Issue 2
Nov - Dec 2000
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THE 30 YEAR STITCH-UPPFI and the new Scotland Editorial.………………………………………………………..2 Isobel Lindsay is a lecturer in the Department of Government AT Strathclyde University. She is an Office Bearer in a wide range of civic organisations in Scotland. How to make a healthy profit…………………………….4 Mathew G. Dunnigan is a retired consultant physician. He is a leading figure […]
“Lucrative Contracts for Businessmen” was the headline in Scottish Business A.M. (20/09/00) in response to the announcement that the Scottish Executive was to launch a substantial increase in the use of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). This gung-ho mortgaging of Scotland’s future public finances must be challenged. This edition of SLR illustrates the extent to which […]
By Craig Binns People with acute political instincts will already have clocked the Executive’s present council housing stock transfer policy as a potential disaster – another poll tax. Incoherent justifications of the proposal by Ministers; central government interference in the day to day operation of the process; gross and unexplained delays in implementation; changes of […]
By Henry McCubbin In Glasgow the 3ED consortium, involving the Miller Group construction company, the Halifax Bank and Hewlett Packard computers, will organise construction and retain operational control of school buildings for the next 29 years. The city council will rent the buildings from 3ED for an annual fee of £40.5 million and 600 ancillary […]
By Matthew G. Dunnigan The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was launched in 1992 to transform “public sector organisations from being owners of assets and direct providers of services into purchasers of services from the private sector”. Initiated by the Conservative government, PFI has been enthusiastically adopted by the current Labour administration to provide “the largest […]
By Tom Nairn Getting out of Britain is not easy. We mustn’t be parochial about this, I agree; it may turn out to be even harder for the English and the Welsh than for the Scots. However, we in Scotland have to do it our own way, and a starting-gate has now been laid down: […]
Book review by Andrew Noble : Nick Davies The School Report: Why Britain’s Schools are Failing, Vintage Original Paperback (2000), £6.99. Even if our wintry skies were not filled with louring rainclouds, we would be living discontentedly in partial darkness. Our skies are dark with chickens coming home to roost. Two decades after Thatcher’s allegedly […]
By Henry McCubbin Welcome to the first of a regular feature in SLR that will suggest a number of web sites that may be of particular interest to our readers. Increasingly the web is becoming a source of information far beyond that immediately available to ordinary members of the public via their newspapers or libraries. […]