To be fair, though you and I might not like it, ‘selling off council estates’ and ‘privatising waste collection services’ have been entirely mainstream for a quarter of a century.

I’ve voted for Ken 3 times even when he wasn’t in the Labour party,and he had that left wing extremist Lee jasper in his rnaks who has been causing trouble causing cindy butts to cry by saying we will have more brixton riots after Smiley culture was kille dby polci,e ,that’s the same Smiley culture who was coming up to court for mass cocaine smugling and owed gangsters money,but apartfrom the sad way smiley ended up,lets make out his death was some sort of opressive racist polce murder, while ignoring all those killed in drug feuds who hav’ent done anything wrong,
As for Deward Lister biegn a right wing extremist for scrapping hte GLC ,thats the same GLC that the Tories got 13.8 million and 14.1 million votes in the 87 and 92 elections after sccrapping it and the Same GLC that labour in ’92 and ’97 didn’t bring back,
I don’t see his problem with the ILea etiher and No I won’t be voting for ken next year,

Did street cleaning and refuse collection improve or decrease in quality after the privatisation?
Haven’t Labour councils done the same steps?
Did anyone become homeless because council houses were sold?
Didn’t Labour councils sell of council estates as well?

jpr @ 2: given your punctuation and grammar, I assume you were educated at a bog-standard comprehensive…

But did he privatise street lighting with motorists having to put a coin in the slot to get the street lights to light up and illuminate the road?

The price mechanism doesn’t work for public goods where non-payers can’t be excluded from enjoying the benefits by free-riding.

4 yeah ,bloody thatcher mucking up the education system

“Did street cleaning and refuse collection improve or decrease in quality after the privatisation?” – I live in Wandsworth Borough and the standard is certainly the worst of any local authority I have lived in. I don’t think this is because of privatisation on its own though – it is the fact that the Wandsworth Tories accept low tenders that don’t provide an adequate service so they can continue to brag about the lowest council tax.

This guy is still not as radically right-wing as Tony Blair, and the things he’s done are fairly normal for most councils, Tory, Lab and Lib.

Like it or not, private refuse collection companies (Veolia, Sodexho, Enterprise etc…) usually do a good job and provide value for money.

Similarly, selling council housing to a housing association isn’t all bad either. Given how dilapidated and unsafe some London council blocks were in the 80s and 90s, Housing Associations have improved quality of life hugely in former ‘sink estates’ which councils just left to decay.

The most ‘radical right wing’ policy that’s ever happened in the UK is PFI. Worse than right-to-buy, worse than internal markets in health. PFI robs future generations of millions in order for Tony Blair to take the immediate credit for building a school or a hospital.

This chap looks harmless in comparison!