Zone Fever (G is for A is for Z is for) 2024 – 34 x 105 x 84cm, canvas, acrylic paint, spray paint, vinyl lettering, wood, sheet plastic, plaster, tub, letterbox, triplex, foamcore, photograph, wire, modelling clays
Zone Fever (G is for A is for Z is for) 2024 – video
A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a designated region ‘freed’ from the host country’s regulations, stakeholders and investors are trusted to ‘self-regulate’, meaning they can create their own rules. At one end, we have low-wage production, and reduced employment rights for workers. At the other end zones are basically tax havens where corporations can both onshore and offshore their profits.
Sunak and Truss turbocharged the resurrection of Thatcher’s free zones and added dozens more; there are now 74 SEZs and 12 Freeports currently being installed across the UK under the Labour Govt. 48 SEZs and 8 Freeports in England 18 SEZs and 2 Freeports in Scotland 8 SEZs and 2 Freeports in Wales Bidding on all free zones closed in 2022.
As each zone becomes operational, additional zones will create a domino effect that collapses councils already bankrupted by deliberate underfunding, public services will be scrapped, and public assets absorbed by private equity as corporations move in for the kill. Advocates of the zone are invariably right-wing and believers in deregulated free markets with zero interventions by govt. zoning starts off small, and once it is operational, those in surrounding regions will at some point be forced to emulate free zone economies.
Deregulated free zones are like bacteria festering inside the nation-state, they feed on State aid (public money) and then quickly take over the host country. Libertarians regard public services as ‘small potatoes’, their ultimate goal is ‘countrypreneurship’ the privatisation of entire countries. Brexit was literally born of ‘exit’ strategies developed in the 50s and 60s by anarcho-capitalists and libertarians advocating for the total dissolution of social democracy. The 82 free zones in the EU are strictly regulated to prevent governments of member states from giving State aid (public money) to companies of their choosing, this distorts the integrity of the EU’s Single Market creating an unlevel playing field.
The bidding process for UK free zones took place between 2021 and 2022, businesses lined up for tax breaks and low-regulation were chosen by the UK Govt. From the EU Commission’s website on State Aid and SEZs
‘(EU) Parliament stresses that State aid should support ecological transformation and foster the development of services, knowledge, and infrastructure rather than providing support to specific companies’. UK SEZs contravene EU laws and regulations on State aid. When Sunak and Starmer say ‘no rejoining the EU’, not one reporter in the MSM points out this fundamental component about the EU’s rules on State aid. UK SEZs are being installed by stealth.