Zulfikar Ali

'Dark have been my dreams of late' | GymKata Expert | Cloud Architect | IT Security | AWS Pro | Azure | K8s | @Wolves fan | Brummie

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@London_W4 Trust me BRO! WHY bother making such fictional nonsense...who does it serve?

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@is_OwenLewis What magical device is writing data to persistent storage at 17GB/secong? And where u storing 900GB per 'customer'. Mans got jokes

[Epic Gobshite @epic_gobshite]

Oh, spare us the sanctimonious drivel, Andy. Ten years ago you flounced out of Westminster because the 'system' wasn't working for you personally after failing upwards for 16 years. Now, after using Greater Manchester as your personal branding exercise - racking up debt, rebadging buses, and claiming credit for growth that predates you - you're bored of the Mayor gig and want back in Parliament for your own opportunistic gains. 'Deeply care about Makerfield'? You couldn't even be bothered to stand there (or anywhere) last time. This is just the latest chapter in your serial loser saga: you got absolutely trounced in not one but two Labour leadership contests, first to Ed Miliband, then to Jeremy Corbyn, before sulking off to Manchester to play regional 'king'. Now you're back chasing the top job again, positioning yourself as the saviour while the North crumbles under the very government you helped enable. The people who actually voted for you as Mayor get their mid-term rug pulled for your ego trip, costing taxpayers another expensive election. The 'man of the people' routine is ancient history, especially after Labour's national meltdown. This reeks of desperation, not principle. Good luck explaining to voters why the 'change we brought to Greater Manchester' requires you abandoning it halfway through for another shot at the prize you already proved you can't win.

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@Hekired22 @AllahGreatQuran Not for hair, has many other benefits when taken orally just b careful as it's harsh on the stomach

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

This one will require a stiff drink.

In the early 1990s, the government came up with a clever idea. Instead of borrowing money cheaply to build hospitals, schools, and roads, it would get the private sector to build them and then pay the private sector back over 25 to 30 years. The Private Finance Initiative. PFI.

The attraction was obvious. You got a shiny new hospital today. The bill didn't show up on the government's books. The cost was deferred into the future. Politicians got ribbon-cutting ceremonies without the awkward conversation about borrowing.

It was, in effect, the nation's credit card. Buy now, pay later. Except the interest rate was extraordinary.

The total capital value of everything built under PFI was around £50 billion. As of March 2024, there were 665 PFI contracts still running across the UK, with roughly £136 billion in remaining payments stretching out to the early 2050s. These are payments public bodies are contractually locked into. Hospitals, schools, councils, government departments. Paying for buildings that in many cases were constructed twenty or thirty years ago.

And the terms are extraordinary.

PFI contracts were structured so the private sector would not just build the facility but manage its services. Cleaning. Maintenance. Catering. Portering. These services are bundled into long-term contracts with built-in inflation increases that the public sector cannot renegotiate, cannot exit without paying massive penalties, and often cannot even fully scrutinise because of commercial confidentiality clauses.

In one case raised in Parliament, a hospital was charged £333 to change a lightbulb. That isn't an urban myth. It was cited in Hansard.

The NHS has been hit hardest.

According to parliamentary analysis, the capital cost of NHS PFI projects was around £13 billion. The total repayments are estimated at around £80 billion. And the peak of NHS PFI annual repayments isn't even here yet. It arrives in 2029. The bills are still going up.

In 2020-21, NHS trusts paid £457 million purely in interest charges on PFI contracts. Not services. Not maintenance. Interest. In the last five years, NHS trusts have handed over more than £1.8 billion in PFI interest alone. We Own It calculates that money would have covered the starting salaries of over 50,000 new doctors.

One NHS trust, Essex Partnership, has reportedly paid back 27 times what was originally borrowed. Some hospitals are spending more on PFI repayments than on medicines for patients. And remember, these repayments come out of the same NHS budget that's supposed to fund patient care, staff, and equipment.

