The Ugly Love Child of Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping

In a piece of pure Corbynism, as he knows but will not yet admit, Peter Hitchens writes:

When the Carillion signboards began to appear on building sites in the Blair era, I suspected something fishy was going on. Carillion wasn't a real word. It wasn't anyone's name and it didn't mean anything. And it probably wasn't really a company either. 

I knew I was supposed to believe that the Thatcher era had begun a new age of freedom, but it looked to me more like a new age of money-making, in which nobody was really responsible for anything any more. And so it is. Complain to the BBC about one of its biased programmes, and your complaint is actually handled by an outfit called Capita.

I say handled. I mean stonewalled. I am not sure if any of the responsible people at the BBC ever even find out that a complaint has been made against them. They certainly don't change their ways. Somehow the same outfit is also in charge of the great failure which is Army recruiting. And I think this versatile body pursues the parents of children who play truant from schools.

Ah, yes, schools. They are mostly 'academies' now, run by mysterious 'trusts' and financed by a government office which is almost impossible to find or question. As far as I can see, when a school becomes an 'academy', the first thing that happens is the head teacher buys a big new house – in the same way that directors of privatised rail-operating companies often seem to acquire villas in the Caribbean. 

This could explain why my train this morning (supposed to be an eight-carriage express) was replaced by a burbling three-car rail bus, without apology or explanation. Rivers of public gold can be poured quite legally into the pockets of people who do not seem to do anything especially good in return for the huge payments they attract. What is so good about all this? 

I'm sick of hearing about how long it took to get a telephone in the days of nationalisation. So it did, but that was partly because it was just before new technology allowed a huge expansion in phone lines. And have these people tried getting anything out of free, privatised BT? If you want any formerly public service, it's now always an agency or a service company or a call centre. 

Actually, I like the public sector, the old sort, of town clerks, coal boards and men in peaked caps. I long for the return of British Rail. I see no benefits in privatised water or power.

For me the lost ideas of public responsibility are symbolised by the glorious old Thames Conservancy, which used to keep that great river in order, patrolling it in beautifully varnished Edwardian launches. Fallen trees were swiftly removed, and tributary channels were dredged. Now there's some 'agency'. And since this happened, my home town is hit by floods far more often than it used to be, no doubt because dredging contributes in some way to global warming.

It's all power without responsibility, spending without accountability, greed without restraint. The supposed freedom is accompanied by the greatest assault on free speech and thought in modern times (in the name of equality). It looks to me like the ugly love child of Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping, and I wish it had never been born.