Intray 2024 – 14 x 17 x 26cm, carboard, laser print, sheet plastic, wire
Have you heard what right-wing libertarians’ plans are for dismantling social democracies around the world? Public services are ‘small potatoes’, the goal is ‘countrypreneurship’, the privatisation of entire country’s. Establishing the zone is the key framework that carve’s out a region and separates it from the host country’s laws and regulations. Brexit is the ‘exit’ strategy for such an experiment. Now do you see why Starmer says no rejoining the EU, Single Market, and Customs Union? Zone fever has arrived, a Tory initiative fully backed by the Labour Party who are board members of Sunak’s 12 Freeports and 74 SEZs nationwide consortia.
Reminder, Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe’s SEZs failed because they came up against EU regulations on State aid, ‘the 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’. Canary Wharf shared an inbuilt mechanism with Hong Kong of ‘administrative absolutism’ where business leaders made decisions with zero input from local residents entrapped within the free zone. London Docklands Development Corporation could bypass local govt, including planning permission while ignoring the housing needs of residents. The corporate director made visible his contempt for locals by referring to them as the ‘surplus population of existing residents’. Land was sold at a 6th of the cost of market value. Look at Teesside SEZ/Freeport which has spent £560 million of taxpayers money, profits are split 90/10 in favour of the private sector. Rinse and repeat across all 86 free zones.
The resurrection of UK SEZs and Freeports, 86 in total with more promised by Labour is a direct result of Brexit, watch how councilors and MPs from Cons, Labour, and SNP gaslight the public first by denigrating those like myself who have researched the facts, and secondly by touting the ‘growth, innovation, and prosperity prosperity’ myth of deregulated free zones. The UK Govt’s website states there is no economic evidence that free zones improve the economy, the results of previous incarnations of SEZs were ‘underwhelming’ when compared with the projected outcomes of deregulated zoning. Ref: Crack Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian