Imagine you have been happily married for eleven years. Your spouse, Prudence, looks after the money but seems to run it well.
Then one day, you accidentally open some post meant for Prudence. The letter is printed in red and is from a dodgy debt management company. In it, you discover that your spouse is maxed out on all of her 600+ credit cards, has lots of dodgy loans and has been in collusion with your friends to hide this all from you so that it doesn’t end in acrimonious divorce. By your reckoning, Prudence can never pay this back and your grandchildren will still be lumbered with the crippling debt.
Are Labour voters starting to get that sinking feeling that their relationship is on the rocks?
Dizzy has unearthed something very interesting about the Private Finance Initiative schemes and several other bloggers are now digging. What is particularly interesting, however, is the total silence of the mainstream media on what is an explosive story.
In the media jungle the tiger sleeps at night
The latest from the Private Eye on PFI
(A DA notice is a supposedly voluntary request from the Government to the media not publish certain things in the national interest).
Here is an Excel spreadsheet listing the PFI deals, courtesy HM Treasury. It is certainly out of date as it doesn’t include Morley leisure Centre Newleaf.
The Morley PFI was my first experience of PFI, and I found it very difficult to understand; even after asking all the right questions.
And your spreadsheet link does not work.
Comment by Nigel — November 27, 2008 @ 8:55 pm
Nigel- link fixed now.
Think of PFI as buying a car on tick, you pay for it for the next twenty years and it still isn’t yours at the end. Then if you decide you don’t need a car during that time you still have to pay for the petrol from the PFI garage anyway.
That is why PFI schools don’t feature on the at risk lists when an area has too many schools.
Comment by Shades — November 27, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
I think the first blogger has already, in effect, been DA Noticed by the MSM deciding to self-regulate and not run with the story. We should make this a test case and soundly expose the fact that we will not be gagged. The more bloggers who pick up the story like yourself can only increase the pressure on the MSM to break it’s silence.
Thanks.
Comment by jailhouselawyer — November 27, 2008 @ 11:59 pm
Jailhouselawyer, I mean directly contacted by the Government asking them to take something down in the interests of not embarrassing the Government.
Comment by Shades — November 28, 2008 @ 10:47 pm