Across the pond: news roundup

Different countries, same conservative agenda

While a debate rages in the US over the economic future of the state, it's worth taking a look at how things are going for "our closest ally," Great Britain. The government is currently run by a coalition made up of the conservative Tory party and the moderate Liberal Democrat party. However, as everyone knows, it pretty much is the government of the Tories. They didn't get enough of the popular vote to win a majority, but they don't really appear to be in the power-sharing business. Although logically, the Liberal Democrats would have had a more natural partnership with the  Labour party, the Lib Dem leadership instead opted to go to bed with the Tories. The result has been pretty devastating so far, with the exception of the smooth handling of the Olympics, which cannot be considered too much of an exception as the games have not proven to be the magic boon to the economy that was sorely needed.

Instead, the conservative government is on the austerity bandwagon and continuing the path of the Thatcherites: dismantling publicly funded institutions in favor of privatization. It is their belief that private companies operating for-profit can deliver public services more cheaply and more efficiently than can state employees.

With the US Presidential election less than two months away, we should really consider what effects conservative policies are having on economic recovery and on the public. Below are some recent stories which highlights the policies that Tories are pushing (and with a breathtaking speed when compared to the length of time it takes reforms and policy to pass in a Presidential system):

Healthcare:

Britain's National Healthcare Service, or NHS, is not the best of the European healthcare systems. But, it does have all of the perks of being totally free (for now). But despite Danny Boyle's touching homage to the NHS during the Olympic opening ceremonies, the system is under attack and the standards of care are slipping. Nursing staff, holiday pay and wages are being cut, while the government rolls out more market-driven initiatives that will turn doctors into businessmen and the NHS into a partially privatized service. This means that certain services will no longer be free (this process is already occurring), and patients will be directed to privatized for-profit care. The latest news is that some 1200 NHS employees are now working under zero-hour contracts, which are popular with fast food companies like McDonald's. These contracts, which are spreading throughout some NHS trusts, offer no guaranteed hours and thus, no job security.

Louisiana's creationist "voucher" schools set to rake in $4 mil in public funding

"Charter" school. Sounds alright, doesn't it? The Republican party is a champion of charter schools or voucher programs, and are also proponents of homeschooling. But charter schools do nothing to help the public education system, which at one point, impressively enough, educated a generation of baby boomers and post-baby boomers.

The boomers are said to be the largest and most educated group of people in the history of the public school system. The things that generation accomplished have a marked effect on modern life, some obvious and visible examples being the vast majority of the infrastructure Americans use every day. The US's public education system churned out the generation that built some of the world's most impressive dams, bridges, interstates and skyscrapers, and let's not forget our baby boomer tech giants Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. But, as Chomsky points out, a debate has long raged over the very nature of education, and whether intellectual independence and curiosity should be a part of public schooling at all. Republicans have decided that education is a cost, one that can be cut with little explanation, except for one based on lies about shortfalls in social security caused by the mass retirement of baby-boomers.