the hard brexiteers have won TM to their camp.
DD can't get any concession out of M. Barnier.
TM is hemmed in by her own red lines.
We are heading to a transition without any deal.
Brexit, for once some facts.
- Thread starter flecc
- Start date
DD can't get any concession out of M. Barnier.
TM is hemmed in by her own red lines.
We are heading to a transition without any deal.
Comical headline of the Day from the Guardian
"
Donald Trump says US will not be a 'migrant camp'"
Someone who didn't do well at history!
"
Donald Trump says US will not be a 'migrant camp'"
Someone who didn't do well at history!
Right, that seems clear enough headmistress!
Good idea? I think not!
Tom
Good idea? I think not!
Tom
Ad Sinistram explains as follows:
There is a simple rule to life. You cannot trust the Tories with the NHS.
The original Tory blueprint for the privatisation of the NHS was developed in the 1980’s by Oliver Letwin and John Redwood.
In ‘Britain’s Biggest Enterprise’, Letwin and Redwood :
– calls the NHS “a bureaucratic monster that cannot be tamed”.
– says the NHS needs “radical reform” and “revolutionary ideas”.
– claims waiting lists were caused by the “system itself” rather than a lack of funds, and that spending more money would simply increase waiting lists. No, really.
They make these five recommendations:
1) Establishment of the NHS as an independent trust.
(Done, the NHS is now NHS England).
2) Increased use of joint ventures between the NHS and private sector.
(Done, the marketisation of the NHS was a key plank of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act).
3) Extending the principle of charging.
(Done, again the 2012 Act, so far charging has been extended to:
Refugees:
https://www.thelancet.com/…/l…/PIIS0140-6736(16)31150-3.pdf…
Overseas visitors and Migrants:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/…/NHSChargingOverseasVisitors…)
4) A system of ‘health credits’.
(Letwin explains these would be issued to a patient who could “spend” it in an NHS hospital or “he could choose instead to go to a private sector hospital”.)
5) A national health insurance scheme..
(Steps 4 & 5 are underway. Tory MP Christopher Chope of upskirting fame tried to bring before parliament a private members bill: 'National Health Service (Co-Funding and Co-Payment)', It would be the first step toward TOTAL PRIVATISATION of the NHS
https://publications.parliament.uk/…/2017-20…/0037/18037.pdf
Which wasn’t the first time the Tories have tried;
https://www.facebook.com/AdSinistram.u.k/posts/315070452214138)
To see in full: ‘Britain’s Biggest Enterprise’ by Oliver Letwin and John Redwood - Wednesday 26th October 1988:
https://www.cps.org.uk/…/111027171245-BritainsBiggestEnterp…
This was followed up in 2005 by ‘DIRECT DEMOCRACY: An Agenda for a New Model Party’
Some excerpts;
“The problem with the NHS is not one of resources. Rather, it is that the system remains a centrally run, state monopoly, designed over half a century ago ...
We should fund patients, either through the tax system or by way of universal insurance, to purchase health care from the provider of their choice ...
Our ambition should be to break down the barriers between private and public provision, in effect denationalising the provision of health care in Britain.”
This particular section was written by our Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.
https://whatwouldvirchowdo.files.wordpress.com/…/direct_dem…
This attitude was on display from day one in Hunt’s role as Health Secretary, as demonstrated by his very first act being to intervene on behalf of Richard Branson to ensure his takeover of NHS Surrey.
https://www.facebook.com/276296686091515/posts/684249555296224/
Jeremy Hunt also being a man who takes massive cash donations from US Private Healthcare hedge funds. Now that’s not dodgy at all, is it?
https://www.facebook.com/AdSinistram.u.k/posts/682562988798214
So what exactly was the 2012 Health and Social Care Act?
“The Health and Social Care Act 20121 did 3 main things:
• removed the responsibility of the Secretary of State to secure comprehensive and universal healthcare provision. This means government can blame local decision makers (Clinical Commissioning Groups and NHS hospitals), and that these organisations will find it easier to start to withdraw care from patients and/or start charging for it2.
• lifted the cap on private patient income from Foundation Trusts3 , 4 (and laid down a legal requirement for all NHS Trusts to become Foundation Trusts), so that they can earn up to half their income from patients who can afford to pay (meaning those of us who can’t, will be increasingly pushed to the back of the queue).
