Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey is taking "one of the biggest gambles ever to be made by local government"
See an article in the Guardian about Haringey's plans to "stuff family homes, school buildings, its biggest library and much more into a giant private fund worth £2bn".
See the tag below for other posts about this issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/03/britain-power...
Thanks to Michelle for flagging this up.
Below is Matt Frei's report from Channel 4 News today which summarises the issue and includes Claire Kober's comments on it.
Tags for Forum Posts: haringey development vehicle, hdv
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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I largely agree, Michael, thanks. When you and I deal with huge commercial forces, we don't necessarily come off worst. Same is true of Councils. I don't buy the idea that, when our Cllrs negotiate with the 'A' team of a smart, ruthless capitalist forces they'll come off worse because I don't think anyone trusts Cllrs enough to negotiate - civil servants (the property professionals) do that for them.
So, for instance, a property professional with decades of large corporate experience can come off best - that's what Councils have - seasoned experts. The idea that the public sector is incompetent and cannot run things as well as the private sector is just propagandising.
The private sector is atrocious at business - there are huge numbers of businesses that are felled by sheer incompetence - bankrupcies abound, corruption among even our most respected names (e.g Rolls Royce) is rife. Banks are fined hundreds of millions for money-laundering ill-gotten gains. Large public-facing corporates here, when measured, simply can not do what they're in business to do - customer service is abysmal. They hide failure.
What annoys me is the contempt ordinary people feel for the public sector, a contempt fuelled by the right-wing. An ideal society may be one where most of us work for the government :)
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Permalink Reply by James R Grinter on
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Does our council still have those seasoned experts with many years of experience, or did they let them go/ lose them to lack of projects, or for other reasons? Are they now reliant upon consultancy from the private sector, which as you say operates quite differently.
That is a key question.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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There has been a gradual loss of those skills over many decades but it has not been the fault of local authorities. Up until the early eighties most urban authorities were engaged in very large scale social and infrastructure projects, for example the large scale building of social housing and town planning. The authority I used to work for had its own architects department for instance. The political shift in the early eighties to private sector delivered infrastructure and what new social housing there was coming from housing associations and third sector providers simply meant that there wasn't the work left for those kinds of professions so people were made redundant or went over to the private sector.
Schemes as big as the HDV are so rare that expertise has to be bought in.
One of the things I find very difficult to get my head around though is this insistence that local authorities are businesses. They're not. While it's not unreasonable for them to operate in a business like way, their reason for being is to deliver things that no business would touch. Local authorities cannot make a profit. The great volume of services they provide are (or should be) quite rightly to those in the most need, not to those with the most money. Yet the Cabinet model - a quasi board of directors really - that was imposed on local authorities swept away an important layer of accountability and involvement, leaving ordinary councillors shouting from outside of the room to try and get what their constituents actual need
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The Council does behave commercially when relevant - they hire-in consultants which I don't think is bad, as you imply. Who do you think that, faced with a massive property corp across the negotiating table, the Council should have on the team to achieve a level playing field? They chose GVA, a massive property corp in their own right. Was that a mistake? Not to put you on the spot, but what would you do?
I've met some of the Council team - they are undoubtedly clever people, some with loads and loads of 'real-world' experience (in the City) who do what they can, given the resources available. They have advantages the private sector does not, but when operating in a purely commercial arena, I give them an equal chance against capitalists because both sides are having to grapple with public sector rules, which are more of a handicap to private companies.
It's a myth that might is right and that Councils get screwed because of their incompetence - they get screwed because the right-wing, funded by business, have rigged the game. Centuries of capitalism have given the private sector massive subsidies for instance. The right wing amplifies any Council failure but little mention is made of huge business ones, which are far, far more frequent.
The left wing has a way forward - change the rules - that's how councils win and they have unique advantages - one is, they'll be in business long after their commercial partners have disappeared up their own balance sheets, so don't suffer from the disastrous short-termism that gives profit away.
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I think your point about the myth of council incompetence is a good one Chris. Commercial concerns go belly up, leaving people without jobs or without their bills being paid, on a depressingly regular basis. Yet the mantra of private sector good/public sector bad is chanted over and over again. Interestingly a number of local authorities are bringing some of the services they had out to contract back in house because they can do the job better and more cheaply.
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If you were right, you'd be able to examine any one of their major commercial decisions and confirm it - I don't think you are.
You mentioned Veolia - has the Council done well, or not? If, as you seem to think, this relatively recent decision was 'a result of poor procurement and commercial decisions when originally outsourcing' how would that be evident?
