Truth Social

Loading...

Register

News - 21 September 2025

Common Wealth report visualises the state of ‘Rip-Off Britain’

avatar-image

Willem Moore

@willem_moore


A new report from Common Wealth has beautifully visualised how privatisation turned our nation into “Rip-Off Britain”. Complete with a ‘Visual Story’ and ‘Data Dashboard’, the site takes you on a journey through every grubby scam that capitalists have inflicted on us. Somehow, they’ve also managed to make the journey through this information beautiful:

We recommend you click this link to see the Visual Story yourself. In this article, we’re going to provide some of the key findings and responses to the report.

“Who Owns Britain?”

The Visual Story shows all the ways private companies are rinsing us from “cradle to grave”:

Jessica is born on a rainy Tuesday in Manchester at Wythenshawe Hospital. Jessica’s healthcare needs will be covered by the NHS for the duration of her life, regardless of her ability to pay. However, aspects of the care provided by the NHS are increasingly outsourced to private companies, which are inherently motivated by profit rather than serving the public good. The ward where Jessica takes her first breath was built under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deal. PFI was a method of funding the construction and maintenance of public infrastructure projects whereby private companies paid the upfront costs, and the NHS or another public body pays back these costs over many years, usually at very high rates of interest. Of the £2.3 billion spent in payments to private companies for legacy PFI projects in 2020-2021, nearly 20 per cent went solely towards paying off interest charges. Over 30 years, PFI hospital contracts will have cost the public about six times as much as it would have cost to build those hospitals from public funds in the first place.

The Data Dashboard covers utilities, transport, care, land, mail, and Britain at large. In the ‘Private Island’ section, Common Wealth highlight the following costs which successive governments have lumbered us with:

  • £2bn: the extra interest we pay each year because of privatisation.
  • 9% of the 2023 energy bill was paid out to shareholders and lenders through dividends and interest payments.
  • £1.5m: the average director pay for privatised companies in 2024 — that’s 46 times the median salary.

In the same section, Common Wealth write:

The privateers promised us a miracle. They gave us Rip-Off Britain.

Our country is in decline because of their radical experiment. People can feel it: they pay more for essentials and struggle to afford a decent life.

Too often the basics don’t seem to work anymore. No wonder we feel frustrated. We have lost control of our essential services and infrastructure. Shareholders were paid hundreds of billions out of our bills as critical investment went neglected.

If the public loses, who benefits from private island? The winners are the new owners of what was once our common wealth: billionaire investors, foreign governments, international asset managers and pension funds, and private equity giants.

In 2024, Britain voted the Tories out following years of scandals, including constant accusations of dodgy contracts and cronyism during the Covid pandemic. Since Labour took charge, they’ve generated very similar headlines to the Tories.

The following are just some of the stories we’ve run in the past year:

This is what Labour’s approval ratings look like after a year of this:

Common Wealth close out the Private Island section with this:

Enough. We deserve better than this. We deserve real control.

Sticking plasters on a broken model won’t work. A better country — one where everyone has security and hope — means remaking how we own and run our essential services and infrastructure: by and for the public.

This isn’t nostalgia for 1945. This is how we renew Britain in 2025. It’s time to end the rip-off.

Common Wealth

Common Wealth highlighted several instances of people supporting their new study:

The more people understand we’re getting ripped off, the better.

We’re past the point where anyone can pretend this privatisation shit works; now we need to stop the wealthy layabouts at the top from getting rich off the services that should be enriching us all.

Featured image via Common Wealth / Independent





Source link

Join The Groups That Matter

Help!