful and polite, and this is the experience of others I have talked to. ... It’s one thing to privatise state-owned industries, it’s quite another to transfer to the private sector monopoly registration bodies which have been in public ownership since the days of Queen Victoria. This is a privatisation that I’m sure even Mrs Thatcher would oppose. ... We have until May 26 to respond to the Government’s consultation on its proposals. You can send your views to lr.consultation@ukgi.gov.uk or write to Lizzie Dixon, 1 Victoria Street, London, W1H 0ET. http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/657770/Land-sell-off-property-UK-Land-Registry-privatisation-petition-public-ownership ---------------------- ---------------------- COMMENT Unbelievable. People should not have to petition to keep public property / services under public control.

UK Welfare Sanctions & Disappearing Welfare Claimants

ꕤ Article SOURCE https://www.rt.com/uk/329080-benefits-welfare-cuts-destitution/ Disappearing Welfare Claimants https://www.rt.com/uk/329080-benefits-welfare-cuts-destitution/ Close to 1.5 million benefit claimants could face destitution after disappearing from the welfare system, a former Labour minister has warned. Published time: 15 Jan, 2016 14:10 Field warned the government is unaware of how many claimants have been left impoverished because it is failing to properly monitor why they have disappeared from the welfare system. Following a forensic audit of the government’s welfare reforms, he found that the whereabouts of 1.5 million UK residents who drop off the state’s welfare rolls each year is unknown. The study, which will be published in full by Civitas on Monday, was authored by Field and his senior parliamentary researcher Andrew Forsey. It found that some of the welfare claimants who have been wiped off the system were hit by benefits sanctions, while others may be in jail or abroad. The study said that roughly half a million benefits sanctions were imposed on welfare claimants in the financial year 2014/15. It called upon the government to conduct an urgent survey of those citizens whose benefits are scrapped annually under the government’s sanctions regime. The report welcomed the government’s decision to trial a yellow card early warning scheme, but suggested the policy should be supplemented with non-financial sanctions for claimants who fail to meet the terms of their welfare program. It suggested the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) introduce trials whereby vulnerable people are offered a“grace period,”during which requirements imposed on them are softened to ease the “transition or acute difficulty.” The report also called for greater transparency, and urged the government to reveal how much expenditure is withdrawn under its benefits sanction regime. “The number of sanctions was halved in the year leading up to the 2015 election, but it still remained at half a million. Sanctions are therefore being applied at a scale unknown since the Second World War, and the operation of sanctions on this scale makes for a most significant change in the social security system as it has existed in the post-war period,” Field and Forsey wrote. “A number of people – we know not how large a number – are being totally disconnected from both work and welfare, and risk being exposed to destitution.” “Justice calls for a major survey of what happens to the hundreds of thousands of people thrown off the welfare rolls each year through the sanctioning process.” Field and Forsey said it is absolutely unacceptable for the government to strip benefits from masses of people annually and not concern itself about how this group of people will survive. “The ability to track the wellbeing of the whole population is now a part of being a grown up government, let alone a ‘One Nation’ government,’” they added. The DWP said Forsey’s and Field’s claims are baseless. “People leave the benefits system for many reasons, including when they go to work – which is good news,” a DWP spokesperson told the BBC. “It’s extremely unlikely anyone would leave the benefit system because of a sanction. The truth is we have record employment and we spend £80 billon supporting millions of people who are unemployed or on low incomes.” Field resigned from the government under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the wake of the 2010 election, he led an independent review into poverty in Britain for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. He also co-chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in Britain in 2015. https://www.rt.com/uk/329080-benefits-welfare-cuts-destitution/ Field = Frank Field It looks as though he has completely changed his tune? He's gone from being pro sanctions to lobbying on behalf of the sanctioned?  That doesn't make sense. Field is also opposed to freedom of speech, by the look of the Wikipedia entry. "Private views thought to be damaging to public conduct, and expressed in public, would be monitored and suppressed." [Wikipedia] The guy sounds like the Stasi.  Sounds rather scary.  lol  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Field_%28British_politician%29  '“Moral and civic duties provide the very foundations upon which civilised life is built and are a proper area for legislative prescription and if necessary sanctions”' -- Frank Field [purportedly, book:  'Neighbours From Hell'] Source | Wirral Leaks "Frank, who has attacked the Conservative government for cutting benefits to the poor, is ready, for those who fail to abide by his model of society, to…well…cut their benefits! Not only this, but the imposing of sanctions should be seen as a criminal justice matter! ‘The agency deciding what action should follow a repeated failure to meet a [citizen’s] contract should be the police and only the police. Once the police have the required  evidence to levy a sanction…[it] should automatically come into operation on the appropriate benefit.’" Source | Wirral Leaks 'Wirralgate Cover-up' mentioned.  Sounds ridiculous.  It's about a tape recording of using 'inappropriate language' (eye-roll).  Local council thing.  More | here. Enjoyed the Wirral Leaks article.  Interesting analysis of policy and poverty. ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Check out how the UK government let up on screwing the vulnerable public in the lead-up to the election.  What's the bet that was a deliberate slackening of sanctions they otherwise would impose? Democracy doesn't work.  People are still fighting for the same things that keep getting wound back by governments, and governments are always inefficient and dodgy. People shouldn't have to incessantly campaign for their governments to do the right thing.  They should be doing it, and they should be transparent without people having to campaign for transparency -- all the time. I don't think they have a right to sanction anybody.  The government is the front for the interests that have appropriated land and privatised it, effectively corralling or imprisoning free men as labourer-slave human livestock, who are no longer free to live off the land that was stolen from free men:  hunters and warriors.   Those that have stolen land and imprisoned free men are therefore obligated to provide for the well-being of those whose heritage they have usurped and whose self-sufficiency they have denied.  How's that for an argument?  lol It sounds reasonable to me, because if you dismantle society as it was, privatise land and deprive a people of the ability to sustain themselves in their customary way (ie dismantle a way of life that involved freely and communally living off the land), in order to create societies that are based on usurping land and usurping resources for the benefit of a few, then those people that have basically been displaced by such are system are undeniably entitled to sustenance etc.  I'm talking about responsibility of nations to nationals, rather than notions  of universal responsibility. PS ... I think I might have a romanticised view of the 'displaced' by the system.  Just checked out some tabloid mayhem reports, and I'm horrified by what I see.  Where are the proud hunters and warriors I imagine? Now I'm kind of inclined towards state totalitarianism, strict breeding restrictions, and a selective breeding regime.  lol ꕤ

