As Polly Toynbee has noted this morning:
The symbolism runs deep into the veins of the NHS. The government on Thursday sold off the NHS-owned company supplying safe blood plasma on which thousands depend. It was sold to a US private equity firm with a reputation for aggressive asset-stripping. Bain Capital owns Burger King, Domino's Pizza, Dunkin' Donuts and much else. Its predatory history dogged Bain's founder, Mitt Romney, throughout the US election.
After contamination by brain disease variant CJD, sourcing plasma from UK donors was banned in 1999, so the NHS purchased its own supplier — PRUK — to regulate quality and safety itself. Campaigners fought to stop a sell-off to a profit-hungry business beyond NHS control. Alarming footnote: I rang the Department of Health press office to find out more, but instead of returning my call I was outsourced — I got a call from Bain's PR company instead.
Not only has an essential service been sold - without good reason - but even the justification for it has been sold.
Such is the nature of the cowardly state.
We need the courageous alternative.
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I read about this yesterday, thanks to your tweet Richard, I have seen nothing on any of the major news channels or indeed on the BBC website, all they had yesterday was this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22528719
I noted, no editor picks, maybe because the highest rated comments were those against the idea whilst comments reflecting the opposite POV, a POV the “editor” seems to prefer, were heavily in the minus. How on earth they can claim that “Reform is a non-party public services think tank” is beyond me.
I have spent a couple of hours this morning trying to find a good reason why this sale has taken and place and have come up with zilch, My guess is there isn’t one due the part in the article that says:
“I rang the Department of Health press office to find out more, but instead of returning my call I was outsourced — I got a call from Bain’s PR company instead.”
As people have been pointing out, alas that does not include our MSM including the BBC, this onslaught against the NHS has one purpose and one purpose only, and to quote Steve from over at Sqwawkbox:
“to attack the public’s affection for, and confidence in, the NHS — so that there will be less protest when it is effectively ended by being ‘saved’ by privatisation.”
The “hegemonic” state knows it can get away with murder – in this case, probably literally, or certainly culpable homicide – but even they slipped this one in by the back door and under the radar.
But what ARE our media doing? Why aren’t they shouting from the rooftops about this particular piece of crookedness? I despair of this country – remembering always a line from an early Wilfrid Owen poem (actually about a lost love, and all he scrificed in pursuit of it, but the language still resonates)
“Starkly I returned, and stared upon the ash of all I burned”
That’s what the great British public is going to say, when they get back off the doorstep, after talking to the distraction burglar, and find his mates have stripped the house bare, and set fire to everything else.
“Why didn’t anyone tell us?” they will say. Answer, you were too busy listening to nonsense about immigrants and the EU and the way “red tape” and Health and Safety was a fetter on business to see what was really going on. Distraction burglary with a vengeance, except that the small fry who do this to OAP’s get put in prison; these big operators hoover up the dosh AND get put in the House of Lords!
The last is especially true
What’s more – they don’t even turn up when they are sent there but instead block places for those who might
Superbly put, as usual, Andrew, and so, so, sadly, very true.
Thanks, Ivan. And I forgot THE chief distraction element, amongst all the others, namely the summoning up of the benefits “skivers and scroungers” narrative.
This, like the MP’s expenses “scandal” – a fire in a wastepaper basket used to distract the public from seeing that the whole building was on fire as a result of the casino/mafioso greed of the financial services snake-oil merchants, so preventing the public from seeking the REAL change that was needed – has been used, not only to direct attention away from the real crooks, as with the expenses scandal, but for something infinitely worse.
For it is clear that, in using such Goebbelesque techniques, that we really DO have a government different from any other, probably since the 1820’s, namely a truly malevolent administration, intent on not just opposing – with rational argument and political action – those with which it disagrees, but on punishing and disadvantaging, and even harming, those opponents. This really is a malevolent Government, bent on its own Right-wing Maoist “cultural revolution”.
An Opposition – an effective Opposition, MUST emerge NOW, or nothing will remain by 2015.
“An Opposition — an effective Opposition, MUST emerge NOW, or nothing will remain by 2015.”
I think the ConDems are trying to cover that base.
“English MPs would be able to reject legislation on devolved issues such as education, the NHS, transport and the environment, even if it had been passed by a majority of all MPs in the House of Commons.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/english-revolution-in-house-of-commons-plan-to-give-englands-mps-right-to-veto-on-issues-not-affecting-scotland-wales-or-northern-ireland-8698505.html
Anyone know how many ministers have shares in these ‘health’ companies?
Over 200 parliamentarians are known to have links to private healthcare corporations. So far..the work is ongoing.
The work has been done at the excellent Social Investigations website: http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/nhs-privatisation-compilation-of.html
‘Not only has an essential service been sold — without good reason — but even the justification for it has been sold.’
Richard. The second part of this sentence is much more important than many people appreciate because it illustrates a feature of privatisation very often ignored, and deliberately so by politicians. In a nutshell, it allows them to claim that government and public service is becoming more transparent – as I’ve heard both Hunt and Cameron do this week – while creating “externalised” public services that are in fact completely the reverse.
This is because one of two things – or both – happen. Either the company that now runs the service claims ‘commercial confidentiality’ when approached for information about a service. Or, it refers questions back to the government department who hold the contract with the service provider. That department will then routinely decline to answer any questions on the basis that the service provider should answer. Add to this the fact that privatised services are not subject to FoI and any form of transparency is removed almost totally.
The most obvious and widely seen example is ATOS and the DWP. Any question to the former routinely receives an answer that is a non answer, and the enquirer told to ask the DWP, who then refer you back to ATOS. Result, complete opacity.
