Interesting Links for 22-10-2013

[andrewducker]

• A handy guide to the new nuclear power plants deal
  (tags: uk nuclearpower )
• The letter Q was illegal in Turkey from 1928 until last month
  (tags: spelling turkey )
• The ocean is broken
  (tags: environment ocean nuclearpower )
• Facebook stops censoring violent videos
  (tags: censorship facebook )
• Heavy new penalties for VAT evaders boost revenue from

Comments

[drdoug]

Accounting

[andrewducker]

Yeah, that sounds about right - it's PFI++.

You'd think people would learn...

[gonzo21]

Ah, thank you for that. THis sounds like the sort of high level of madness that most sane minds will shy away from contemplating, because it just seems too crazy to possibly be true.

That leaves the only arguments for the Royal Mail sell-off as being ideological - the Condems want to get rid of everything and the kitchen sink - and enriching their already super rich chums? I can't see any other rationale behind it.

[cartesiandaemon]

AAAUGH! Yes, that sounds realistic. But terrible! It's like neither socialism nor capitalism nor democracy but the worst aspects of all of them :(

[ext_208701]

There's one other reason - union avoidance. It's much harder for a union to hold out against a committed private company than the government because pissing people off doesn't get the management of the company voted out and you can't time your strikes for elections.

Government accounting makes no sense anyway, they don't include liabilities for any pensions they have to pay, nor guaranteed future income nor assets. If you did try and do this stuff you end up with things like the annual deficit is dominated by life expectancy changes, and one quality terrorist attack results in a huge government profit due to the sudden removal of a bunch of liabilities.

Privatising RM is a win for the pension fund, but that's because the management is probably going to fire around 100k people who will then draw much smaller pensions than you might currently estimate, and they'll stop anyone else joining it whereas previously this would have been subsidised by the general taxpayer forever.