War in Iraq Cost Over $1.7 trillion dollars / Private Contractors PROFIT from US War: $138 billion US taxpayer to private contractors

Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War By Angelo Young, International Business Times 20 March 13 The accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels. Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops. Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday. The No. 1 recipient? Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. ..., which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. ..., in 2007. The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg. Who were Nos. 2 and 3? Agility Logistics ... of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts. As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected. According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies. Even without the graft, the costs of paying for these services are higher than paying government employees or soldiers to do them because of the profit motive involved. No-bid contracting - when companies get to name their price with no competing bid - didn't lower legitimate expenses. (Despite promises by President Barack Obama to reel in this habit, the trend toward granting favored companies federal contracts without considering competing bids continued to grow, by 9 percent last year, according to the Washington Post.) Even though the military has largely pulled out of Iraq, private contractors remain on the ground and continue to reap U.S. government contracts. For example, the U.S. State Department estimates that taxpayers will dole out $3 billion to private guards for the government's sprawling embassy in Baghdad. The costs of paying private and publicly listed war profiteers seem miniscule in light of the total bill for the war. Last week, the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University said the war in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars, not including the $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans of the war and the lifetime benefits that will be owed to them or their next of kin. http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/308-12/16561-focus-cheneys-halliburton-made-395-billion-on-iraq-war COMMENT The things that stood out for me are: War in Iraq cost $1.7 trillion dollars PLUS $490 billion in immediate benefits owed to veterans PLUS lifetime benefits owed to them or their next of kin Privatization of US military operations rose to unprecedented levels Private contractors (companies) received min.  $138 billion of US taxpayer money for contracts doled out by US govt Half (52%) of that went to 10 govt contracts Biggest recipients: KBR, Inc ie parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co received:  $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over past decade Agility Logistics (of Kuwait) &  state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp Kuwait contractors received  $13.5 billion of US contracts (jointly) Private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels Amount of corruption ballooned Costs higher than paying government employees Professional, disciplined soldiers - displaced No wind-back by Obama admin on doling out contracts (without public tender process) - on contrary: increase of such contracts Iraq = private contractors remain on the ground, although US military has largely pulled out of Iraq eg.  $3 billion taxpayer money to private guards for USG sprawling embassy in Baghdad This is really mindblowing.   The amount of money that is made by PRIVATE companies enriching themselves through war is staggering. Bear in mind also, that those who PROFIT from war will lobby FOR WAR. What is also staggering is that the functions of the US military have been farmed out. The danger of that is lack of (a) accountability and (b) transparency. So, really, the government is pulling a stunt where they've probably got an 'anything goes' thing happening, because what's going on is contracted and therefore beyond public scrutiny. Hopefully, that makes sense.  I don't have a way with words.  But I hope that idea comes across. If the military screws up, it is on government heads.  But if private contractors screw up, it is passed off as a bad apple, renamed and redeployed as a mercenary. The 'decommissioning' of the US military for these private contractor forces or functionaries is worthwhile considering. And there's also the costs incurred by the taxpayer funding those that: do the job at higher price than professional soldiers introduce corruption and those that don't even compete (put in tenders) but I think these aspects aren't half as important as the establishment of 'private' State armies and functionaries that are arm's length and beyond public accountability and scrutiny. What's also interesting is the Kuwait profits.