7. Modern Commons
This blog is 7th in a series that I will release weekly which will end with the release of the Utopian Manifesto covering Land and Property.
Earlier blogs in this series can be read here:
The Commons Today
You'll never live like common people You'll never do what ever common people do Never fail like common people
Pulp ~ Common People
We may think we want to live like common people, but we will never do what common people do.
Clearly it’s not farming our cattle on common land that we need to be concerned about today. But the principle of common wealth being appropriated by, and transferred amongst a small wealthy elite continues to challenge commoners today.
The same as a commoner forced from the common and left to starve, we are being forced from the NHS and left to die. Our common systems are being removed, defunded, and left to rot, the blame for that is being levelled at us, the commoners, when in reality it is the theft via excessive wealth accumulation and tax avoidance by The Overclass and our current version of ineffectual politics and capitalism with its excessive extraction of profits by The Overclass in return for nothing.
So maybe you think me rattling on about William the Conqueror means I’m rattling my on about 'days of yore', move on, the land is owned privately now, there is nothing more we can do. Sure, that maybe true, but the process of the commons being removed continues today. The commons today are not just fields and parks, but they are the assets which we could all benefit from today if they were properly funded.
The commons today are the welfare state, the NHS, state schools, the police, Courts, the Internet, Wikipedia, quality journalism, the BBC, the sunshine, air, rivers, the sea, the atmosphere, the global climate, the planet.
Like the Commons before, all of these common assets are at risk. At risk of being taken and/or destroyed in pursuit of greed and profit just as commons before them have gone.
Thatchers Privatisations
So if we think that the last King who took land from the commoners was William, we are wrong, Thatcher and Major have continued taking land from us and giving it to wealthy others, Blair and Brown put NHS land and buildings into PFI initiatives. Tories or Labour since the 1980s have continued the process of commons removal that has been going on for over a thousand years.
"the biggest privatisation you've never heard of"
An estimated 500 billion acres of land were transferred from public ownership to private, to companies such as water utilities, rail companies, road contractors. This was our land. Our common asset. It's not anymore. It's owned by someone, probably a foreign owned company, getting rich from doing nothing as we work hard and increase the value of the land they own.
What assessment was done before this was sold? What if the public needed the land again in the future, for example for house building or new railways? Are natural habitats being safeguarded, or do the companies exist purely to make profits?
New Labour and PFI
The champagne socialists who voted New Labour patted themselves on the back when Labour came to power in '97 as if something other than conservative policy was about to be enacted. Blair and Brown accelerated the selling off of much of the NHS estate, and the privatisation of many of its buildings under the PFI initiative. NHS land and buildings now owned by private, profit seeking companies. We didn't vote for it, but we didn't vote against it either.
What assessment was done before this took place? If land owned by the NHS is sold off for homes, shouldn't those homes be affordable on a nurses salary?
The guaranteed rents paid by the NHS today to these private landlords consume NHS trust budgets bankrupting hospitals today. Of course we need to keep nurses pay down, we literally cannot afford to give any more money away after feeding it to the already rich owners of the hospital buildings. Of course NHS trusts look wasteful and inefficient. Like other commoners, they're being squeezed out by high rents. But someone makes money from this and its not the nurse or brain surgeon saving lives during the course of their work, but The Overclass owners who sit by doing nothing.
NHS Treatment
The list is endless. If I'm foolish enough to give the regional BBC News 30 minutes of my time you can guarantee that one story will be of a family struggling to get the medical care they need for their sick children. The story on the night I was editing this blog (5 Apr 23) was about children needing spinal operations. One lives in constant pain. Another will have to have much more dangerous and painful treatment if it's left much longer. But this is just the removal of the commons from the Commoners. The money isn't there, its already in someone elses pocket, so the children, they will suffer.
NHS Mental Health Care
This is not a service thats been starved of cash so that it can be privatised. This service has never existed. Does this matter? Well during Covid we shut down the economy. Why? We were told that even 1 life was worth saving. So everyone in the country except Number 10, Matt Hancock and the Government made sacrifices. We shut ourselves at home, avoided contact all because every life was worth saving.
Yet the lack of mental health care means that people are dying and killing themselves daily. Many of the people you see on the street, people who could be doing something of more value with their life struggle and use alcohol and drugs to self medicate.
Now, post covid, the number of teenagers who need mental health support as a result of lockdown, not seeing friends, missing out on key life events, has sky rocketed. The number of children being sections has increased 10 fold. Nuffield Health report that in 2017 103 children were locked up by the state. That's now over 1,000. Locked up in piss poor environments run by companies making good profits. Every life matters? Apparently not.
