I think the 'why did they continue to be given government contracts' line being advanced by the Labour Party is a bit of a red herring. The company was trying to reach an arrangement with its creditors and as late as Saturday it looked like it might be rescued by a debt for equity swap. If the government had stopped them tendering for government contracts last year it would simply have made any sort of rescue impossible and hastened the company's collapse. It would have been like a medical team stopping a blood transfusion whilst the patient was being operated on, because he wasn't well and they didn’t want to risk wasting more blood.
It's a nice bit of politicking though.
Last edited by KerrAvon; 16-01-2018 at 08:08 PM.
Where did you get your information from concerning the shareholdings of the cabinet and the political contributions of senior Carillion board members?
Stopping MPs voting on matters they have vested interests in would be an interesting one. Presumably that would mean that the whole of the Labour Party would be barred from voting on Trade Union legislation, or, at the very least, that RMT sponsored MPs would not be allowed to vote on matters concerning the railways, Unite sponsored MPs being stopped from voting on health matters etc.? It might leave Labour in a bit of difficulty in enacting a lot of its manifesto promises.
In what way do you say that the Carrilion collapse 'points to the inability and absolute inanity of contracting public services to private companies'?
The imperative to try to create a profit drives efficiencies when a private company is engaged to deliver public services. Compare that to directly managed government projects where the lack of any such pressure results in flabby over manned operations that invariably deliver late and many times over budget. The outsourcing of public services is certainly not without issues, but I think it infinitely preferable to a return to the bad old days.
Don't single out one party - you could say the same for all of them. It's the SME's and ordinary folk taking the hit yet again. These senior board members have moved to tighten policy to protect their own payoffs and bonuses a short while back. Perhaps not illegal, but definitely immoral, and not how I run my businesses at all. When we had to make changes back in 08/09, everyone, myself included, took 5 weeks unpaid leave. I traded two extra weeks with one employee so that he only had to take three. My policy was that it was better that we all took a bit of a hit rather than a few take a massive hit i.e. job loss.