While the eyes of the world were fixed, momentarily, on Danny Boyle’s £27m critique of Cameron’s butchery of the NHS few people noticed the Number 10 Press Office sneaking out a press release.
One might have expected a brave proclamation somehow declaring that we had entered a brave new world where the Conservatives were at last comfortable with a State taking care of its sick, poor and vulnerable. Or would we be treated to a claim that the Tories, with the exception of certain Nazi-saluting former ministerial aides, were now at ease with the multi-coloured, multi-cultural country we embrace as our home.
No, in the week we learned that it is incapable of keeping hold of the keys to the Olympics Stadium Cameron decided he is more than happy to give the keys to the nation's WMD to a private security firm.
Hasn’t ConDem government learnt its lessons from the Olympics? Placing national security in the hands of private companies is fraught with hazards. It is one thing to draft the military in to fill in when a private security firm fails to deliver staff to guard sporting stadia. But who do we turn to when the safety of military Trident weapons is compromised - The A Team?
A recent report from RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank, has criticised the rationale behind outsourcing to private companies in general. If, so the argument goes, the Government is so poor at negotiation that it is better off having private firms run services on its behalf then who will negotiate contracts between Government and the companies charged with running those services? http://www.rusi.org/news/ref:N501674F3225F2/ .
This follows a MoD report warning that UK Government spending cuts placing the safety of the UK's nuclear weapons arsenal. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/17/nuclear-weapons-safety-cuts-mod?intcmp=239Develop
The only spending cut that could make the UK and the world safer is abolishing the use of these appalling weapons once and for all.
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