– George Monbiot, as I have said several times, is an excellent writer who highlights issues that we all need to be aware of.
– I’ve discussed corporations many times here myself. I decry their growing power over our governments and over our lives. What Monbiot’s talking about here really gives me the chills and has made me wonder if the ‘takeover’ I’ve been on about hasn’t bigger aims than I’d previously imagined before.
– He discusses here how the conservative government in the UK seems hell-bent on converting schools from the public to the private model which is scary enough.
– But, it made me imagine that corporations, which are gaining control more and more over governments, are also moving into controlling all the things that we think of as the rightful province of government; our schools, our utilities, our water, our power, our prisons, our road systems, and just about everything else. I say ‘rightful’ because government is suppose to do these things for the good of the people and the nation.
– It will be a radically different model if these things all end up being done by corporations for profit because they won’t be doing them for the good of the people but, rather, for the good of the corporations’s profits. And simple look as how things have gone in the U.S., as they’ve been experimenting with privatizing prisons there, should give us all deep pause.
– dennis
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Forcing schools into the hands of unelected oligarchs is the latest contradiction of everything the market fetishists claim to stand for.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 5th March 2013
So much for all those treasured Tory principles. Choice, freedom, competition, austerity: as soon as they conflict with the demands of the corporate elite, they drift into the blue yonder like thistledown.
This is a story about England’s schools, but it could just as well describe the razing of state provision throughout the world. In the name of freedom, public assets are being forcibly removed from popular control and handed to unelected oligarchs.
All over England, schools are being obliged to become academies: supposedly autonomous bodies which are often “sponsored” (the government’s euphemism for controlled) by foundations established by exceedingly rich men. The break-up of the education system in this country, like the dismantling of the National Health Service, reflects no widespread public demand. It is imposed, through threats, bribes and fake consultations, from on high.
– More… ➡
– Research thanks to Piers L.