NHS Dentistry
NHS dentistry is another example. When I was a child I had 6 monthly appointments with an NHS dentist who would lecture me on looking after my teeth.
At no election since then has any party said that NHS dentistry will be privatised. In fact, it's been the opposite. All parties proudly proclaim their commitment to it.
Excellent news and no reason for Commoners to pick up their pitchforks. All the while it's been starved of cash and decimated so that it can no longer operate. It's now private or nothing. I can't say it better than George Monboit did in his blog here, so I will just quote the opening paragraph:
Every child in the UK is entitled to free treatment by a nonexistent dentist. Some people on benefits, pregnant women and those who have recently given birth also have free and full access to an imaginary service. Your rights are guaranteed, up to the point at which you seek to exercise them.
Dentists, educated by you the commoner are still available, just make sure they make a profit, otherwise, whats the point? Thats an improvement right? Profit is always better than public.
NHS Opticians
Now known as a privately owned company called Specsavers. You can get a free basic NHS eye test there. The NHS give Specsavers money for this. But I guarantee that you'll end up paying extra to Specsavers. Specsavers and Boots now also do all routine NHS hearing tests. NHS money going to privately owned companies who need to make a profit. Less money in the NHS.
Nursing
If you are spending £billions giving money to nursing agencies. To employ doctors and nurses who were trained by taxpayers. And those agencies have highly paid bosses. Getting fantastic bonuses, enormous dividends get paid to shareholders, sometimes large corporations and overseas owners, all the while the same Doctors complain about their pay, are we seriously not clever enough to devise a better system?
What about a community agency? One owned by every region in the country. It can still change a profit, but perhaps the margin is capped. It can still pay its boss, but perhaps the pay and bonuses are reasonable. It's divided is paid to its owners, the community.
Ambulance Service
Rich people in The Overclass don't want to pay to take you to hospital. They are willing to give £billions of taxpayers money to banks because obviously they don't want to lose their own money. But in return, they expect austerity from the Commoners. What does austerity mean? It means less money to provide ambulances and paramedics.
Austerity has supposedly ended. £billions are miraculously found for covid, £billions are wasted. A new version of austerity not called austerity is implemented to pay for covid. We buy into the message that we need to pay our debts, we need to cut back. Why? There are clearly £billions to give to The Overclass. Why can't we buy another ambulance? Because ambulances don't make a profit. They're a cost. A public sector cost. Public sector is bad, apparently.
The Government implements rules which charges the cost of a waiting ambulance to a hospital budget. The hospital has even less money to spend. Ambulance services could then use this money to buy more ambulances. No. Because the point is not about improving the service. It's about cutting the service and maybe one day privatising the service against the back drop of "yeah, but it got so bad only the private sector could make it more efficient". Fast forward 40 years and I wonder how efficient the service will be.
Perhaps privatised water companies will show us how the future might look as they were privatised over 40 years ago.
Water
Privatisation we are told will fix everything. Just don't mention that to the water companies who needed investment to fix leaky Victorian infrastructure in the 1980s so eventually they were privatised. Water companies are now some of the biggest land owners in Britain. These shareholders getting rich off the value of our land which increases in value due to our hard work.
They could fix leaks, but they have a legal obligation to make a profit and return that profit to their owners. So bonuses are paid to bosses and dividends to shareholders. The leaks remain as bad as ever and we are heading into warmer climates and less predictable rainfall where we need to have done everything we can to save water, but instead, dividends have been paid.
And how has privatisation of the water companies affected our common assets of rivers and seas. That's now where our untreated raw sewage is pumped. Treating it is costly and reduces profits. Dumping it on the commons costs nothing. Destruction of the commons improves profits.
The Government knows they need to do something, expect empty promises about clawing back bonuses or better regulation, these companies were privatised in the 1980's, things have got worse, profits have been fantastic. seweage dumping has been off the scale. And while the leaks aren't getting fixed people are told to have showers not baths, to turn taps off, save water. Well, thats the guilt put on Commoners, if you're in The Overclass then obviously the rules are different:
"we’re overlooking another key driver of urban water shortages: the wealthy. Researchers from several European universities write that, by filling swimming pools and maintaining green lawns, cities’ highest income residents directly contribute to the shortages that leave poorer residents struggling to drink, wash, and cook."
So next time someone wealthy tells you to save water or that a hosepipe ban is necessary, lets ask whether we really are all in it together.
