New Bennism?
Cheerleader for neoliberalism and eating babies, Matt Sinclair, muses about Hillary Benn’s refusal to give the World Bank £50m.
Ignoring the fact that he seems to think the current government is left wing, Matt does make make a few statements that are, er, nuts.
Respecting sovereignty means allowing nations to do what they want with their own citizens and their own money. It doesn’t mean we have to throw our own money down a hole because we need to wear democratic blinders to avoid telling the difference between a loan which is going to end up spent on subsidies for the Chad auto industry and one which will get used constructively.
Yes, absolutely. However, we could perhaps come to an accomodation between the hardline position of Wolfowitz that - heaven forbid! - allows countries to have some say in how the West helps countries that they have royally screwed over in the past. Matt seems to follow the line that is working so well in Iraq and Afghanistan that once you have democratic structures in place, things will work perfectly. Unfortunately, as we see with low council turnouts in the UK, you have to think that voting is worth something to bother going to the polling station. What’s the point of setting up a democracy if Paul Wolfowitz is going to offer you the choice of his way or starvation?
Seeing as you mention Chad, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that the international financial system does have form in that country - Chevron and Petronas owe Chad on the order of US$450m. No, this isn’t mad anti-imperialism - they let Exxon stay.
World Bank conditionality is an easy target for lazy snipes about democracy from socialists who haven’t absorbed the historical experience of what privatisation, Britons should know, and trade liberalisation, all Europeans should remember, can do to improve a country’s economic performance.
No, I don’t think that we should, for instance, sell arms to Iraq and then advocate invading it. Where is that picture?
Let’s look at the experience of privatisation in Britain. The privatised company responsible for the Waterloo & City Line, Metronet, are so shite that they cannot open what must be one of the simpler railway lines in the world - two stations 1.5 miles apart and totally separate from the rest of the Tube.
Or we could talk about the competition that would occur between Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs). Oh, wait, no. Generally each type of carriage is only made by one company, so there is no competition. Not even economies of scale as with a nationalised system.
Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Potters Bar showed that the attitude of private companies to safety was lax at best. Things have improved since the public outcry and more subsidy from the state, but there is still greater risk of an accident because of communication problems in a fragmented system.
I have to go out now - more later.
xD.
September 24th, 2006 at 1:35 am
They don’t have to take the world bank’s loans you know- and how is it undemocratiuc for the creditors of a bank system to have the shares in it rather than the debtors? seems like common sense-and necessarily if you want anyone to be fool enough to fund the world bank.
Now that doesn’t mean there’s not a strong argumetn for abolition of the world bank but the idea that while it exists those who fund it should be able to decide who it loans to is just common sense…
September 24th, 2006 at 1:41 am
El Dave do you seriously belive that privitization (with the disputable exception of the railways) has not been a huge sucess? Why do you thik the whole world has copied it otherwise. and isn’t it more often the telecoms than the Railways that are at stake in world bank backed privitizations?
September 25th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Why do I think the whole world has copied it? Mostly, because they weren’t given any choice, it being attached as conditions to the loans that were ‘needed’ to climb out of the pit countries found themselves in.
Water privatisation hasn’t worked in Britain, either. PFI has basically meant borrowing money by the state but not as sovereign debt, and therefore at a higher rate of interest.
There are examples of privatisation working and examples of it not working. I think that this attitude of ‘privatise everything’ is rather dogmatic.
October 31st, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Dave that’s simply not true the coumist states all adopted it-after enjoing the glories of nationalization, ditto for other westen states-no one forced jospain or Gonzalez or hawke to privise they did it because it obviously worked
Water privitin only “failled” if you ingore the fact the water standards were raised so high that invemsn in the basic ifnruastucue had to double- imaignei f the state was doing that
PFI whatever its pluses and minuses is not privisation-it’s borrowing