A small museum exploring an obscure economic ideology that has come to dominate our lives.
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Operating as usual
"In 1979, Margaret Thatcher rose to power aiming to build a free-market Britain. One of her first ambitions was NHS reform – and she set in motion the outsourcing machine that still undermines the health service today."
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher rose to power aiming to build a free-market Britain. One of her first ambitions was NHS reform – and she set in motion many of the process that still undermine the health service today.
"Neoliberalism has been neatly described by William Davies, a professor at Goldsmiths College, as “the disenchantment of politics by economics”. It sees politics as an ineffective or illegitimate means of social improvement. Decision-making should be transferred to “the market”, a euphemism for the power of money. Through buying and selling, we establish a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Any attempt to interfere in the discovery of this natural order – such as taxing the rich, redistributing wealth and regulating business – will inhibit social progress.
Neoliberalism disenchants politics by sucking the power out of people’s votes. When governments abandon their ambition to change social outcomes or deliver social justice, politics become irrelevant to people’s lives. It is perceived as the chatter of a remote elite. Disenchantment becomes disempowerment.
Before neoliberalism triggered the financial crash of 2008, its doctrines were treated as orthodoxy across the political spectrum. Obama had a chance to break from this cage, to confront the powers that “the market” disguised and the social divisions it caused. But he chose not to take it. Grace and decency alone cannot defeat structural injustice.
Trump stormed into the political vacuum. Chaotic and unscrupulous, in some respects he offended the neoliberal consensus, ripping up trade agreements, while in others he reinforced it. But the important point is that he was a monster the consensus created. His success was a product of the fake unity and fake healing of elite political agreement. When mainstream politics offered only humiliation and frustration, people turned to a virulent, demagogic anti-politics."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/11/us-trump-biden-president-elect
The president-elect must be willing to fight big money and redistribute wealth, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
UK to outsource £28M deportation service
Home Office wants to contract private companies to help returnees reintegrate in their home countries.
Water Privatisation Has Been a Disaster – It’s Time to Take it Back into Public Hands
Last week's 24 hour drought in East London wasn't an isolated incident – across England and Wales, water privatisation has led to insufficient maintenance, poor service and high bills. It's time the take our water back from the profiteers.
"By undermining the public funding base of our universities and turning students into consumers, successive governments lay the foundations for the student covid crisis – but it's young people who pay the costs."
By undermining the public funding base of our universities and turning students into consumers, successive governments lay the foundations for the Covid crisis – but it's young people who pay the costs.
Meet the Man Who Sold His Fate to Investors at $1 a Share
On January 26, 2008, a 30-year-old part-time entrepreneur named Mike Merrill decided to sell himself on the open market. He divided himself into 100,000 shares and set an initial public offering price of $1 a share. Over the next 10 days, 12 of his friends and acquaintances bought 929 shares, and Me...
“A teacher tells her how “management” of a new sink has cost the school £88 a year for the past 14 years. With nine years left on the PFI contact, that one sink will have cost £2,024."
A Nottingham professor has collated 3,800 examples of bad practice she says go to the heart of government. Now she has written a book
Government opening door to privatising London Underground, says union
RMT warns of industrial action as review of TfL’s finances will consider ‘alternative operating models’
While water firms dumped raw sewage into rivers and seas ‘at least 200,000 times’ in 2019.
Privatised profits, socialised costs.
Critics say utilities borrowing to pay shareholders instead of improving infrastructure
The UK government's rush to reopen public spaces before the pandemic is under control is incredibly dangerous and worrying.
The museum will not be re-opening in June.
"The pandemic has also exposed the privatised care system as catastrophically unfit and ill-prepared. In 1993, 95% of care at home was provided publicly by local authorities. Now, almost all of it – and almost all residential care – is provided by private companies. Even before the pandemic, the system was falling apart, as many care companies, unable to balance the needs of their patients with the demands of their shareholders, collapsed, often with disastrous consequences.
Now we discover just how dangerous their commercial imperatives have become, as the drive to make care profitable has created a fragmented, incoherent system, answerable sometimes to offshore owners, that fails to meet basic standards, and employs harassed workers on zero-hour contracts."
From PPE to care homes, this crisis has exposed the pernicious role of corporate power in public policy, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
The privatisation of the NHS supply chain has created a fundamentally dysfunctional system for the sourcing of PPE.
A fundamentally dysfunctional system
London Renters Union
We're. Not. Paying. Rent.
Because first we need to pay for food - and other essentials.
Cancel debt. Ban evictions. Together we can win. ✊🏻✊🏾✊🏿
#CantPayWontPay
⬇️ JOIN our new campaign here ⬇️
www.cantpaywontpay.uk
Naomi Klein details this process of using major catastrophes as cover for rushed privatisation and outsourcing as a core tactic of neoliberalism in her book The Shock Doctrine.
Critics claim Matt Hancock has accelerated dismantling of state healthcare
#MuseumFromHome
Cross-section of the wall at Grenfell Tower, a display at the Museum of Neoliberalism I co-curated with Gavin Grindon, which opened in Brighton and London last year.
I'll post the text from the captions in the comments
www.museumofneoliberalism.com
#MuseumFromHome #Grenfell
Dog Section Press
Lewisham knows
At first glance this article looks like it's about coronavirus. Nope!
Amazon-owned Whole Foods is quietly tracking its employees with a heat map tool that ranks which stores are most at risk of *unionizing*
Stores' risk scores are based on more than two dozen metrics, including racial diversity, employee turnover, and "tipline" calls.
Museum of Neoliberalism merch is now available from the Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives online store:
www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/shop
A display from the Museum of Neoliberalism. Temporarily closed due to coronavirus.
