This is what we have to look forward to

In Cameron's Brave New World, we're going back to the days of Small Government - about 1780, I reckon. Back then, taxes covered the military and the King's gambling debts, and that was about it. Everything else was a matter of private arrangement, such as the fire protection plaques still sometimes glimpsed on old houses.

The system still operates in the US - and it won't be long until it returns here.

Homeowners in the region outside the town limits of South Fulton, TN, have to pay $75 to come under the protection of the town's firefighters. Late in September, the house of Gene Cranick, who had not paid his $75 for the year, caught fire. When the fire department arrived, they announced that since Cranick had not paid his fees, his house would be allowed to burn to the ground. Cranick offered to pay the $75, but the firefighters weren't having any of it. They eventually acted to put out the fire when it spread to the home of a neighbor who had previously paid. As the mayor said, " if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck."

Forward to the Workers' Syndicalist State

The Tories have been muttering about instituting Easyjet-style local service provision (mm, what a vote-winner) and the Labour Party have had to find a localised model of service provision to avoid looking like centralist Soviets (not that I mind centralisation much - especially as I find myself living in an evil Tory/Lib Dem council).

The model they've gone for is one of workers' control: users and staff of anything from hospitals to leisure centres running places without too much control from the centre.

I'm all for it. Yes, things will end up being plotted by hyperactive busybodies, but the theory is sound, because the theory is Syndicalism, a splinter of communism which appealed to the Welsh miners and others in the 1930s (and got several of them in trouble with the CPGB Central Committee. Under syndicalism, the workforce of any particular industry, via their democratic union, controlled the means of production. Industries would be run co-operatively and would trade resources with other syndicalist industries. The profit motive and capitalist class would wither away. The theory suggests that government wouldn't be necessary because all workers would operate with the good of society in mind, and thus all would behave well. Personally, I think that a government of some sort would be required to adjudicate, distribute and set priorities (and conduct diplomacy, defence and public services), but it would be minimal compared with the Soviet and capitalist models.

Syndicalism rocks - and its time has come. Though I've probably just ruined its chances by identifying its origins in such as disreputable lefty idea.

Cashier number four, please

Obviously I'm in a grouchy mood today, but it's all justified. I've been to the Post Office. It's like the university - a once proud institution which proclaimed a state's and nation's commitment to public service, reduced to an ugly corpse to be picked at by corporations, 'external service providers', outsourcers and all the other parasites who've taken over our civilisation.

The main city Post Office in Wolverhampton is in a very ugly 70s concrete block. You'll find it next to the abandoned, elegant, spacious Edwardian building engraved with the words 'Post Office'. Inside, the current building looked as though it was ashamed of its use. A mean newsagent's business huddles at the front, while a bare concrete block stretches to the back of the building, the gloom livened only by advertisements designed to hold the attention of the captive audience. Of the 15 cashiers' stations, a magnificent ONE was open, to serve the 30+ people in the queue. Convenience was not a consideration: I was there to pick up a widely-used form, but even for that I had to queue: has there been a rash of redirection-form thefts requiring secure storage?

Still, I enjoyed the grumpy solidarity of the queue… we all had a good moan. Just like being at work… Why are we so ashamed of public services?

I'm back. How I wish I wasn't.

My friends, Norway is awful. Never go there.

OK, it isn't. It's wonderful in so many ways that I don't think I can express them sufficiently. I just don't think that we're worthy. Perhaps other Scandinavians might make the grade, but the rest of us would just mess it up with our fat guts and junk food and linguistic failings and reactionary tendencies etc. etc. etc.

Coming back to the UK was like being expelled from Paradise. Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden with a lighter heart than James, Neal and I did on Saturday. I can't even be coherent about it - just everything was better. Many of them even support Stoke City, because it was a top club when British football matches started to be shown in Norway during the 70s.

I suspect that most of my posts today are going to be 'another great thing I've just remembered about Norway', and I'll post a few pictures.

One of the big things we all noticed is that Norwegians believe in using government to do big things - transport, opera houses, stunning cities that are actually brilliant to live in and get around. They undertake big projects at government expense and get them right. It's such a huge contrast to this place. Here, we wonder about doing something, then decide that if it's got to be done, better some consortium of lying thieving bankers should make money off it, and then wonder why it's shit. I refer you, of course, to 'NHS' hospitals and schools built on the PFI principle. If you don't know what that is, it involves faking the maths to make it look better to get a private company to own and run a hospital or school, renting it to the government for 30/40 years at a massive profit. It doesn't work. The hospitals are rubbish, smaller, dirtier - read this if you don't believe me.

Norway seems to be a confident, bright, caring country. The population seem to actually like and care about each other, which makes them happy to get together for the public good. We live in a selfish, atomised society in which we actually don't want to take responsibility for each other. Sure, we'd like clean hospitals and decent schools, and trains which run on time and cities you'd actually want to live in/walk around/be proud of - but we certainly don't want to pay for it. We'd rather get our kids into private schools, and get private medicine (over-rated, by the way), buy more plasma screens and generally turn away from public space, towards private, short-term pleasure.

It's embarrassing. If you haven't been to Germany, Denmark or Norway, you probably think Britain's a first-world nation. You'd be wrong.

