Ritchie on PFI:
I have a number of ways I could respond to this, but I am (for once) simply going for the ‘told you so’ route.
From ‘People’s Pensions’ in 2003, where Colin Hines and I advocated local authority bonds as an alternative to PFI, the the Green New Deal, where we developed the theme, to green quantitative easing, and then People’s Quantitative Easing, I can claim some credit in being an anti-PFI campaigner, and always because it was glaringly obvious that it failed to deliver value for money.
That is 15 years of saying so.
And now, finally, the NAO catches on.
Note his insistence. PFI does not deliver value for money and the NAO now agrees.
Now look at the NAO report:
Although we do not form a view on the value for money (VfM) of PFI and PF2
Oh.
Clearly Snippa is unable to understand a report as nuanced and carefully considered as this. What would he make of this paragraph?
or this one?
Actually comment 1.11 is very important. Maintenance spend is often underestimated or even ignored in the thrill of a big capital project. One major example was the National Theatre in London. A prestigious project but no one had budgeted for maintenance and cleaning of all that concrete and all those walkways. Peter Hall’s diaries are full of his indignation about having to find money for upkeep of the building when his job was to put on plays and put bums on seats. Although the financial pressures did force him to work very hard at putting bums on seats. But the point remains, once you gave built something, annual recurring spend has to come out of a department’s budget and it is often the first candidate for cutting, in public and private sector alike and it is often under-budgeted
Leftard playbook: Answer the question you wanted, not the one asked.
If something isn’t written and illustrated in crayon, Ritchie isn’t interested.
So PFI meant the government got say a £180 million hospital built for nothing, then say £12 million paid out for 30 years with someone else responsible for building upkeep (add a few million over time for that) and at the end of the 30 years the government has a properly maintained building handed to them. For a mere £1 million a month.
This sounds rather better than a mortgage.
Can see its attraction, new buildings get built or sold off and for low payments in the future money does not need to be found in large quantities now.
Disadvantage is that someone has to pay. And a good deal in late 1990s is not necessarily the same good deal 15 to 20 years later.
It seems that the fat one has still not read the report – it must be on the “too hard” pile
He is a man untroubled by his ignorance, being ignorant of it.
I once commented when asked by a colleague why we leased certain assets that it meant the executive had to approve lifecycle replacement as the lease extension costs usually meant it was more productive to get new equipment than keep old equipment runnnig, but if we purchased they would just extend life to save some capital budget
Try getting that past the fat one, Bnic.
Commenter Graeme is failing badly and getting the usual abuse