Hold Capita to account

Capita's plans to remove hundreds of jobs from the London Borough of Barnet are rightly prompting opposition and I urge all readers to sign the petition at http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/capita-keep-our-jobs-in-barnet.



On the day the Royal Mail was stolen from tens of millions of us in order to be sold cheaply to hundreds of thousands with cash to spare, Capita demonstrate - by shifting hundreds of Barnet jobs around the country - that the private sector will always put shareholder value above public service.



Today's Guardian editorial's description of our "self-hating" public sector is more than apt. For the generation that I have worked in public service (mostly representing public servants as a union rep) I have watched the continuing denigration of the public service ethos by politicians of all parties - and by many of the senior managers appointed to do their bidding.



The Barnet Alliance for Public Services are to be applauded for petitioning Capita's Chief Executive. If these money-grubbing privateers want to deliver our public services we should aim to hold them to account just as we would elected Councillors.



As a child of two public servants brought up to believe that the value of what we do with our lives could never be valued in money I think it's long past time that we asserted the truth - that the profit motive is a squalid and sordid little thing and the private companies which leech profits from taxpayers are an infestation which we will one day exterminate.

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