She left school and worked her way up to end up with Thames Water as their "strategy and regulatory affairs director". What a fantastic title, her parents must be really proud. Unfortunately for Catherine I feel that part of her soul has been sold. According to The Times, she says:
Britons should consider not flushing the lavatory after urinating and taking shorter showers to secure future water supplies
Okay, that must be the solution to the problem right, its my fault, not Thames Water, despite the fact that Thames Water loses nearly 25% of its water through leaks, I just need to flush less. But apparently Ross also:
"...agreed that the UK had failed to prioritise new reservoirs"
The UK has failed? Thats our fault then. Its not Thames Water that has failed to prioritise new reservoirs, its us. No doubt Catherine gets paid well and receives a bonus. She may also be a shareholder and get dividends from the profits Thames Water makes from not building reservoirs for the last 30 years. Thanks Catherine. Sleep well.
Education
Education, like health care, is one of those hard won things fought for by commoners. For children, instead of being worked to death in workhouses, free full time education to 16, surely any civilised society would want to keep that?
The benefits to society, all of society, commoners and The Overclass as a result of this are enormous. Of course this needs to be paid for, but it's clear that the whole of humanity has benefited in societies wealthy enough to do this.
So it may seem strange therefore that The Overclass are no longer willing to pay towards this. Instead they want to keep their coins in their pocket.
Rishi Sunak recently said that Maths needs to be promoted more in English schools. I'm assuming he's not talking about schools like his which cost £15,000 per term.
But I actually agree with Little Rishi on this, however, since 2010 his party have given teachers a relative pay cut of 15%. How can you give maths lessons when you cut the pay of people who would deliver them?
Like the health service there is too much to cover in education. Student fees of £9k a year being another, but for this, see the existing Utopian Manifest page. The commons are being lost. Money needs to be made instead.
Railways
Obviously the best British example of successful privatisation is the British railway system. I'm being sarcastic. You cannot beat a system where running one electric train from Bristol to London, 2 hours travel time, capacity 500 people, is sent mostly empty because the £250 return ticket is far more than it costs to drive, even when there is a war on and the price of oil is high.
The madness here just isn't worth any words, but we're told what the problem is. Lazy overpaid train drivers who strike for more money. Of course, why didn't we see this all along. They must be stopped at all costs.
British Rail was bad we were told. Civil Servants running the trains was bad we were told. Are we really sure this wasn't massive bullshit? Are we really happy with what we have now? Is private really better based on the last 40 years worth of real world evidence?
Buses
At least we make up for our trains failings with our superb bus services. Of course, I'm being sarcastic again. Buses from Bristol to anywhere within an hour of the centre should be of a nominal fee of say £2 for anyone over 25 and under 70. Free outside that age. The lower age is set high to get younger people into a public transport habit. But instead, services are being slashed. Bus companies aren't making enough profits.
Roads
Our roads are common assets. Apart from those that have been privatised. "Smart Motorways" the ones which are totally renovated by the taxpayer, as the M4 from Reading to London has been over the last five years before being handed over in pristine condition to a private company. Who then regulates the speed and can fine people for breaking the limit. They rake in £millions. Yet Smart Motorways have been shown to be more dangerous than motorways. But what's a few deaths when there's good money to be made.
And our other common roads, we would fix them if we had the money. But the money is not there for common assets.
Public Toilets
Unfortunately these are facilities that cost money from local Council budgets and these wasteful local people trying to make things better need to cut their budgets.
So toilets get closed. That may sound like a trivial thing but it means that shops and public spaces become slightly more inaccessible to women particularly, older people and others with bladder or bowel issues.
If we have to take away public toilets, then so be it. But make every private company with toilets make them available to all, or, if they don't want to do this, they can pay an increased Council Tax.
Money might be saved, but the community is not improved, it degrades. Common spaces become more disgusting for those who use it:
But there is a way to make public spaces less disgusting... remove them from being public and from the commons and privatise them turning them into POPS.
POPS
The country is gradually getting more POPS, Privately Owned Public Spaces.
POPS are places where private security guards can patrol and on behalf of the lords of the manor can dictate how they exercise their rights to the usage of that land. Democracy and common rights need not apply here.
Shopping centres are a good example of this. This is the reason why, in Bristol for example, the old shopping centre, Council owned, is generally occupied during the day by a couple of dozen people with addiction and mental health problems. Most probably have some bed available to them so technically are not homeless, but they would appear to any visitor to be homeless as they randomly beg for cash. They help contribute to the place being a dire, depressing shithole.
Yet the privately owned Cabot Circus next door has none of these people and problems. This is because there is a private security force keeping them out. Them along with anyone who may want to exercise the right to protest or really anyone who isn't there to spend money enriching The Overclass. The country may still claim to have freedom of speech, just don't threaten the profits of a POPS.
