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Hi everyone. Often, when bad things happen, we want to believe that this is an isolated error that can be easily rectified. More often, though, this error is systemic: the outcome of a system structured to do exactly this -like the UK school meal fiasco.1/ https://twitter.com/5_News/status/1349069102955044864
For those of you who haven't been following this scandal, the UK government, after resisting doing anything for poor children missing school meals due to lockdown, finally contracted out free school meals to a bunch of private companies. 2/ https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1349238367465189378
These companies are supposed to provide £30 worth of food per week, but according to many estimates are providing a fraction of that (closer to £5). Why they could not just give food vouchers or direct cash is another question. 3/ https://twitter.com/RoadsideMum/status/1348646428084760576
This is added to a long list of privatisation scandals where the UK government has contracted out freight, PPE, testing, multiple covid contracts worth billions of £, with very patchy delivery. My point here is that these are not mistakes. They are systemic. 4/
The UK government's main role in this economic system is to funnel public £ to private profits. Privatisation is a core way this happens. We wrote about it in this article with @kmbayliss and @giulio_mattioli on electricity, water and bus transport. 5/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024529420964933
Our point is that the real purpose of this system (as opposed to the narrative it uses to justify itself) is rent extraction by the private companies: not citizen access to affordable, sustainable and quality services. 6/
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024529420964933
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024529420964933
This problem is systemic in all aspects of the UK government's operation. This means that we as citizens can't just criticize each "error" as it arises, and hope that criticism will act as a error-correcting mechanism. 7/
It means we have to attack the core of the Tory program of privatization, and demand a return to a state which uses public capacity to work for the public's benefit through public institutions. This is our only avenue forward. 8/
Sadly I'm not sure that @Keir_Starmer 's new economic policies go at all in this direction, despite a large fraction of Labour (myself included) wanting massive public investment in public services, including a Green New Deal. 9/ https://twitter.com/LabGND/status/1349302289274695681
Not sure where to go from here, and I know it might sound obvious, but private profiteering from public expenses is a feature, not a bug for this government. They can't be shamed into acting in the public benefit, since that is not at all their purpose. End/
@RoadsideMum @BootstrapCook since you're quoted, FYI.
Correction: after huge amounts of people/twitter pressure, and copious coverage in the media, the meals are to be replaced with direct vouchers. Congratulations to all who worked so hard, starting with @BootstrapCook and @MarcusRashford and @RoadsideMum https://twitter.com/BootstrapCook/status/1349304259301548033
But the systemic aspects still remain: this HUGE amount of visibility pressure was required to get the government to do the most basic task of feeding hungry/poor kids. The problem of their designing all policy to increase private profit rather than public benefit remains.
