Posts written by Fiona K

Yasmin Levy and someone called Yiannis Kotsiras. Can't believe I haven't posted this before:maybe I did and have forgotten. No matter: bears repeating

You may remember that I talked about Four Seasons Health Care upthread


I mention this because Four Seasons could not meet its debt obligations in December

Today it failed to meet a debt repayment which was due and so the media is talking about the prospect of collapse and what that will mean for residents of Four Seasons care homes

Naturally the narrative being pushed by our plutocrats is that this is because the local authorities do not pay enough for care
https.//www.theguardian.com/business/2017/...ffers-275m-loss.
Oh, and Brexit, of course. They do not mention the millions which have been extracted by passing the parcel about and claiming a miracle of restructuring every time. We are not to ask any questions about the very high interest rates paid to offshore companies through dubious arrangements, as outlined in my posts of 2011/2012.

In 2012 Four Seasons said that their focus was on quality care for the residents of their homes. How has that gone? Well the CQC (itself useless, see above) rated 107 out of their 285 homes last year. 54 were said to be "failing". Given how poor you have to be to get an "adequate" rating, that is chilling. It is not, however, surprising

You will note that Four Seasons is still owned by Terra Firma, though most of the debt is held by a US company called H/2 Capital Partners, which Bloomberg describes as "a privately owned hedge fund sponsor. It also makes real estate investments"

https.//www.theguardian.com/business/2017/...er-four-seasons

According to the above report the Paradise Papers revealed that Terra Firma intended to extract millions from Four Seasons while ensuring that it avoided tax. Just like all previous owners for many years, then. But it looks like the music has stopped, and they are not going to get that money

Oddly enough H/2 Capital also makes cuddly noises about how they will provide high quality care
QUOTE
Spencer B Haber, H/2 Capital’s chairman and chief executive, said: “We firmly believe that with the right stewardship, enterprises like Four Seasons best serve their investors when they best serve their residents. Responsible private capital understands the primacy of resident care and peace of mind for their families

How original. Forgive me if I am not persuaded they are any different from the rest of these thieving charlatans

I have the impression that this GE was not of Ms May’s choosing. It was forced on her by Tory grandees and they corporate backers. I am inclined to believe that she meant it when she said no election: and has been overruled.

I think this for a number of reasons:

First, I never did understand why there appeared to be a split in the plutocracy’s ranks. Most of them were clearly against brexit, yet media supported it. It puzzled me.

But what I see now lends itself to a speculative narrative which seems to fit what facts I have.

They were aware that support for brexit was side effect of their divide and rule tactics of blaming EU for their austerity polices and blaming immigrants for the effects on public services. That is of long standing and quite consistent (though it is noticeable that it is not that long since EU immigration was presented as a good thing: all those cheap Polish plumbers).

In their bubble, it was unthinkable that they would lose brexit vote, however. They are nothing if not arrogant and they were playing, they thought, to a minority of thicko’s who would buy in so strongly they would vote for brexit. Most would hold their noses and vote remain, despite the distrust and active resentment fostered by the media stance.

They miscalculated. It seems the media don’t know their own power when coupled with really bad outcomes for the poor of the policies they have been pursuing here and in US etc. Very probably they have not grasped just how poor those outcomes are and how far up the ladder they have reached by now

So they got brexit. And they needed to regroup. Particularly in light of the fact that their opposite plutocrat numbers in EU failed in solidarity, in favour of their own corporate advantage and so made it plain they were not prepared to save UK profit at expense of their opportunity.

A pause filled by the surprising realisation that Ms May is actually, truly racist: or is too stupid to realise their interests are genuinely threatened. Account of the negotiations so far suggest both, and her record at the home office lead me to conclude that Ms May’s only concern is halting immigration. which necessarily entails hard brexit.

So what then? No need for a GE cos legislation is going through and there is no real problem to solve in those terms. Electoral fraud cases might be difficult, but it is a gamble, and there is no real reason to think many will be prosecuted: they aren’t usually.

Yet they cannot tolerate hard brexit.

Solution: force GE on Ms May. She is too arrogant to recognise danger and polls make the tale of now is the time plausible: she wins by a landslide and that appeals

So she calls it, reluctantly and under pressure but with insufficient reason to break the habit of a lifetime and stand up to her “mentors”

Then the media turn hostile to her, as we see. BBC was late in getting the memo but they have it now, as Marr and Peston interviews show (still soft ball but not what she expected). Media can make anyone look bad, if we focus on personality rather than policy, and that is their strength. Full force of that is now turned on May, and it is working, per the polls. Time it tight, but it doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. May is coming across as an obstinate clown, with a seasoning of corruption and in the context of talking up her expected “landslide”. Never helpful to tell voters you take them for granted so that looks supportive but it isn’t.

They don’t have time, nor I suspect,inclination to overturn her prospective victory. But if she gets an increase of 50 votes it is easy to portray that as a defeat (see narrative re SNP at present): and then there are the electoral fraud cases, which won’t go away for mysterious reasons we are not used to. Any by elections resulting from those will be fought on the issue of fraud: and Ms May supports those frauds overtly, which means she cannot be unsullied.

The result is she will go and a soft brexiteer will replace her. The right wing of the party will still not be happy, but I do not think they can do more than make the usual level of trouble in this scenario: and that is a lot better for plutocrats than hard brexit.

Ms May can’t row back, but the new leader can. It is is also their best shot at defusing Scottish independence, for SNP have relied on hard brexit for their narrative recently: and nobody actually loves EU so it has not played as well as they hoped.

If tories now negotiate soft brexit, indy has nowhere obvious to go in this situation, despite the fact that tory govt remains as damaging, whether in or out of single market: europe was never the problem in the first place. It is not the reason for indy at all: But many will probably withdraw support if soft brexit achieved in these circumstances.

The initial miscalculation has made this hard for the plutocrats: but they have been at this a long time and are not to be underestimated.

Be careful what you wish for in terms of this election: I fear it is not what it seems