Would a Private Firm Ever Buy Anything with Something Like PFI?
It’s grim reading about the problems the NHS is facing over bloated PFI deals.
No-one with any sense would ever have locked themsaelves into such deals. I’m sure people like Tesco have probably used design, build and maintain for stores and depots, but they wouldn’t have ended up paying six times the cost of the building. They’d have also used standard designs to save building costs. I bet each hospital is very different.
The problem is not with PFI, but with the politicians, civil servants and administrators, who pushed these deal through. In a banana republic, I would be smelling the pungent smell of bungs, bribery and favours. But here it’s just bad economics and incompetence. And who was in charge of the country’s finance at the time? So add this to a list of his big mistakes, like pensions, banks, renewing Trident etc. Gordon Brown must rank as the worst Prime Minister any country in Europe has ever had. let lone the UK!
Two Shows Yesterday
I did two shows yesterday and also met Jarlath Regan outside the Gilded Balloon.
Jarlath Regan outside The Gilded Balloon
It was good to meet him after all those years since his father helped saddle Vague Shot in 1990. He’s grown a lot and I’ve got a lot more decrepit. But as his father, Tadey, always says, “The Struggle continues”
I shall be going to see Jarlath’s show tonight with three other widows.
Yesterday, I really enjoyed Paul Sinha, who calls himself the only gay Bengali GP turned stand-up comdian. If I had more time, I’d like to catch his full show, as I only saw him in a preview show at the Pleasance. But I’ll be watching out for him.
I also saw Stripped, which was a one-woman play about a girl who turned to stripping to pay the rent. It lived up to its good reviews.
The Anonymous Widower 