Many of us have argued for a long time that the Tories are privatising the NHS.
They of course deny it.
But the new that ratings agencies - the discredited Standard & Poors, Moody's and Fitch - are to rate the success of hospitals in future really says all that needs to be known about The Tories' objectives: the plan is very clearly to prepare businesses for sale.
Ignore clinical quality, care or any other factor that impacts health outcomes; just look to the financial bottom line. It's a sad indictment of their bankrupt philosophy and their failure to tell the truth. No wonder almost all, right across the medical professions, are opposed to this reform which is already happening despite having not a shred of legislative backing as yet.
The contempt the Tories have shown for parliament is amazing.
The contempt for the rest of us staggering.
And we'll end up paying, as the Americans do, vastly more for significantly worse health outcomes.
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Richard, you are correct in stating that the Tories are showing absolute contempt for parliament and the people of this country. However the LibDems must share in this responsibilty but are too weak to do anything about the situation because they know they will be destroyed at the ballot box. What can we do to stop this? We now have an elected dictatorship with virtually no checks and balances on the executive. As we know from recent experience in other countries this could lead to a bloodstained revolution. I sincerely hope that we do not reach this stage.
It’s actually the political class no longer bothering to hide its contempt for the electorate. Politicians know the electorate are stupid, they voted them into power in the first place.
Dead right Bill. The only thing we can do to break the cycle is to withdraw the mandate altogether and have a mass organised abstention at the next election. Sure we’d end up with the Tories for another 5 years but what difference would that make. If we could get turn out low enough then even they would be embarrassed into change
No they wouldn’t. THEY DON’T CARE!! You’re dealing with an entirely amoral bunch who literally cannot see beyond how much money can be made. There simply are no other considerations. They aren’t well, in other words. Future civilisations, if there are to be any, must necessarily exclude such individuals from positions of authority.
“they voted them into power in the first place.”
Actually, in the case of this government, no they didn’t! In fact, nobody got an overall majority, so instead of an election, the Kiv Dems joined forces with the tories to form a right wong coalition.
Isn’t democracy wonderful??
The LIB DEMS I mean!! I HATE this bloody keyboard!! 🙁
Representative democracy clearly doesn’t work. I believe we need to push for participatory democracy – citizen initiated referenda. We need the power to initiate laws, but also to veto them. That would be a good start. It works well enough in Switzerland. We could take it further by then introducing the recall – the ability to sack public officials. Imagine what we could do there.
Over the past 50-100 years the military industrial complex has very neatly circumvented the democratic process – big business pays the pollies, who in turn support them in return for jobs or rewards. On top of that, the world’s major banks are shareholders in nearly all the major corporations, including the media, thus ensuring that such issues are not openly challenged. Our democracy is a joke.
Enter the Internet and social networking. An alternative to the established media is presented and humans around the world are using this technology to challenge governments everywhere. We have a rare opportunity to institute participatory democracy, before the governments finally work out a way to gag the World Wide Web – as we are currently seeing in the U.S.( Congress is voting on the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ (SOPA) and the ‘Protect IP Act’ (PIPA) ).
What can I say ?
The unions have been saying this for years, some in the Labour party have been saying the same.
Unfortunately, that contempt for parliament is not confined to parliament or to the Conservative party, but spreads to contempt for democracy and also comes from labour and the Lib-Dems.
A widespread parliamentary contempt for people is exhibited.
Face it, democracy is deceased in the UK.
The press is predominantly right of centre, usually far right, and the remainder account for a small, and falling, number of readers.
In fact, with the coming Scottish independence and the electoral boundaries re-drafts the Conservatives seem to be ensuring an inbuilt majority for the foreseeable future.
Still, the health service unions see the problems and so do the doctors.
The doctors will be bought-off, and the unions ignored: All they do will only harm people/patients.
Let’s see
Doctors are being put in charge of budgets where they have no expertise,
Service conglomerates are put in charge of diagnoses where they have no experise,
Ratings agencies will judge hospitals where they have no expertise,
What could possibly go wrong in this evidence free reorganisation?
It is at moments like this I pull out the Kenneth Baker 16 September 1999 interview with the Guardian about his time as Education Secretary and say ‘would you trust a party like this?’:
“I loved Keith dearly. Keith was a lovely person, but he was seduced by very clever civil servants in the department. I had a much more practical approach. I could see the advantage of a voucher system, but Heath and a lot of the Conservative party were against them.” So he couldn’t do it. At least, not openly. Instead, he combined parental choice with his new funding formula, which meant that the vast bulk of each school’s budget depended entirely on the recruitment of children, whose parents were now empowered to choose their schools. “Well, yes, it’s not a formal voucher system, but it’s very tantamount! In effect, it was a voucher system. I just didn’t call it that. It was a subtler approach.”
[…] I liked this succinct comment on the blog this morning with regard to the reorganisation of the NHS.: Doctors are being put in charge of budgets where they have no expertise; […]
The whole idea is to move as much taxpayers money as is humanly possible into the hands of private capital. This is becoming clearer and clearer with each passing month!
I agree, they presumably picked on the disabled and sick first on the sound basis they can’t fight back. It’s working very well too as Atos are getting hundreds of millions a year for making decisions costing further tens of millions a year at tribunals. This scenario will no doubt be repeated when the wholly unecessary replacement for DLA, PIP, is introduced as repeated face-to-face assessments will be compulsory for that too. The end result is that more money that should be being used to support the sick and disabled being turned into an income stream for private companies – and all three major parties are at it, too!
Representative democracy clearly doesn’t work. I believe we need to push for participatory democracy – citizen initiated referenda. We need to be able to initiate laws, but also veto them. It works well enough in Switzerland. We could take it further by introducing the Recall – the power to sack public officials. Imagine what we could do there.
Over the last 50-100 years the military-industrial complex has neatly circumvented the democratic process. The pollies support big business in return for jobs or rewards of some kind. On top of that the worlds major banks are major shareholders in most if not all of the world’s major corporations, including the media. This effectively means they can effectively prevent any of this being openly discussed or challenged. Voting at the ballot box every 3,4 or 5 years is not democracy. Our democracy is a joke.
Enter the Internet and social networking. The population has an alternative to the mass media for its information and humans around the world are able to openly challenge their governments. This is a great opportunity for us to now push for participatory democracy – before the governments work out a way to gag the World wide web, as they’re now attempting in the U.S. (Congress is currently voting on Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the ‘Protect IP Act’ (PIPA)).
And when its sold off it will be owned by the big US-based health investment conglomerates that ensure a high cost, low health care situation in the US. Purpose – shareholder profit maximisation.
At the Trade Commission level, the Transatlantic Economic Council has been implementing a ‘standardisation’ process between the EU and US, with the major focus on health fo rthe last year and a half.
The pretence was that this would mean if you were having an operation in Europe, there could be distance health input from the US, for the benefit of the patient.
But since this has been the major focus, all these changes to the NHS have been put forward.
The UK is of course the US-style liberalisation standard bearer in the EU, pushing forward such liberalisation and transnational investment access.
The fact that nothing that goes on in Brussels is ever reported makes the EU a very handy tool for the global investment driver, the City of London Corporation.
Behind the Brussels fog, the liberalisation push doesnt appear to come from the UK.
Linda do you have a twitter account? I like to read your articles when they appear but unless you tweet to announce them (or, you know, come round my house each time and tell me, whatever) then I don’t know when they come out 🙂