• replaced the old bureaucracy with a new, more complicated one (at a cost of £3bn), in particular replacing Primary Care Trusts with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). CCGs have less responsibility to treat all patients intheir areas. They have a few doctors on the board (this is why the Act was presented as ‘giving power to doctors’, even though most doctors are not involved and want to spend their time being doctors, not contract administrators).
Just before the Act went fully ‘live’ in April 2012, a regulation (under Section 75) was inserted doing one more, crucial thing:
• requiring all commissioning decisions to be open to competition from private providers, unless there is only ‘one capable provider’ (something that is very hard to prove, particularly when there is continual talk of the need to ‘do things differently’).”
https://keepournhspublic.com/…/introductionforcampaigners-K…
This was Letwin and Redwood’s wet dream.
“The Health and Social Care bill has opened up the NHS to further privatisation, with threats from free market campaign groups with links to government wanting its total abolition.
As the bill was being debated and voted on in the House of Lords and Commons, MPs and Lords who had financial interest in companies involved in private healthcare companies, were able to vote on the bill.
This flaw has allowed the corporate takeover of our parliamentary system, and the passing of a bill that will hand over public resources into the hands of private companies our so-called public servants have vested interests in.
This page is a quote page of some of those 141 Lords and multiple MPs who have links to private healthcare. There will be more added and please use this resource, now and come election time.”
To see those 141 Lords and MP’s with links to private healthcare:
https://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/p/lords-and-mps-q…
Which lead to £1.5 billion leaving the NHS and going into the pockets of just 15 private companies linked to 23 Tory MPs and Lords, who were all able to vote for the Health and Social Care Act:
http://www.theguardian.com/…/healthcare-companies-links-tor…
As Michael Portillo Sadi at the time;
“They did not believe they could win an election if they told you what they were going to do because people are so wedded to the NHS."
Since the introduction of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, privatisation has gone into overdrive...
"Health trusts have been accused of taking a first step towards privatisation by transferring the employment of support staff to new subsidiary companies.
At least three NHS foundation trusts in Yorkshire, the West Country and northern England have set up firms with the intention of taking thousands of workers off the NHS’s books.
It means that a staff member whose employment is transferred to the new companies will no longer be an NHS employee, even if they have been guaranteed their current working conditions."
https://amp.theguardian.com/…/nhs-trusts-accused-of-backdoo…
"An analysis by the Health Foundation think tank found that £900m of the money promised before the 2015 general election was spent on buying care from independent and other non-NHS “providers” - compared with £800m spent on the same treatments from NHS trusts"
https://www.google.co.uk/…/…/uk_58d8fb02e4b03787d35a348d/amp
"Government quietly privatises the NHS's in-house agency staff provider"
https://www.google.co.uk/…/nhs-privatisation-charges-profes…
While at the same time...
"NHS spending on agency staff increased by £400 million last financial year, despite an attempted crackdown.
English providers spent an estimated £3.7 billion on locum doctors, nurses and other staff in 2015-16."
https://www.google.co.uk/…/09/nhs-agency-staff-spending/amp/
"Sir Richard Branson’s health firm, Virgin Care, has won a £700m contract to deliver 200 types of NHS and social care services to more than 200,000 people in Bath and north-east Somerset."
https://www.google.co.uk/…/virgin-care-700m-contract-200-nh…
"July 2016 saw the very quiet publication of two key documents charting the route to the privatisation of the NHS in England. Firstly, from NHS England, came Strengthening Financial Performance and Accountability in 2016-17. This is the latest set of instructions on the implementation of NHS chief executive Simon Stevens’s Five Year Forward View(5YFV)."
http://blogs.bmj.com/…/tory-plans-for-nhs-privatisation-re…/
"Over the last year private firms have won £3.5bn worth of new clinical contracts – an increase of 500% on the previous year, our research shows. Two years on from the Health and Social Care Act we now have clear evidence that NHS privatisation is accelerating."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/…/nhs-privatisation-soars-500…
"Jeremy Hunt’s claims that the NHS is not for sale lay in tatters last night after he signed the largest privatisation deal in history. The Health Secretary, who has repeatedly denied health services are being siphoned off to private firms under this Government, faced furious reactions as the £780million deal was revealed."
https://www.google.co.uk/…/nhs-sell-out-tories-sign-largest…
"The Tories have been carving up the NHS and giving away the pieces to their donors Circle Health, which is 29.2% owned by a hedge fund run by major Tory party donor Paul Ruddock has been handed over £1.3 billion in NHS contracts. Other Tory party donors with major investments in Circle Health include Martyn Arbib, Crispin Odey and Michael Platt.