I'm sorry. I'm in a bad mood because I've returned to litter and pollution and filth and poor architecture and an office in which some of my artwork has been smashed. Glass everywhere.

Workers of the World, Throw Off Your Labels

Let me tell you a story.

During the first half of the century, people looked at their schools, hospitals, transport systems, mail companies, prisons and a whole host of other services and realised that if they all got together and paid for them to be run by the state, they'd be more efficient and distributed/run fairly. So we gradually acquired state railways, a National Health Service, pensions and other benefits and government-run schools.

Then governments stopped investing in such services properly, because while taxpayers demanded top quality services, they didn't want to pay for them - except in genuinely civilised countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. These services declined - not terribly, but appreciably.

Then a new bunch of lying, smart-suited gits came along and said that 'efficiency' was the preserve of capitalism, because 'competition' would drive prices down. The Conservatives fell for this hook line and sinker, because they don't believe in all of us pulling together anyway - they want competition between citizens. So the rich can buy better services and the rest of us have to put up with whatever we can afford. If you think that's fine, look at the American health service, which takes up far more of the national income than the British one, yet leaves 46 MILLION people outside the healthcare system, on top of a decline in wages since the 1970s. So much for efficiency. The drive to make a profit contradicts the desire for quality - you only have to look at private prisons, 'outsourced' school meals and hospital cleaning or privatised railways to see that profits are derived by cutting corners.

The little things get to me on a daily basis - not being able to afford dental work, Coke machines in schools, 'sponsored' roundabouts, adverts on everything. Prisoners given no chance for rehabilitation because education, drug treatment and pyschiatric help are expensive - and now my institution never mentions the social and intellectual benefits of education: instead, we have a 'business' model in which 'efficiency' conquers all. How 'efficient' is opening a new world to a student through a good book or a fiery discussion? Not at all - so let's get rid of it. O Brave New World.

Think of this: imagine a world without the BBC. No licence fee, you might think. Brilliant. Then you notice that the news is a bit lightweight. Fewer overseas correspondents. Less politics - your advertisers don't want you upsetting the government. Then perhaps the consumer investigations will disappear - your advertisers certainly don't want you criticising them. Perhaps Top Gear, already a whore for the car industry, stops saying anything negative at all. Your soaps start featuring little plugs for products. The weather report tells you to get down to B and Q to buy a barbecue - and suddenly your world has no space not festooned with adverts.

You kick in the TV and lacerate your foot. You dial 118 999 and after a while, it's answered somewhere in Southeast Asia. After some negotiation, a private ambulance arrives, meter running. You look through the brochures, trying to decide which hospital you should go to - the ambulance driver's suggestions carry a hint of 'on commission'. They all look the same - reassuring doctors, smiling nurses, TV in every room, but there's no price list and you can't tell which one's best. You give up and pick the first one on the pile. Oh dear - 15 miles is expensive, and your insurance doesn't cover the ambulance trip. Nor, when you arrive in a state of considerable delirium, does it cover self-inflicted wounds, and treatment will max out your credit card, so you accept an expensive, branded aspirin from a tired doctor wearing a Boots the Chemist white coat and a bandage and hope you get better. Oops - the hospital cleaning has been outsourced to a company which provides inadequate numbers of ununionised, untrained cleaners who, unmotivated by the recently-reduced minimum wage and long hours, don't make the best job of it. So you pick up MRSA.

Time off to recover? No chance - benefits have been cut and privatised, and you're not 'deserving' - you hobble back to minimum wage work and never walk properly again, and lose your job as a postman for one of the private services. You turn to minor crime and end up in a privatised cell for 23 hours a day, losing your skills, getting ill on no exercise and the worst, cheapest food available and picking up a drug habit and some useful criminal skills. On your release you find that your kids, having departed Coke High with no qualifications but a conviction that fizzy drinks help the world to sing 'in perfect harmony', can't support you or even themselves.

All this is because you don't want to pay taxes. Of course, it will only happen to other people. Poor people. You and your kids can go to private schools, elite universities and professional jobs - unsullied by the predations of companies owned by your pension fund and encouraged by the governments you vote in because they talk about 'hard-working families' needing tax-breaks, about 'choice' and efficiency. Not your fault. When they steal from you, smash up your SUV, rob your mobile phone, it's because they're evil, feckless scum who don't want to work or better themselves. Isn't it?

(I gather the US isn't far from this dystopian vision already).

All this, actually, is just a plea for you to read John Harris's piece in today's Guardian, in which he warns us all of what to expect over the next few years. It's grim. Here's a little bit on hospital cleaning:

Not long ago, I met two hospital cleaners whose jobs in Bury St Edmunds had been outsourced to a company that blithely cut the workforce in half. "We were always on about infection in the hospital," one of them said. "Instead of four cleaners on the ward, they said, 'We're going to put it down to two people, but you won't have to hoover.' Effectively, they were saying, 'clean less'."

Don't vote Labour - they love this stuff because it's not socialism and they're all joining the boards of private service providers. Don't vote Tory. They love this stuff because it's not socialism and they own the private service providers. Oh dear.

Sorry. I seem to have become suddenly rather angry. The sooner I move to Norway, the better.