Even if I have nothing to hide, I still object to the trade-off of privacy for profit, or privacy for protection. In this case, it's privacy for profit - but when MS start sharing that info with the NSA, or FBI, or CIA, or MI5 or the MOD here in the UK, that's when it starts being privacy for protection, and quite frankly a government that feels the need to spy on it's citizens is a government that cannot be trusted!
/irrelevantranting
Now that we have a fully conservative government in the UK, I'm pretty sure they're going to start monitoring us all online, stealing our files and tapping our phones. That's the kind of government we elected, a right-wing, overly-paranoid, deeply distrustful of poor people government who only look after the 1%. Defunding our health service and removing union rights.
you put your close tag for irrelevant rant in the wrong place.
also I think that you are confusing your politics...
right and left wing are terms used to describe the amount of government control that governments should maintain on services.
for example, a severely left wing point of view would be that public services should be run by the government, the best way to run a service the everyone relies on is to have it in governmental control and fund it through general taxation.
This can be seen with the NHS in the UK, it is a public health service that provides free (at the point of contact) health care to all citizens. it is funded through general taxation. and for the most part works reasonably well.
Whilst a severely right wing government believes that "services" are best run by organisations that have an interest in them running efficiently to maximise profit...
The best example here would be BT, or British Rail, before BT was private company it used to be a division of the post office, (which is why the green cabinets in the street where phone wiring links up to are marked GPO)
in those days rather than a couple of days to weeks to come and connect a phone line, you would and ask for a line to be installed, and be given a time slot (that may be a few days) where you would have to remain inside waiting for the engineer.
when the engineer got to your house they decided where your phone entry point would be installed (you had no choice) and you got a choice of a white or black dial phone.
Making BT compete ultimately ended in cheaper prices, faster service, better service, and more choice.
The point is that BT as a private entity, for the most part works reasonably well.
British rail, is long gone, but as private operators took over we see better value for money, better services, more choice new rolling stock etc. however, rail is a contentious issue, because it is still heavily subsidised by the government... so the question is, if we (tax payers) are already paying for a rail service through general taxation, and each public service provider (who are private companies) are charging huge amounts, and then making huge profits why are we funding them... (e.g. if they make huge profits, then why do they need huge subsidies?)
the biggest argument now in the left wing vs. right wing debate (in the UK) is allowing private services to be provided to the NHS.
Practically what this means is that instead of having a person employed by a hospital to cook meals or clean wards, the labour is provided by an outside company.
and this means that there may need to be less people sitting inside management jobs within the NHS,
or in the case of a catering service, rather than meals being made onsite in a kitchen, meals may be prepared offsite en mass and provided as ready to heat meals. (like most pub/restaurant chains provide) and in turn this means that rather than having 30 people employed through 100 hospitals cooking 100 meals a day. (3,000 staff preparing 10,000 meals)
you have 3 people employer to work steamers/broilers/microwaves, in each hospital, being provided ready made meals from a central kitchen that may employ 100 people to make the 10,000 meals, and additionally 100 delivery drivers (one for each hospital).
Now you have 100 main depot chefs, 100 delivery drivers and 300 in house meal heaters. that's 500 staff,
this meals that you are spend 1/6th of the money devoted to staff costs from the catering budget.
(estimate that each cook gets paid £14k per year and that's a thirty five million pound saving when those 2500 jobs go.)
now here is the rub... the question is, what should be done with that £35 million pound saving (actually it'd be more than that as there would be less wastage... realistically you have three options:
Improve meal quality:
10,000 meals each meal time means there are (with three meals a day 365 days a year) roughly 11 million meals. with the same overall catering spend, you can, (with these figures) increase meal expenditure by just over £3 per meal, that sort of increase is significant for quality of ingredients.)
options 2, the government keeps the money, or at least some of it:
which seems to be a good solution for everyone. the government gets to keep £30 million pounds a year (which it spends else where maybe paying doctors and nurses) whilst the company taking on the business (and operating risks etc) get a £5 million pound profit (which they may use to pay the staff better)
option 3:
let a private company keep the money:
we're saying that previously the government spent an imaginary £60 million providing food to these 100 hospitals. The government will still be spending £60 million, and a private company managed to make huge savings, and so the private company gets to keep what is left.
the real trouble is when the private companies choose option 4:
keep the 35 million pound savings that you made.
increase the cost fo government to £61 million. (so you get a million pounds more
decrease the portion sizes, so as to save money (and increase profit)
decrease the ingrediant quality so as to save money (and increase profit)
decrease the menu choice so as to save staff costs (and increase profit)
that's the point where privatisation of public services is a bad thing.
and it might be worth noting that the previous Labour government privatised the NHS (privatised cleaning, used private agency staff for nurses and doctors, used private ambulance contractors.) a lot more than the current Conservative government has (or plans to)...
E.g Labour - traditional party of the left, were more right wing than conservative -traditional party of the right.
in the context of this discussion. you're actually talking about libertarian vs. authoritarian governments. as this discusses the amount of control that a government wants to exert on it's citizens.
and in this regard I still don't really understand your rant against the conservative government (as in mow that we have). sure the government do have a bill designed to allow traffic inspection etc.
but so did the previous Labour government...
in fact the previous government in 2010 stood on a platform of supporting 90 day (three month) detention without charge or trial, deep packet inspection of internet, ISPs being forced to log and record connection metadata, and mandatory ID cards. (papers comrade?!)
long story short, when talking about right and left you are talking about financial approach to services.
when you are talking about citizens rights you are talking about libertarian vs. authoritarian.
or to put it another way, Hitler was very right wing, and Stalin was very right wing. but what made them really bad was that both had very authoritarian regimes... (hence a lot of people died.)