Care UK has received over £100 million in NHS contracts. Their chairman is John Nash who has made £247,250 worth of donations to the Tory party. Aside from his company picking up huge NHS contract as a result of Tory party legislation, he has also been handed a seat in the unelected House of Lords. "
Tom
Can’t argue with much of the above, but something has to change within the NHS. Like most public owned sectors, it is a criminally inefficient organisation which hoovers up as much public money as an be thrown at it without returning any improvement.
Every time I have any sort of contact with the NHS the inefficiency and bureaucracy angers me. I think a big part of the problem lies with the managers. Most seem to be halfwitted fools who would find it impossible to secure a real management position. The remainder seems to consist of fat women who stand around in groups discussing their children. At least privatisation would go some way to tackling this.
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Totally agree Tillson, I am also often angry at what I see each time I'm in contact with the NHS at more than superficial level. The wastage of resources is rife and it's accompanied far too often with sub standard service, including in medical treatment. The French have a payment system with full provision for those who cannot afford to pay and provide equal high quality medical services to everyone in far better ways without having to wait long periods.
Of course I would prefer to have an NHS service that worked efficiently with best medical treatment provided promptly, but I doubt that is possible while the NHS is the monster that it is, too large to manage well. Trusts haven't worked, they've just been mini duplications of all that's wrong with the NHS, so a different model is needed. Experience dictates that must have a substantial element of commercial management practice if it is to be efficient and cost effective.
.
.. it sounds very similar to the legal and courts system, except the fat women are better dressed.
A barrage accross from NI to Scotland could make sense for energy.. there is a huge tidal difference with water flowing up from wexford and down fron rathlin.... mind you the submarines from Holy Lough would lose their freedom of movement.
I agree entirely and I think a bit of a 'Time and Motion' study as it used to be called wouldn't go amiss. The administration people rather than those involved in clinical duties do make me wonder if there are enough 'arsekickers' around.
Uniforms have me baffled. I have been in and out of a variety of hospitals over recent months and I can usually identify the cleaners and various nursing grades but there's always someone in a uniform that I can't identify. One place I was in helpfully had some pictures on a wall with various white tops and epaulettes but I saw people in other garb, possibly radiographers, radiologists, technicians, but difficult to get a handle on as they have to be up fairly close to read the ID badge.
I have noticed that some admin grades, particularly the ones who have computer screens in front of them tend to wear civvy cardigans over their supplied uniform which detracts from the sense of order one would like to see.
Must dash; I have an appointment this afternoon.....and tomorrow and for some time to come. C'est la vie!
Tom
I think all the uniform business stems from management trying to confuse & deceive the public into thinking that a greater number of nurses and medical staff exist. It’s a similar ploy to the police, PCSOs, Special Constables and Street Wardens. All deliberately dressed in similar costumes in order to deceive.
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Not terribly impressed with the notion that the UK idea of commercial management practice would change anything as the service is being run as a business now, and quite frankly looking at what has happened where any service has been privatised there is an unbroken record of disaster.
Nice idea but it doesn't work in practice.
If the UK management techniques were of any value, why do the only companies that truly prosper have foreign managements?
Exactly, I didn't say British commercial practice and specifically drew attention to the very superior French system.
I don't agree that the NHS is run as a business now though. It's supposed to be, but I see no evidence of that in practice. All I see is the same old system but fragmented and worse.
.
The logic of choice?
Choice, as a way of trying to improve a system, often fails. In the case of healthcare, we have numerous reasons for this:
When we have an accident or collapse in the street the last thing we are able to exercise is choice.
Even when we have time and circumstance on our side, how do we make a sensible choice? So much apparent exercise of choice these days is really a matter of which company's PR do you swallow. (Or which one you find less unpalatable.)
When we buy a car or ebike, we still get hoodwinked. Despite putting effort into assessing our needs/wants and investigating what is available, we are all too likely to end up disappointed before we even get to decision time. (Right now we are discussing changes to cars and repeatedly find we simply cannot get what we want.) In healthcare it's a bit like being able to get a leg amputated or some cream for hard skin - but not being able to get our ingrowing toenail dealt with.
How do we decide what treatment we want, and who should provide it? We are so ignorant of the real issues.
