Polly Toynbee has noted this morning that:
One London teaching hospital in the forefront of integrating itself with local community care to treat more people at home, has just been told this too is "anti-competitive". Torbay, pioneer of integrating health and community care, is warned this is an anti-market "monopoly" that should be tendered out in bits.
I have had good experience of the need for integration in health care today. This idea that there may be 'competition' between hospitals and services is the complete antithesis of everything all good care should be about but is everything profit is about, which will benefit from confusion, duplication and chaos.
This is the reality of the Tory Health Service.
It s far removed from the National Health Service.
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£1.6 million in legal costs – yet again, the process of privitisation sucks money OUT of the system. This has been the story all along. Many think the rail system is private – in fact masses of Government money (ours) goes into propping up ‘too big to fail’ companies for ideological reasons. Every time privatization lurks so do lawyers and ‘consultans’ every ready to line their wallets. If we totted this up over the last thirty years the figure would be amazing.
Odd. The government’s policy is to promote more integration, at least that is what we are told. It is a facile and unutterably insulting policy, because it implies that no-one has ever thought of this before and that its implementation is easy
http://thosebigwords.forumcommunity.net/?t=45774951&p=343087560
Nonetheless it now seems that they are only interested in integration if it makes profit? Is that really what they are saying?
Well – should we be surprised, from the Government that suggests all schools become profit-centred Academies, backed by hedge funds and venture capitalists (the vulture and vampire strategy, battening on tax-streams, instead of doing anything REALLY useful and REALLY entrepreneurial – oh, no; that would be too risky, we might lose money!)
However, how DARE they say this? The extent of their arrogant corruption (not necessarily in terms of theft and embezzlement and unethical behaviour, but in terms of being able to look at themselves in them mirror and not see the foul monsters they have become) continues to astonish, as does the supine ignorance of the British electorate, who seem capable of swallowing endless tosh, however stupid it might be.
On that last point, harking to your post on getting decent MP’s and members of the Lords, the latest brouhaha over the Falkirk by-election and the actions of UNITE the Union in trying to get more working-class Labour MP’s (a laudable aim, providing they are men and women of experience and integrity, and not the working-class equivalent of upper-class “hooray Henry” types), here is what Martin Kettle had to say on why UNITE the Union’s actions were wrong:
“But the third and overwhelming problem with the Unite strategy is simply that it is suicidal. A Labour party campaigning on an old industrial class-based agenda, with extra powers for unions that are in other respects withering across British life, led by quisling politicians manipulated by union officials who in some cases are old Stalinists, in pursuit of a state-owned economy that would not work and would not be popular, may appeal to a few romantics. But it is an utterly bankrupt strategy.”
This seems to me to be SO FAR adrift from what UNITE is trying to do, that it is almost actionable libel. UNITE, and many other people, whether or not they vote Labour, or belong to a Union, would wish nonsense such as this piece of prime “Alice Through the Looking-Glass” approach to to declared a no go, and the cruel nonsense that it is. UNITE do NOT want to turn the clock back to 1974, but want, as supporters of this Blog, to re-instate and revive the civilized society of care and concern, that DID say “I am my brother’s and my sister’s keeper”, refashioned to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
The ones who DO want to turn the clock back, pace Martin Kettle, are the Tories, who are thirsting to resurrect Lord Liverpool’s corrupt administration of the post-Napoleonic War period, when people could be shot for demonstrating for bread, or transported to the colonies for daring to ask for human rights, back in the “good old days” of workhouses and the Poor Law. The frightening thing is that, if they win in 2015, that is where we will find ourselves. And don’t think it cannot happen – in North Carolina the Tea-Party dominated Republican Party, which now holds the Governorship and both local Houses of Congress has now abolished ALL unemployment benefits – yes, ALL. Where the US leads, the UK follows – be wanred!
Agreed – especially re Unite
It’s easy to blame this on Tories and to a large extent it is true but it is not the whole truth .
The opening up of public services to “competition” from private concerns is an EU policy .
People seem blind to requirements of the UK Government of the day , of whatever political colour , having to weaken and handicap the N.H.S. so it does not fall foul of EU competition laws .
Agreed
This is the EU neoliberal project
The Government do NOT have to do this because of EU rules, so far as I am aware: it is a choice, unless someone can point me to EU rules which force this upon us. As I understand it the underpinning is the GPA, which is certainly promoted by the EU but does not make this mandatory
http://thosebigwords.forumcommunity.net/?t=45774951&p=347394239
The report in the Guardian about the “30 billion shortfall in funding” tells a different tale. Read the last three paragraphs and weep.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/05/nhs-face-funding-gap-2020?CMP=twt_fd
We’re coming-up to an election. The government is as popular as a boil on the foot. Solution: Inflate a minor problem, such as the Labour parties contributors asking for something, to a major communist infiltration.
More will be coming from the mainly Conservative press and other media.
I see little in that press about the tens of millions donated to both party, and individual MPs’, by large companies and individuals. But of course, they would ask and want nothing for their altruism ?
The problem is not what UNITE (my union) is asking for, the problem is that people are not asking what the Conservative parties donors are asking for, and getting.