PPP - London Underground (Tube)

There was a report by the commons select committee at the end of last week which criticised the (PPP) private-public partnership.

Report criticises Tube shake-up


Well, for those who lived in London 5/6 years ago when all the furore was going on about PPP and the problems that we all foresaw and that the MPs of London at the time, especially the Labour ones who said it wouldn’t be a problem, well guess what, you never listened to a word us locals said, and shows how out of touch you were, and why do you think Ken got elected the first time, because he stood on one issue, to scrap PPP, well unfortunately this government wouldn’t listen, and now I like many Londoners can sit here and crow and say we told you so. I mean the words “No shit Sherlock” come to mind when I read the report. This was predicted from day one, and what we all know as well, is that the targets set for the PPP scheme are lower than what the Underground were set before they were privatised and anyone thinking it wasn’t privatised is deluded. PPP or PFI as another way to describe it, is backdoor privatisation, and we saw the screw ups on National Rail and despite that, the government of the day, which is the same one we have now, decided that going ahead was still a good idea. Can anyone see back handers in this, this government furnishing the pockets of their friends and friends companies, when if it had spent the money that it is now giving them, directly, the work would be done faster, and more value for money, without giving 100m of profit to these companies.

This part of the above article, spells it all out

Committee chairman Gwyneth Dunwoody said: "I welcome the fact that the government is at last putting real money into the Tube. But I cannot see why it needed a PPP to do it."

The committee said government spending on the Tube - disregarding the cost of the Jubilee Line extension - had risen more than twentyfold from £44.1m in 1997-98 to £1,048m in the current financial year.

Welcome to the world of dodgy finances and broken promises of a government that is supposed to be socialist.