We can of course cancel PFI without compensation
We can? Just rip up contract law as we like?
Be interesting to see what the ECJ says about that. And the ECHR. Only one of which is an EU body of course.
And all our trade treaties, and the ISDS provisions in them.
This is the chap who thinks we should adopt his plan to have private pensions routed through the state to be spent on infrastructure?
I suggest we go and find his pension company. Then cancel it.
He can hardly complain. Contracts to pay are just whims and fancies after all.
This is the classic Progressive attitude to Law, contracts and promises. Law is what is suitable to use as a weapon against your enemies (in Murphy’s case, that’s everyone else) to be changed, re-interpreted or ignored as required. Contracts are binding or ripped up depending on the exigences of the moment. Promises are cynically made, broken and forgotten, then made again. But it’s all OK because they care.
After years of Simons’ writing “PFI” has a different tag in my mind..
And I can sort of predict what would happen if anyone would try to cancel anything PFI without compensation…
Yes, this man thinks you should trust him to invest your pension on your behalf. A man who is quite happy to tear up contracts and promises with no compensation.
I wouldn’t trust him with the loan of a fiver until the weekend.
He really is an unremitting fascist, isn’t he?
If the contracts were negotiated in bad faith they might be illegal.
I do think it’s worth putting some investigation effort into the most extravagant of those contracts, and the bank accounts of those who negotiated on the taxpayers’ behalf. Plus, one or two politicians: I have in mind Blair particularly. It was during his time as PM that what was previously a modest little Tory experiment was turned into a cornucopia for contractors.
Other than that, there’s presumably nothing to be done. Or rather nothing that wouldn’t do far more harm than letting the bloody things run.
Let’s nationalise the railways.
And we can start with the model train set in the shed at the Old Orchard, Downham Market and all its infrastructure, outbuildings and land, without compensation.
He’s in favour of Twitterocracy. Vodafone aren’t paying their tax? Take the money straight from their bank accounts! PFI schemes are poor value for money? Cancel them without compensation! Ke$ha was raped by Dr Luke? Lock him up and throw away the key! A pædiatrician lives next door? Fetch the gallows!
@Bravefart – I think that’s fair; I mean, the idea of property rights is a neoliberal construct that would be unworkable without the Kurajus Stait. And after all, property deeds are just a contract and we all know that they can be ripped up without compensation. All land should belong to the state anyway.
@SMFS
“I suggest we go and find his pension company. Then cancel it.”
Given that in one of his blogs where he bemoaned people saving, where I asked him what he, with no mortgage, no extravagant spending on cars or holiday and on 70K a year, was doing with his savings, his response was “I’m 56”. I guess that he’s fucked up his pension provision or he was in Equitable Life.
This is –or was –a problem for me because of my cherished plans to sack without compensation and confiscate the pensions of the leftist establishment.
Said leftist establishment is now a power bloc of such size and power that it cannot be broken without such drastic measures.
A quandary. A Pickle…how to get the bastards without destroying contract law?
Then Murph himself gave me the answer.
TAX!!!
Sack the Senior Civil Service–and pay them every penny of compensation due and their pension. But then along comes the infamous Selective Higher Income Tax and takes it all back again before the pukes actually get a penny.
Since I am no friend of the ZaNu/BluLab scam of PFI–a con designed by BlueLab and used by TheBottler to indulge in vast quantities of off-the-books spending–that can be smashed up in the same way. The terms of these capers were so bad for the taxpayer that I have little regard for the corporate socialist hangers-on who have benefitted massively from Brown’s stupidity and double-dealing.
While we are on the subject of legal stuff:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35648252
WTF? Talcum powder gives you cancer? $72m?!!
“Given that in one of his blogs where he bemoaned people saving, where I asked him what he, with no mortgage, no extravagant spending on cars or holiday and on 70K a year, was doing with his savings, his response was “I’m 56”. I guess that he’s fucked up his pension provision or he was in Equitable Life.”
He doesn’t like saving, and he doesn’t like consumption. That doesn’t leave many alternatives.
Well, hasn’t Jeremy Hunt started all this by tearing up the employment contracts with doctors because he doesn’t like it.
Just when I though that the UK’s international trading reputation was based on the rule law, specifically contract law.
Mr Ecks,
iSHIT?
Well done, Sir.
I guess that, technically, you could impose a 100% revenue tax on all revenue obtained through PFI. That wouldn’t be cancellation without compensation, but would have the same effect.
jgh – he’s not ripping up the contracts, he’s changing the template so that as new contracts are signed they will be different from existing ones. Something of a difference, there.
I assume that ripping up means an act of Parliament otherwise the British courts would deal with the matter as a normal contract dispute, and on that basis the government would be unlikely to come off well.
Just to confirm, Richard Murphy is firmly on the Remain camp. That would be “Remain in the EU with the ECJ and all rules underpinning the single market and of course the EU’S extensive network of treaties with the rest of the world.
But that was yesterday. Today we just rip up the rulebook.
“But that was yesterday.”
Today is another stump.
Rob/ Ironman and Others
The phrase ‘Late you come, yet still you come’ seems to sum him up perfectly
For someone wont to parrot about ‘neoliberals’ ‘historical ignorance’ his own lack of self- awareness continues to stagger…
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Reports2013/hitlerenablingact.htm
BTW – where is ‘Lawrence from Guernsey’ haven’t seen him chiming in for a while?
Of course a sovereign government can cancel them. That’s what sovereignty means.
There is no law without enforcement. Where is your enforcement mechanism if the UK courts have been specifically instructed that they are not to enforce the contracts by parliament?
A trade war?
Leaving the EU makes this much more straightforward of course. As it would the refunding, which can then be done sensibly via the Ways and Means account at the BoE at an effective rate of 0%
The principle of sovereignty is that no parliament can bind a successor. The PFI contracts are an attempt to get around that. They should be summarily cancelled as the rentier instruments they are.
There are no rules involving parliament. Parliament is the rules, and it can change them at the will of the people.