Where does South Africa's ANC government go for advice about the best way to privatise those sections of the economy that are still nationalised?
It sends Ian Phillips, a leading member of the South African Communist Party and special adviser to Public Enterprises Minister, Jeff Radebe, to China.
They want, says Comrade Phillips, to exchange ideas around the concept of restructuring. "We are sharing experiences."They are also privatising operations.
Still state controlled and now the subject of privatisation projects are telecommunications and the energy sector. An announcement on privatisation is to be announced in a policy document soon.
Hooked on high prices
The UK's largest pharmaceutical company, Norton Healthcare, has threatened to stop production rather than submit to health secretary Alan Milburn's proposed price cap on generic drugs, ie non-label drugs. The price of these rose sharply after Milburn instructed hospitals to switch from expensive brand name drugs to cheaper generic.
The Norton Healthcare boss is rather annoyed about this and probably regards it as a gross act of ingratitude.
He expected better of the government after donating £100,000 to Labour Party funds in 1999 and a further £10,000 to Frank Dobson's London mayoral election campaign.
While on this subject, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham has withdrawn the Urabe vaccine in the UK because of life threatening side effects.
The vaccine has been shown to be linked to meningitis. Their nobility is limited, though. SmithKline Beecham is continuing to export the drugs for sale in Argentina, Chile, Haiti, Honduras, Lebanon, Macedonia and former Yugoslavia.
Hats off to Lord Roy?
Sniping from the Left is grateful to Roy Hattersley, who in his Guardian column exposed the deputy prime minister's preposterous claim that "the values that motivated Keir Hardie"are the same ones that motivated Tony Blair" for the arrant nonsense it is.
Keir Hardie was no revolutionary marxist, but unlike Blair, he did not hesitate to call himself a socialist.
Tony Blair's proudest boast is that he got rid of Clause Four. Keir Hardie considered that "the increasing burden which private ownership of land and capital is imposing on the useful members of the community, the poverty, destitution and general moral and physical deterioration resulting from a competitive system."
This was Hardie's first speech after he became the first Labour member of parliament. Hardie wanted to abolish this system. Tony Blair nourishes it.
When the Victorian House of Commons sent congratulations to the Duke of York (later King George V), Keir Hardie observed that "the life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial and moral value than the whole royal crown put together from the royal grandmamma down..."
Like Roy Hattersley, this column is waiting impatiently for Tony Blair's view on the occasion of the Queen Mother's 100th birthday in July.
But Keir Hardie would also have asked Roy Hattersley a pertinent question: "What on earth are you doing in the House of Lords?"
Private reservations
If Gordon Brown and his fellow ministers are really concerned about the preferential entry from private schools to the elite universities, why do they not do something about it?
They could start by abolishing the charity status of schools like Eton and Harrow. Every year more than £60 million is pocketed by these schools out of tax payers' money.
Children in private schools account for 7 per cent of those in school but, if nothing changes, they will go on to fill half the places available in Oxbridge, and from there they will go on to fill all the more prestigious posts in the civil service, the judiciary and the armed forces, and of course in the universities as well, thus completing the circle of privilege.
Can we expect the necessary changes from this government which has abolished free entry to higher education? From Paul Boateng, Lord Falconer, Baroness Symons and other ministers who have sent their children to private schools?
Can we, indeed, expect the end of any selection in education, as once promised by David Blunkett, when the prime minister himself takes advantage of the selection system for his own children?
Keir Hardie, indeed!