The private sector

A few weeks ago, there was an article in the Guardian by a senior person in G4S, perhaps the person who is now saying how sorry he is for his incompetence. It was quite an angry assertive article, claiming that private companies are effective and moral.

I don't see anything effective or moral about what we know now, though what we now know comes as no surprise.

I think it is worth pointing out that G4S is the private sector.

Only last night, on R4, they were running a repeat of one of this year's Reith Lectures by Niall Ferguson, a political tract in favour of the private sector, or what he would call freedom.

Challenged over his stats and data, he said stats and data prove anything you want, don't bother with stats and data, go and see for yourself; so then we listened or were expected to while he told us his subjective opinion of schools in new york.... and then a while later he was back refuting other challenges by demanding people look at the figures

And now we have one person basically accepting responsibility for letting down the well-named Low Cog, which is astonishing and I am still waiting to hear there's a catch, while most others involved are saying it isn't them, yes, they knew, but no they didn't know

In the morning I shall get on a private sector train and the chances are it won't run on time. Chances are the information provided will be crap. Oh but they say their information needs improving and they're working on it. They said that five years ago. Jam tomorrow; never jam today.

When I tried to log in to the net today, the private sector wifi was down because of “maintenance or a temporary fault or congestion”... i.e. we haven't got a clue but we do know that we are running on inadequate bandwidth

ie fuck off

If you have any faith in the private sector, just have a look at how it's doing, at how it's explaining away almost everything it does... look at the small army of people employed in trying to stop it running off with our wallets.... So what is there to have faith in?

A bakers at the top of the hill where I live seems to be honest and organised. Theyre not perfect but they do say when they have screwed up. A small family business on Scilly which provides me services too; a number of businesses there – when I was recently battered by rain I was given a dry space to sit, day after day, where I could at least write if I couldn't walk, and no recompense sought or wanted. In January, a man who took me between islands on his boat, and it's a working boat, and declined even the price of a beer.

A friend told me the other day of a plumber who treated her fairly... And a few other examples. Honesty and / or competence are so rare that one comments on it.

But the bulk of what is called THE PRIVATE SECTOR consists of bullshiters, buffoons, cheats... add your own words. Every day we are given evidence of that; yet people still laud it.

Don't waste my time with “Look at the public sector!”

That's irrelevant. I saw a short piece today suggesting that Barclays will argue they're not so bad because others have behaved as they have. Irrelevant.

Nor is the world binary anyway