Partial dismantling of the NHS has already begun. ‘Private Finance Initiatives’ were introduced by John Major and Tony Blair in the 1990s. Private companies build and maintain infrastructure, which is then leased by the state for regular repayments. Our tax money to pay for the NHS is funnelled, by PFI, to these companies.
Above you can see examples of actual prices charged to the NHS by private contractors for individual items. The total build cost for NHS PFI hospitals was £11.4bn. The final price we will pay is projected to be over £79bn.
Neoliberal policy has also gifted these companies with generous tax cuts. They regularly hold their gains in offshore tax havens. NHS Trusts are often unable to afford the high repayments. PFI firms have seen huge profits. Hospitals have seen closures, redundancies, pay cuts and longer working hours. These financial matters may seem distant and abstract, but they will be felt directly in your body. If you need medical help, PFIs have ensured you a longer wait to be seen by a doctor and a drastically reduced treatment service.
The PFI debt is four times the size of the budget deficit used to justify austerity.
—
Museum of Neoliberalism
curated by Darren Cullen and Gavin Grindon
www.museumofneoliberalism.com
—
Video music by musicmaniac301
Boris Johnson’s agenda is over — a new politics will emerge
Voters will not tolerate another NHS winter flu crisis with too few medical staff
Museum of Neoliberalism's cover photo
Please stay home
Added a banner outside my studio/Museum of Neoliberalism (it's closed and I'm the only one here) - please don't go out this weekend. Stay home and help beat this thing.
Been debating if I should temporarily cover the 'tories out' sign to avoid confusion, as tories need to stay in too.
#stayhome #staythef**khome
#coronavirus #covid19UK
The market responds to the coronavirus crisis
The 3D printed valves have saved 10 patients so far.
The Museum of Neoliberalism will be closed tomorrow & for the rest of the month. The government response to the #CoronavirusPandemic has been weak and dangerous and we don't want to contribute to an escalating problem. Sorry if you had a visit planned! Will be emailing all bookings today.
"We are all Keynesians now" - Milton Friedman
#Budget2020
Book free tickets now: www.museumofneoliberalism.com
Hornby Virgin Train set boxes on display at the Museum of Neoliberalism
I co-curated the museum with Gavin Grindon and it is open every Thurs-Sunday, just book a free ticket at museumofneoliberalism.com
#museumofneoliberalism #neoliberalism #virgin #richardbranson
Write up about the museum in i-D and an interview with co-curator Darren Cullen aka Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives
Inside the exhibition satirising the terrors of modern, capitalist Britain.
We have a surprising number of Valentine's Day bookings for the Museum of Neoliberalism tomorrow evening for those seeking a grim, yet free, romantic date.
Time slots are still available www.museumofneoliberalism.com
We're also open Thursday until Sunday every week, 11am-7pm, just book a free ticket at the above address.
Jacobin magazine
Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has announced it will be renationalizing British train lines. It’s further proof that privatization is being discredited around the world.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/01/inside-museum-neoliberalism
The magazine Teen Boss, styled as Teen Bo$$, launched in September 2017. Where Mizz, the tween magazine published between 1985 and 2013, proffered free keyrings and ran stories about teenage mothers, Teen Boss grooms its readers for a world where entrepreneurial ingenuity is considered an aspiration...
Proud to stock DOPE magazine (by Dog Section Press) in the museum gift shop. Good write-up about the magazine and its street vendors below.
You can support DOPE and its solidarity campaign here: www.patreon.com/dopemag
It’s evening rush hour on the London Underground when a crammed District Line train approaches Whitechapel tube station in east London. A woman who looks to be no older than early twenties, with big eyes and a bigger rucksack, squeezes through the crowd, offering passengers a copy of a magazine. ....
We got a four star review in this week's Time Out London
Whatever you take away from the Museum of Neoliberalism, you definitely won’t forget the display ‘Bottle of Amazon employee urine’. According to the museum, i
Closed for Xmas until the 2nd Jan
16 Eltham Road
London
SE128TF
| Thursday | 11:00 - 19:00 |
| Friday | 11:00 - 19:00 |
| Saturday | 11:00 - 19:00 |
| Sunday | 11:00 - 19:00 |
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A display from the Museum of Neoliberalism. Temporarily closed due to coronavirus. Partial dismantling of the NHS has already begun. ‘Private Finance Initiatives’ were introduced by John Major and Tony Blair in the 1990s. Private companies build and maintain infrastructure, which is then leased by the state for regular repayments. Our tax money to pay for the NHS is funnelled, by PFI, to these companies. Above you can see examples of actual prices charged to the NHS by private contractors for individual items. The total build cost for NHS PFI hospitals was £11.4bn. The final price we will pay is projected to be over £79bn. Neoliberal policy has also gifted these companies with generous tax cuts. They regularly hold their gains in offshore tax havens. NHS Trusts are often unable to afford the high repayments. PFI firms have seen huge profits. Hospitals have seen closures, redundancies, pay cuts and longer working hours. These financial matters may seem distant and abstract, but they will be felt directly in your body. If you need medical help, PFIs have ensured you a longer wait to be seen by a doctor and a drastically reduced treatment service. The PFI debt is four times the size of the budget deficit used to justify austerity. — Museum of Neoliberalism curated by Darren Cullen and Gavin Grindon www.museumofneoliberalism.com — Video music by musicmaniac301
A small, free museum about how an obscure and extreme ideological cult of the 1970s rose to power and now shapes our lives in dramatic and often terrible ways.
London Museum of Water & Steam
Green Dragon Lane
Friends of the Horniman Museum
100 London Road