Could it, in fact, be that the Council did well?
It might, in fact, be that the Council, after profiting from loads of experience nationally with outsourcing, are actually able to draw on a body of knowledge and expertise to learn and derive a good deal.
Who are the objective arbiters?
If you don't think Councils are capable of landing good deals, then I suggest, with respect, that that is a prejudice. Bad news too to the Tories whose entire local government strategy ('commercial councils') is to save money by ordering them to outsource everything.
So it looks like, in your view, the Councils are doing it wrong and the government are doing it wrong - abandon hope all ye who enter here! :)
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Permalink Reply by 1vut8bf3om5m9 on
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Centuries of capitalism have given the private sector massive subsidies for instance. The right wing amplifies any Council failure but little mention is made of huge business ones, which are far, far more frequent.
Actually centuries of capitalism (geniusly invented in great part in this country by the way,) have given you a very high standard of living.
It's given you the computer that you can use to publish writings on this site that would have earned you a failing grade in school.
Subsidies are never given in capitalism; we capitalists compete with one another and hope that our competitor crashes and burns from the verdict that is the marketplace.
!Do not confuse this with Obama and other statists that you aspire to themselves giving subsidies to non viable businesses such as solar panel makers whose existence serve to fulfill some political agenda!
There is no need to mention business failures by "the right" because, unlike government, such failure is part of capitalism doing its good work--getting rid of the unviable!
The exception is when the capitalist business holds client money--like Lehman Brothers---and the failure can destroy people who may well have no idea what is happening. This is why financial services companies are regulated to the teeth.
By contrast we DO need to hear about government failures because such failures don't mean that government ceases to go out of business like a private sector firm would for the latter's failings. It's almost impossible as it is to hold government accountable.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Knevel have a look at "The Entrepreneurial State" by Mariana Mazzucato.
Then maybe try "Private Island" by James Meek.
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Knavel
John Thornhill, Deputy Editor of the Financial Times interviewed Professor Mazzucato in 2015.
She explained some of her ideas over what turned out to be an expensive lunch. For the FT.In 2011 James Meek wrote an interesting description about a privatised postal service. In the Sorting Office.
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A few points
Computers didn't suddenly arrive out of nowhere. They have almost two centuries of research and development behind them, a lot of it publically funded. For instance in the U.K. All of the work below was funded by government
The first programmable computer- Charles Babbage
The first electronic computer - Tommy Flowers
The first computer that stored information - Alan Turing
The first transistorised computer - Tom Kilburn
The first integrated circuits - Geoffrey Drummer
Business is subsidised, often massively, through tax breaks, enterprise zones etc.
When a competitor crashes and burns, the owner just files for bankruptcy and moves on. The employees don't have that luxury
Some businesses are regulated to the teeth. The level of regulation and oversight in local government over everything they do and every penny they spend covers the teeth and all other body parts.
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Thanks, Michael. As you'll know, (but perhaps Knavel hasn't yet come across her) this is broadly similar to the economic views of Mariana Mazzucato.
If people don't have the time to read her book, there's a 2015 article in the online Foreign Affairs which anyone can register to read for free. (One article per month.)
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2014-12-15/innovat...
It may also be worth mentioning that Professor Mazzucato was among a number of academics invited by John McDonnell to give lectures to “broaden the debate around economics” in the UK.If other Labour politicians hadn't wasted so much time and effort decorating Jeremy Corbyn's back with knives, they might have noticed that he, McDonnell and others were trying to get new ideas discussed.
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I'm delighted if I can help you see that you're wrong, Knavel - thanks for the opportunity!
Business is a special right originally granted to a group of people in exchange for a public service. A bridge, a new road etc. As that grew, lawyers for the 'incorporated' bodies shaped what we now call Capitalism, by securing better deals from us - things like the massive wheeze of 'limited liability', creating a 'legal person' - a company.
These Corporate citizens 'have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like' no matter how that affects others ('externalities').
They don't pay for externalities like the education of workers who produce the profit for them, the roads their trucks need to drive along, the cost of going to war to protect the oil supply they need etc.
So business feeds on opportunities to make us pay the costs they cause whilst they keep the profit. Cigarette companies do not pay the hospital bill for smokers - we pay it. Fast food businesses do not pay obesity costs etc. When they harm to their own workers (especially in poor countries), government pay the costs, not them, even if it helps foster terrorism here. The personality of these 'legal persons' is psychotic.
There's a lot more but I hope you'll take these things on board and reconsider your opinion and go on to discover more.
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