Review – The Whistleblower – BBC1 Weds 5th March (8pm)

Recent high-profile child safety cases, such as the disappearance last year of Madeline McCann are the background to this episode of BBC One’s Whistleblower documentaries. The programme features an insider ‘whistleblower’ from OFSTED as well as an undercover journalist taking three different jobs in childcare; one at a local ‘family-run’ nursery, the second at an internationally renowned holiday resort chain and the third at a chain nursery which recently saw a child die in it’s care.
The impression you are left with from all these undercover visits is that childcare is seen by these businesses as just another way of making a ‘quick buck’. High prices are charged to parents for the care, but this certainly doesn’t go towards high quality staffing and facilities. Instead, the money seems to go in the owners back pockets, whilst they employ staff on the cheapest rates, with no training and as a result morale at all the places is really low, with a high staff turnover due to the high stress levels this provokes. At the resort we are shown some of the various tricks the company goes into to cuts costs, where they make staff work illegally on tourist visas rather than paying out for work permits for them.
Safety is also poor. As a result of chronic understaffing, stressed and over-worked staff struggle to keep an eye on all the children. Added to this are unsafe toys and objects, as well as a lack of safety equipment for some activities. We are also shown how one nursery owner denies that children have burnt themselves on radiators whilst simultaneously installing radiator guards ahead of an upcoming inspection (and this work, with power tools and all lying everywhere, is being carried out whilst children are still playing in the room!!)
Ofsted is shown to do next to nothing to protect the children, in the words of the programme’s whistleblower, its inspections ‘barely scratch the surface’. And keeping with the recent sleaze scandals we are told that the nursery where the child died may have been saved from closure to safeguard the career of Michael Falon, a Tory MP, who was the company’s managing director at the time.
What the programme didn’t go into was the need for a socialist solution to these problems. Instead of privatised nurseries with poor safety and low paid staff, there needs to be a publicly owned, fully funded childcare system under the democratic control of parents and workers to provide the care children and parents alike deserve.

Prison Privatisation

Well the presentation went sort of okay, i got 68% which is nearly a first (oh how I wanted a first on this) and i kinda did bits, but realised i missed quite a large bit out on my slides. All in all, yet again i wasn't organised enough.

Anyway, Prison Privatisation began happening in the 1990's after the passing of the Criminal Justice Act (1991) which included privatisation of ancialliary services to prisons (catering, ecuation, prison escorts etc.) and new build remand prisons (although a clause was included to get rid of 'new build remand' so it would include all prisons after a year or so). Prior to this as we all know Thatcher's Tories had been selling off basic industires (steel, railways etc.) and utilities (water, gas, electricity, telecomms), although Douglas Hurd as late as 1987 had said that privatising prisons was a daft idea (this is how far to the right Blair is, more right wing than the early Thatcher governments), although in the 1970's detention centres at airports had been increasingly privatised and by 1988 half of them were privately run.
It's important to note that by privatisation I mean 'contracting out' rather then selling off assests in relation to prisons.
The first contracting out was during the overcrowding crisis in 1988 when a military barrcaks was used to house prisoners, the catering for this barracks was contracted out. The first private prison opened in 1992, HMP Wolds, and now we have 11, (two that were private have reverted back to the public sector). 9 of these are pfi prisons.
Now I'm sure most people know what pfi is by now, but i'll recap, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) means that all new builds must consider priavte finance before public finance for these. Generally speaking it means that private money (borrowed at a higher rate than public) gets used for building new state buildings, which doesn't count against public sector borrowing making Gordon Brown look good, although in the long run it costs lots more.
Apart from that, private companies are going to make cuts to increase profits so for example public prisons staffs pay is about 25% higher (this is lower paid staff only), private prisons are understaffed and more overcrowded than public prisons (and are generally worse in many areas (not all though)).
Apart from the conflicts of interest and moral arguements too this shows that prison privatisation isn't a good idea. And that's after you've assumed that prison in itself is a good idea.
The future however looks bleak, although no new private prisons have opened in the last few years, PFI carries on apace in other areas, and with the current overcrowding crisis (remember overcrowding gave the spur to the beginnings of prisons privatisation) it look like more is to come.
For me the left should be opposed to prison privatisation. Firstly it diverts even more resources from education & health and other areas. Second there's worse conditions for prison staff. But most of all we should campaign against capitalism as a whole for causing the majority of crime, which without capitalism around we wouldn't be discussing prisons as a whole, much less privatising them.

PS. Below i've posted a link to the trade union public services not private profit campaign, which has info on the probation service

http://www.publicnotprivate.org.uk/index.html

A Different Kind of Stall

Most people in the SP are away at conference this weekend, I had something else on, but before I went away to do that , I helped run our usual saturday stall in Huddersfield. After about a year or so of on and off campaigning on the NHS, new local issues are coming to the fore, the plans to build two academies in Kirklees, the sacked unique care workers (see www.socialistparty.org.uk for articles in the Socialist about this),but we covered today the council's budget proposal which includes scrapping three well used children's nurseries in Fartown, and replacing the services with private ones. So on thursday, instead of concentrating on the Stop the War rally in Huddersfield, like the SWP and co, some SP members were at a public meeting in Fartown against these proposals to which 200 parents and workers attended (even the local useless labour councillors came to try to hijack the meeting).
Anyway, what has this to do with anything. Well, I was half-asleep when we actually got round to setting the stall up, and I thought it was going to be one of those stalls that's just dull really. It was hard work, we were there for half an hour before a union member and two parents turned up to help, and it was really slow. But as soon as they came, took some petitions and leaflets, I suddenly found myself, invigorated by the fact that it wasn't just the two of us Socialist party members there, there were five of us all campaigning against these closures.
I'm not sure what feeling exactly i'm trying to get across to you, but being part of a bigger movement on the build feels good, campaigning with fighting trade unionists feels good, not having to be the most optimistic person on a stall feels great.
I think the message is that other comrades should invite other campaigners to do activities together, sure you might not sell as many papers or whatever, or perhaps get so many contacts for your given party, but you are building a mass movement against cuts, privatisation and capitalism and in the long run that's got to be worth something.

Reading materials at Uni

One would think that given the increase in fees paid to universities over the last year that you'd be seeing increasing resources to match this. It doesn't seem to be the case at all, i hear tales of cutbacks happening all over the place, my girlfriend is currently uncertain as to whether she'll be able to do a dissertation or not.
By far the most frustrating thing about university is books. Surely if lecturers are teaching the same or similar courses each year then enough books could be kept in stock for students, rather than as I have experienced many times that you need to read books for an essay and they've all gone. And under-resourcing makes the problem worse as people keep books out for longer than they need becuase they're worried that if they return it they might not be able to get it out again. I remember at college where they key text for the course was loaned out to us for the duration of that module, why couldn't something similar happen at university, instead of putting students into even more debt from having to buy a book that they will use just once.