ARmy Rumour SErvice

I love that they think this is somehow 'news'...

PFI = Paying private companies three times as much as you could have done the job yourself for but somehow claiming that it saves you money.

At some point we're going to fall into a massive debt blackhole when someone works out exactly how much we actually owe out on the PFI never never.

Does that £150m include 27 years of running costs? Its hard to follow the numbers form the article. I mean, statistically, the PFI deal's likely to be a crock of shite but comparing apples & oranges doesn't prove it

unfortuatly el tone had decided there was only cash via PFI we shoud surcharge the **** for every single bad deal he did.
for ffs the vc10s and tristars should have been put out to grass after granby.

pfi means they actually get the aircraft which may not be perfect but are a damm sight more usable than a study into an aircraft.

It's what is says on the tin "Private Finance Initiative" so it's a clever idea to get finance, i.e. taxpayers money, into private hands, if it was about saving money it would be CCI - Cost Cutting initiative.

The Engineer plant equipment in Germany used to be serviced by units and fixed by some old German contractor bloke in a van. When nothing was broke he didn't get paid.

Now there are loads of blokes in suits, people in offices and blokes in covies all lording it up on the BFG net and working in encroachments. Some savings there then!

CAS at the time - Sir Glenn Torpy - admitted to his staff in Main Building during an RAF Briefing that Air Tanker wasn't the cheapest way of getting new AT and AAR aircraft - it was the only way. The previous Adminsitration were in love with PFI (as were the Tories in the 1990s) but 4 years ago when this PFI was signed off, there was simply insufficient capital to acquire the aircraft any other way.

let's look at it another way:

FUTURE SHOCK MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES PAYING 3X THE SALE PRICE FOR 3 BRM HOUSE:

The Daily Heil can reveal today that there are thousands of hard working middle class families forced to pay many times the sale price on family homes. We can reveal that most buyers are forced to take on a mortgage which will see them paying for their homes several times over - over a period of 25 years!

Kevin Stupid, of Walsall, says: I though I was paying GBP 150,000 for my damp, squalid 2 bedroomed terrace. I learn now that after 25 years, I will have paid over GBP300,000. it's a disagrace! Fukcing ripped off, I am.

Josh Rangerover-Smythe, of Eton ffinancial Services (Bahamas) Ltd, said 'common householders lack the negotiation skills to get a good deal when buying estates (sorry, small, squalid houses). The should remember that 'Cash is King', and should never be tied in to long-term financial arrangments like err, mortgages, unless it's like Uncle Quentin's Trust Fund that put me through prep and Cambridge.'

Or am I being cynical?

No that's being realistic. PFI is just that - someone else stumps up the cash (that you don't have) and over many years you pay back two or three times what you "borrow".

The mortgage analogy doesn't really work though, as we won't even own the aircraft at the end of it.