These cathedrals to consumerism, our new religion are spaces safe from the harsh realities of democracy.
In Bristol the latest private space is Temple Island:
A Bristol councilor said:
“There could be a number of implications for normal rights within these areas, the right to protest, for example, could be curtailed alongside a host of other democratic rights.”
So much for democracy when the commons are being removed. This is the new forest. Its areas removed from the commoner for the benefit of the wealthy and their friends where the commoner is then criminalised for doing things that were previously legal. Sound familiar?
Libraries, Community Centres, Youth Clubs
Public Libraries, Community centres, youth clubs. We may not notice these things so much if we're not big users of these services but it's wrong to think that these services are still available. They're not. Todays generation does not have these facilities. The money is gone, the commons are gone.
Public Swimming Pools
Without all our current knowledge about how exercise prolongs your life more than any other medical intervention, the Victorians used to build indoor and outdoor public swimming baths for relaxation, fun and exercise in a communal way.
All schools would use them teaching kids how to swim. This in turn would improve kids health and save lives when it came to water safety.
These pools are now disappearing. Unlike Covid when that harmed people so we did something, this harm to children is totally ignored.
In my home town of Portishead we were blessed with an open air poor and on a rare hot summers day there was no where better to be.
I got older and the pool was being repaired less. It was looking tired. I used it less but I became aware that it was open 10-12, closed for lunch, then open 1-4. So closed over the hottest part of the day and it meant that you had to pay twice if you wanted to come back after lunch which just wasn't going to happen.
Strangely enough the Council said that the facility wasn't being used enough.
Town Councillor and millionaire hot air balloon enthusiast Don Cameron said that it's unfair that taxpayers should have to pay for people's hobbies, either the pool paid for itself or it should close because that's how capitalism and the free market works. He liked hot air balloons and no one paid towards that!
Don's just preaching free market capitalism without giving any regard to the fact that he himself may benefit from community facilities. It's unfortunately common how many people like Don get into these little positions of power and influence over our common assets.
But the audacity of a millionaire saying no one pays for his hobby, after having a low corporate tax rate, tax relief for research and development, and staffing his company with people who's very health and education, maybe housing and transport along with all the other common facilities was paid for by the taxpayer is a stretch. Don eventually apologised for the comment.
The pool is also located on land which, if sold by the Council, would make a huge profit for house builders, and the Council, which undoubtedly skews their passion for this patch of land and the removal of the common facility.
The point seems to me is this. One is that you cannot really put a price on a community facility. Another is that you can put a price on keeping the pool open. Maybe that's a few hundred thousand pounds. And you can put a price on the failing mental and physical health of children. This is probably many millions of pounds in the long run. So as a society, which choice should you make? Even if you had to base it all on money it's an easy decision. But the short term cash from selling the land for housing is lost. That I grant you.
The pool was not saved by the Council but it was given to a local group of volunteers for a year to see if they could run it better and for a profit. If not, the Council would sell it for housing.
Ten years on the pool is now heated using an efficient environmental heat pump, it's reduced it use of chlorine, and it's main problem now is capacity. It has to turn people away when the sun shines. It makes a profit. It covers costs. If that is how we have to measure such a facility it seems it can be successful when it's not being run into the ground in preparation for its removal from Commoners so it can be turned into short term profits.
Allotments
This may seem like a trivial matter affecting very few people, but every person in the UK retains a right to be allocated an allotment.
An allotment is a throw back to the retention of a piece of the commons on which a commoner can provide for his family. One game Councils play is just making people wait years for an allotment to be provided.
Another is to raise the cost of an allotment.
It may seem trivial, but its just removal of the commons continuing today in 2023.
Homes
And of course the removal of the commons still extends to peoples home. We’d like to think that killing Scottish commoners is a a Victorian practice that no longer takes place, but all we’ve done is clad ugly blocks of flats with flammable cladding so that middle class, rich and super rich people don’t have to look at something so ugly, stuffed it full of commoners who don’t matter and told them to stay inside as they burnt to death.
Things are just done differently today, apart from the fact that public wealth was still extracted by the private companies who cladded these building allowing the already wealthy to line their pockets on the back of killing black people.
The method may change, the winners remains the same, the rich get richer. The poor get killed.
Cost of Living Crisis
During the cost of living crisis the cost of energy rose. We were told this was because of the war in Ukraine. Russian gas supplies are eventually cut off, supply is restricted, price rises.
People would not be able to pay their bills. They would either freeze or lose their homes. The Government had to step in and help and obviously all commoners are grateful.