The creation of – yes I’ll say it – another form of ‘secrecy jurisdiction’, but this time within British government and public service has been an ongoing phenonmenon for at least a decade. But with a government in power that is entirely bought and paid for by commercial interests (unlike New Labour who always retained at least some degree of arms-length engagement in at least some policy domains)it has become the de-facto arrangement since 2010.
Furthermore, because it’s a well understood approach in government it allows people like Hunt to talk about transparency within the NHS – as he has on numerous occasions this week – while he knows that, in fact, as more and more of the NHS is privatised, the organisations that take it over will actually be completely opaque. So in effect what he’s actually talking about when he refers to tranparency is only the rump or core NHS that remains ‘public’.
Interestingly, in this respect he’s doing exactly what Cameron keeps doing when he constantly makes a point of saying that he wasn’t ‘lobbied’ by Lynton Crosby. I have no doubt that he wasn’t ‘lobbied’, in the narrow sense of the word (i.e. as defined in the dictionary) but I’m pretty sure they’ve had many a chat at which much that is of interest in policy terms came up and Crosby’s position on such matters became clear.
Entirely agreed
Ivan, the Independent, at least, has covered this today. How long before the shysters in Bain Capital bankrupt or wreck PRUK and people receive contaminated blood?
And as you say, when this happens, there’ll be no accountability, just endless buck passing between the company and the DoH. Proving, yet again, that just about everything ministers in this government say is a lie. Thanks, again, to the Lickspittle Democrats for siding with the Tories to enable this to take place.
Finally it’s appeared on the BBC Website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23372989
Still not seen it on the BBC’s TV news (nor Sky News) .. seems they are to busy bigging up the merits of the massive tax break for shale gas, and more concerned about Detroit’s bankruptcy.
You couldn’t make this up. The financial “undead” at Bain Capital invest in blood plasma supplies. Not content with draining the metaphorical life fluids from perfectly viable businesses BC wishes to acquire large quantities of the real stuff. Capitalism with a Bram Stoker bent.
What more in the way of Gothic horror can predatory capitalism inflict on us. Any nominations for capitalism with a Mary Shelley twist?
This is just proof that the right wing zombies in government are determined to make short work of the NHS!
Theremustbeanotherway – the zombie analogy is quite apposite, it’s not by chance that there is a cultural obsession with the zombie at present via films and computer games, I see it as a projection of an actual spiritual state where people become more vicious, robotic and unfeeling and they. If politicians had even a modicum of sensitivity they would simply cease to function in that sea of bad faith – unfortunately there is a large sector of the public who have given up thinking critically – I see things getting worse given LINO’s abdication from reality.
@ Rod Brown’s response “I think the ConDems are trying to cover that base.” to my plea “An Opposition — an effective Opposition, MUST emerge NOW, or nothing will remain by 2015.”
Regrettably, I cannot take this seriously, for the following reasons:
1, I want a new Government NOW, not at some Nirvana-like point in the future. This proposal would not be implemented until the next Parliament.
2. It is, in any event, NOT a reply to the problem stated, but is rather an attempt to solve the old West Lothian question of Tam Dalyell, as to why Scottish MP’s should have a veto on English affairs. In other words, it is an attempt to neutralize the power of the Scottish MP’s, especially if they were to be part of a ruling Labour or Labour-led Westminster Parliament. As such, it is therefore closer to Rhodesian UDI, or even the Secession of the Confederacy, and is certainly a recipe for dissension, and even conflict (perhaps armed) between different parts of the UK.
3. I would not in ANY EVENT trust ANY constitutional change brought in by our Robber Government, whose interests are NOT those of the majority, but of a small elite of the rich and powerful, and who proved it by their preposterous Fixed Term Parliament legislation, which is dressed up as “removing power and patronage from the Prime Minister”, but which is in fact a gerrymandering of the Constitution to enable a Government that has lost the confidence of the nation to stay in power beyond its sell-by date.
For, under its terms, if Cameron lost a “No Confidence”, he could tender his resignation to the Queen, who would then have to ask someone else to form a Government, with the tendency being towards Cameron again, as Leader of the largest Party in the Commons, and I would expect him to go for a minority-Conservative administration, which the Queen would have to accept, unless 66% of the Commons voted for a dissolution and new elections!
Such a crisis would play into Cameron’s hands, as he could ditch the Lickspittles (as one person posting here wonderfully described them) and go into the 2015 Election on a Tory/UKIP Manifesto, when I would confidently expect UKIP to overtake the Lickspittles, who would consign themselves back into a taxi-load of MP’s Game, set and match to Cameron, and doom and gloom for the country.
With respect, I think you misunderstood my point. The point was simple, the ConDems are trying to cover the base where they lose the next election, but can veto any changes to what they have done with regard to education, the NHS, transport and the environment. I should imagine, if they get it through, they would devolve many more powers before 2015. The coalition will not split until as close to 2015 a possible, the Tory’s need the time to continue the fire sale, the LibDems want to stave off the inevitable consequences seen in recent local elections and by elections.
The onerous contracts that accompany the “fire sale” guarantee that there will be no change.
If (big if) labour get elected they would have plenty of enemies to rail against re-nationalisation or re-purchase. It hardly helps that many of the things they would like to criticise the conservatives for, they started themselves while in government. Most of the “free” press is corporately captured, as are most of the broadcasters. It does not help that we have an opposition that refuses to oppose, led by a person who seems to lack the ability to oppose. In fact, given labours intention to water-down their union donors, I see a party that is heavily into throwing out the baby with the bathwater, then slinging the bath out as well.