I happen to be involved with one are of disease in which there are, basically, two medicines. We have no choice now because one costs so much and the other so little. Guess which is offered? (They are not direct equivalents.) If both were available as a matter of choice, many would be unable to make informed choices. Some would go for the expensive one because it must be better! Others wouldn't understand the choice at all.
Potential providers will put much effort into identifying the treatment options that they can make the most out of. Not what is best for the patients.
Choice could very well end up being based on the most trivial-seeming factors - proximity to home, quality of coffee, wifi, ...
It pains me to bring this up but is anyone actually watching what is going on in America? Ok, it's not directly to do with 'Brexit' but I can remember the glee with which Trump's victory in the Presidential race was received by the 'Bexidiot' element here in the UK.
Let no-one be deceived; Trump is an evil, self-publicist who cares not a jot for international protocols, nor for the poor, the sick or the disabled. The fawning exhibition by Theresa May on her visit to the USA was evidence enough that the extreme right wing of the tory party see Trump as one of their own.
If you thought fascism died after WW2, then think again. Fascism is about the elite. It is about pure evil with complete disregard for the ordinary man and the creation of a society where only the fittest and strongest can survive and the word 'compassion' becomes extinct.
This infographic says much about Trump's America:
Tom
Let no-one be deceived; Trump is an evil, self-publicist who cares not a jot for international protocols, nor for the poor, the sick or the disabled. The fawning exhibition by Theresa May on her visit to the USA was evidence enough that the extreme right wing of the tory party see Trump as one of their own.
If you thought fascism died after WW2, then think again. Fascism is about the elite. It is about pure evil with complete disregard for the ordinary man and the creation of a society where only the fittest and strongest can survive and the word 'compassion' becomes extinct.
This infographic says much about Trump's America:
Tom
Yes - most certainly some are listening and watching. Some of those doing so seem to want us to emulate:
"Boris Johnson has criticised the UK government's Brexit talks strategy, saying it lacks "guts" and suggested Donald Trump could do a better job."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44407771
When will we see child cages in the anonymous hinterland behind Dover and Folkestone?
From the Independent
"
US withdraws from UN Human Rights Council
Nikki Haley calls organisation 'hypocritical and self-serving'
The US has long called for the body to reform, saying it allows members that have been accused human rights violations. Ms Haley pointed to the involvement of countries like China, Cuba and Venezuela in her speech on Tuesday.
Needless to say there was the usual hypocrisy
"Ms Haley also accused the council of maintaining a “disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel" that shows it is "motivated by political bias, not by human rights".
And rather deliberately forgot to mention that the US should have been thrown out years ago!
"
US withdraws from UN Human Rights Council
Nikki Haley calls organisation 'hypocritical and self-serving'
The US has long called for the body to reform, saying it allows members that have been accused human rights violations. Ms Haley pointed to the involvement of countries like China, Cuba and Venezuela in her speech on Tuesday.
Needless to say there was the usual hypocrisy
"Ms Haley also accused the council of maintaining a “disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel" that shows it is "motivated by political bias, not by human rights".
And rather deliberately forgot to mention that the US should have been thrown out years ago!
The Goodness will flow! (Allegedly)
From the Independent
"
Millions in the UK and EU at financial risk because of Brexit contract problem, new study shows
Issue of contract continuity should be dealt with separately to political negotiations, researchers state
Millions of people in the UK and across the rest of Europe are at financial risk because of Brexit, new research from financial services industry body TheCityUK has revealed.
The risk arises from questions around what will happen to millions of cross-border contracts when the UK leaves the EU.
According to the research, contracts affected will include 36 million insurance policies, £26 trillion of outstanding uncleared derivatives contracts, pensions agreements and credit facilities.
?
From the Independent
"
Millions in the UK and EU at financial risk because of Brexit contract problem, new study shows
Issue of contract continuity should be dealt with separately to political negotiations, researchers state
Millions of people in the UK and across the rest of Europe are at financial risk because of Brexit, new research from financial services industry body TheCityUK has revealed.
The risk arises from questions around what will happen to millions of cross-border contracts when the UK leaves the EU.
According to the research, contracts affected will include 36 million insurance policies, £26 trillion of outstanding uncleared derivatives contracts, pensions agreements and credit facilities.
?
Jeremy Corbyn states he is still waiting for an answer. I think Mrs May's performance at the dispatch box is answer sufficient!
Tom
Tom