Yet, extraction of wealth from the commons follows a neat 3 step approach:
House builders need to spend more money to insulate houses. So they don't. As George Monboit points out, this would cost around £4,800 to do today. But house builders want to make a profit, so they aren't forced to spend this money, instead they make more profits by building energy inefficient houses.
And anyway, houses can be retrofitted with insulation at a later date at an estimated cost of £26,300 rather than £4,800 paid to the exact same builders who increased their profits by not bothering to do this in point 1.
In the meantime, we have to heat these houses using the energy thats now more expensive and which we cannot afford. We're told to turn the heating down, but either way, most of it leaks out through the poorly insulated house. The money that is wasted on heating the outdoors, thats taxpayers money used by the Government and given to oil and gas companies,
House buildings, already making money, makes more money under this strange set up. They also make more money in future paying for their own piss poor building. Energy companies make money. Home owners are also broadly happy, they've not frozen to death or had their house repossessed, but unseen taxpayers money has flowed to energy companies and house builders and their Overclass owners.
If the Government is the new King, the King continues to give our money to its new Robber Barons, extractive companies like house buildings, energy companies and the like.
Cashless Society
I barely use cash. All my spending is by contactless, Apple Pay or bank transfers using a banking app. So I should be all for a cashless society. But talking to my daughter she pointed out that once society is cashless, whats to stop a bank or Government from stopping certain transactions I want to make, stopping me buying something or being able to sell something stopping me moving as I can't use the bus or train.
My common rights of exchange now controlled by profit making banks accountable to no one. Essentially the removal of the ability for a commoner to hold, store and use cash will be removed along with my ability to transact within society, and that power will transfer to the hands of privately owned banks. Sleep tight.
Sexuality, LGBTQ+, Abortion
These are areas of the commons where the state and organised religion (The Overclass) used to place great restrictions, stopping the commoner from exercising any right over their choices. How humans express their feelings, who they love, how they love, and for women, what they do with their bodies.
In the U.K. we have reached a point where fighting back against this incursion into our common rights has won back some common freedom for us. But you can see in the US religious belief is pushing back hard against a woman's right to do with her body as she pleases. And LGBTQ+ rights remain at risk from the American religious right as well as extreme Islamic beliefs in other parts of the world.
Life Expectancy
Maybe even your life expectancy can be considered part of the common wealth. We have seen that a prosperous and civilised society can overcome war and famine. The rate at which women and children die during childbirth drops, and people live to a natural age for the human body. Medically around 75-95. And life expectancy has been rising for all the post war generations, until now.
Post covid, people can now expect to Live two years less than before, on average. Life expectancy is dropping. But only on average. Because if you're a Commoner, it's much lower than average anyway. If you're in The Overclass, it's still increasing.
Covid Wealth Extraction
And inventiveness on how to extract our common wealth continues. The Covid pandemic provided yet another situation under which commoners money could be transferred into private hands. There are too many examples of large sums of money, none subject to the normal controls (the situation was urgent we are told) where money has been transferred to private companies. Private companies who prior to the pandemic made decent profit margins and decent profits. But during the pandemic made astronomical profits, highly inflated profit margins and ended up paying out huge dividends and bonuses to their owners and directors for their incredible business skill. Some might argue that profiting from the countries distress shouldn't be classed as business skill, or that perhaps the need in this situation was to cover costs and not make a profit, but no, you’d be wrong there.
In January 2023 the National Audit Office said that the value of PPE purchased was worth nearly £15 billion less that had been spent on it. That’s the salary of 500,000 nurses that’s gone into the pockets of wealthy company owners who took the opportunity to extract the common wealth when we were all under house arrest. You the commoner followed the rules to keep friends, family and strangers safe, for others. While you looked the other way, someone took your wallet then told you you had no money to buy things.
Common Removal and Extraction
In an Oxfam report issued in January 2023, 2 years after the start of the pandemic and less than a year after restriction ended, it said:
How does the already extraordinarily rich, get £21 trillion in 2 years? By enclosure of common wealth. By legalised theft. By justifying the removal of commoners access to public funds. How do commoners have to deal with this? By being told earnestly by our supposedly fair and impartial media that train drivers cannot be paid more because it creates inflation, by being told to not use electricity between 5 and 7pm. By being told to fly less, recycle more, bathe less, waste less and accept polluted rivers. By being shamed and told we need to change and eat more turnip.
The theft of the commons by The Overclass is part of the economic and political system we live in today. A version of capitalism so extreme that even the complete extermination of the species is not enough for The Overclass to stop and change.
So next week, Common Economics.
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