Scotland got it just as badly. Audit Scotland reported that Scottish taxpayers will pay a cumulative £40 billion for PFI assets worth just £9 billion. North Ayrshire Council will have paid £440 million by 2038 for four schools that cost £83 million to build.

Now here's what makes this worse.

Many of these contracts are starting to expire. The buildings are being handed back to the public sector. And the NAO has warned of significant risks around the handback process, including cases where public bodies were dissatisfied with the condition of assets being returned to them. Decades of payments. And some of these buildings may come back needing significant further investment.

So what actually happened?

The government could have borrowed money at significantly lower rates to build these hospitals and schools itself. Sovereign borrowing has always been cheaper than private finance. Instead, it paid the private sector to borrow at a premium and passed the inflated cost on to the taxpayer. The private sector took the profit. The taxpayer took the risk. The buildings are now ageing. The debts are still being paid. And the services that were supposed to benefit are being squeezed partly because so much of their budget is locked into contractual obligations they cannot escape.

PFI wasn't investment. It was an accounting trick. A way for governments to build things without the borrowing showing up in the national debt figures. It made politicians look fiscally responsible while loading future generations with obligations they had no say in and no ability to renegotiate.

Both parties did this. The Conservatives created PFI in 1992. Labour massively expanded it after 1997. More than 700 projects were signed. The coalition eventually wound it down. The current government scrapped the latest version. But the contracts remain. The payments continue. And the damage is already done.

This is what it looks like when a country chooses to buy its infrastructure on hire purchase instead of investing properly. You lock in above-market rates for decades. You lose control of the assets. You tie the hands of future governments. And when the bill keeps coming due, you're told there's no money for doctors, teachers, or social care.

There was always money. It just went somewhere else.

[Michael Spagat @Michael_Spagat]

1. Yesterday I presented new research on what I'm calling the "demographic fingerprints" of armed conflict — and what they reveal about Gaza.

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@NathanLetsFixit @ilangoldenberg @grok And you conveniently forgot to scale up the murdered (majority civilian) 1 Million+ Iraqis - they mean nothing to you

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@sciencegirl Total Annihilation

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@ulgentr_ @Jihooncrypto Wait, you're from Turkey and you've never heard of Incirlik? Basically a US air base with US nuclear weapons stored there, +1000's of US air/ground forces

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@JohnCleese WoW spreading lies is too easy nowadays

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@JeremyTate41 1. You're not in the UK, no such thing as a 'classical Christian school' - u made that up
2. You posted absolute LIES, school closed due to lack of enrolment & a 20% VAT applicable
3. Purposely bring 'Muslim' into your wording to stoke more hatred against Muslims

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@TristinHopper Great stuff:
USA/West being the 'good guys' means they're the bad ones
Christian values of 'peace' actually means violence
Could go on all day long. Thank you for your attention

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@prajdabre The RIGHT answer is, copy & paste into Microsoft Word. In the Review tab choose 'Word Count'. DONE 🤣

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@docrussjackson @BylineTimes WTH is a "Nazi-Buddhist"??? How on earth do you align those 2 concepts?!!!!!

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@by_niels21222 @GoodwinMJ @Nigel_Farage So many words yet you don't know what 'taqqiyah' actually means & how it applies.

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@TheRegister Once again the public sector wins! Not

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@bethJXo25 @smile2jannah Another mug. He's not doing anything for the UK, just for himself. The grift is so obvious all you can say is "regardless"?!!!!!!!!!!

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@DanielWakeman7 @smile2jannah Eh? He's not done anything for anyone except to line his own pockets. If you can't see that you're #brainwashed

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@fhuszar I mean, if I've ever read CS undergrad advice that is irrelevant to most CS grads in the UK - this is it. This essay is only relevant to Oxbridge types, nowt legendary about it

[Zulfikar Ali @zulfkar97]

@elonmusk Except Palestinian children