leeds: live it, lease it

There's a real eye-opener in the current Corporate Watch newsletter. Depite living in Leeds, I had no idea about the extent to which we're being fucked over by privatisation of our services. The piece is called 'Leeds: Live It Lease It', a play on the city's slogan of 'Live It, Love It', which cost us £150,000 despite the fact that it's the slogan used by Hong Kong.

All the sell-offs are flabbergasting, but the thing that dropped my jaw to the floor was this

The supposedly state-of-the-art schools constructed by Mowlem as part of the £35 million Leeds 7 Schools Project were built without kitchens. 'Nutritious', pre-cooked, frozen food is therefore shipped in each day from Mowlem's catering facilities at a hospital near Middlesbrough.

On so many levels: FUCK!

It means that the food will have to be processed stuff, diminishing the nutritional value.

It means a round trip of over a hundred miles every day just to bring the food in, with all the extra resource consumption that entails.

It means that the provision of meals will always have to be contracted out, as the school has nowhere to cook.

It means that it can never serve locally produced, fresh food, prepared and served by local people with a relationship to the school.

As ever, PFI is benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the local people who are meant to be grateful.