Tag Archives: privatisation

The Conservatives’ health service failure – summed up in a single graph

Trolley wait: this was almost unheard-of in 2011 but after 13 years of Tory rule, the number of people waiting 12 hours or more on a trolley in a corridor for NHS attention has increased by more than 3,000 per cent.

This Channel 4 News report speaks for itself – almost.

Take a look, then I’ll spill the beans:

There’s just one element missing – the fact that these massive, and increasing, failures are due in their entirety to Conservative government interference in our healthcare, in order to create a false case for privatisation.

The Tories have been obsessed with ending the National Health Service as a means to keep the people of the UK healthy, and focussed on turning it into a means of creating a profit for greedy fatcat health company shareholders and executives.

The fact that your health – or the health of people you know – has suffered as a result is of no concern to them at all.

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And with Labour under Keir Starmer and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting promising also to increase privatisation, there seems to be no end in sight for the agony.

So, who are you planning to support at the general election this year?


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Water boss bonuses show privatisation is a gravy train for the greedy

Rivers of Shit: Boris Johnson couldn’t be bothered to think about the details of his Brexit, and now the UK is suffering shortages of materials including those used to clean sewage. So partially-cleaned and harmful crap is going directly into our rivers.

This is the second half of the privatisation scam.

Back on January 25, This Site explained how privatising governments like the Tories give themselves an excuse to sell national assets like water, electricity and railways into private hands.

They do this by de-funding the service to ensure that it cannot employ the right people, buy the right equipment and/or accommodate demand.

The aim is to make people angry at the public service, so they demand privatisation – or at least accept it when it is proposed.

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But what happens after a service is privatised?

This:

Water company bosses have received over £25m in bonuses and incentives since the last general election, according to analysis by Labour.

The analysis found that nine water chief executives were paid £10m in bonuses, £14m in incentives and £603,580 in benefits since 2019.

It comes amid outrage over illegal sewage dumping, with water firms in England seeking to hike customers’ bills by an extra £156 a year to invest in Britain’s Victorian infrastructure.

The blatant greed is staggering in the flagrancy of the insult to bill-payers.

Instead of using the money paid for the service to provide it, shareholders and executives take it for themselves and then (in the case of water firms, literally) flush that service down the drain.

And then they demand more money, under the pretence that they’ll use it to fix the problems they have created.

You’d have to be a fool to believe that one. So what do you think the Tories are planning to do?

And, come to think of it…

What do you think of the plan by both Tories and Labour to increase privatisation of the health service?

Source: Water bosses have received £25m in bonuses since last election, Labour says | Politics News | Sky News


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The UK supports public ownership of utilities. Why do none of our politicians agree?

Privatisation of public services and utilities has failed dismally. Why do both the Conservatives and the Labour Party under Keir Starmer support it?

Why are they determined to ram it down our throats?

We all know the problems with privatisation:

And we all know the tricks our politicians use to support privatisation:

So we all know that privatisation doesn’t work as a way of providing water, energy, healthcare, rail and bus services and the mail.

And when I say all of us, the polling is conclusive:

Here’s the problem:

At the next general election, neither of the main UK political parties are going to offer public ownership to the people.

You will not be allowed the chance to vote for it.

Don’t you think that’s, well… wrong?

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Your politicians should be seeking election on platforms that have public support, shouldn’t they?

They should have consulted with the electorate and they should be putting forward policies that we feel we can get behind – shouldn’t they?

Has any politician asked you if you support public ownership?

Have any of them asked if you support privatisation?

I’m guessing the answer is no.

Then, why on Earth would you vote for any of them? If they’re not offering what you want – and they very clearly aren’t – you need to find someone else.


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Less-trained ‘physician associates’ are taking over from doctors – because they’re cheaper

Physician associate: training for these not-doctors is cropping up all over the place (this is at Chester University).

If you fall ill or are injured, would you like to be treated by a proper doctor – or would you accept treatment by a so-called ‘physician associate’ who is far less well-trained, but cheaper, and whose employment is intended to make a bigger profit for private health companies?

Here’s Damo to explain what this latest healthcare nightmare is all about:

Already two deaths have been linked to PAs. This means the Tories have intended to make those deaths possible.

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And Labour too – because PAs appear to be part of Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting’s plan for the NHS. They certainly didn’t lift a finger to stop them becoming part of your future – if you have a future at all under the ministrations of these not-doctors.

Don’t just take Damo’s word on this. Here’s an actual doctor:

You have your instructions!

Please tell your MP you want the NHS to be staffed with proper doctors – and if private companies don’t want to spend the money, they shouldn’t be part of the service. You can find out how to get in touch here.


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Pray for the NHS if either Labour OR the Tories form a government next year

If Keir Starmer’s party wanted its conference to exude confidence for the future of the National Health Service, it failed at the first hurdle when an NHS campaigner was kicked out on the first day:

He appeared to be talking about Keir Starmer and the party’s ruling National Executive Committee, who overturned a democratic decision of the Conference Arrangements Committee:

It seems Starmer demanded this in order to avoid conference holding a debate on NHS structures and privatisation:

The party leadership is likely to have lost any such debate.

(Personally, This Writer can’t see what all the fuss is about. Conference delegates have already voted to renationalise energy providers but Starmer has overruled this sovereign decision unilaterally, saying it won’t be in his party’s general election manifesto. Let’s remember that!)

There’s worse:

Apparently the big idea to improve waiting times is to offer already-overworked doctors and nurses overtime to work in the evenings and at weekends, while improving diagnoses with new technology:

For the record: Starmer has no intention of recruiting more staff from the most obvious place:

And diagnostics is only part of the NHS’s job; without proper treatment, more effective, expedited diagnoses won’t make much of a difference.

Meanwhile, the Tories have put some clear blue (English Channel?) water between them and Starmer’s party by saying they will hire doctors from abroad – to break strikes brought by NHS doctors. This would set a toxic precedent for industrial relations in all UK sectors:

It seems clear that the NHS is not safe with either of these political parties.


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Leftwingers – Please Don’t Vote for Keir Starmer as Your Constituency MP | Beastrabban\’s Weblog

This Writer has been laid low with Lurgi over the weekend, so I’m looking to others to sustain This Site.

First up is my brother David, who runs Beastrabban\’s Weblog.

He’s not happy with Keir Starmer at all – and has published a 25-minute YouTube video explaining his very good reasons for wanting left-wing voters in Starmer’s Holborn & St Pancras constituency to vote for other left-wing parties, the Monster Raving Loonies or single-issue candidates rather than helping Starmer bring his brand of Conservatism into 10 Downing Street.

That’s right – Starmer is a Conservative and you need to make sure everybody knows it. If anything, he is more right-wing than Rishi Sunak. And that means he’s bad for you.

Here’s the video:

For text supporting the comments in the video, please visit the article: Leftwingers – Please Don’t Vote for Keir Starmer as Your Constituency MP | Beastrabban\’s Weblog


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Economists please note: high inflation may be A POLITICAL CHOICE

This is fine: the image above was originally about climate change but it may be applied equally well to Rishi Sunak’s attitude to the economy. Political policy in the UK for the past 40 years and more has been to impoverish you, together with all the poor people who voted for him and his ilk, thereby allowing it to happen.

All the Tory talk about getting inflation down seems to have confused some people who have failed to consider that high inflation may actually be Conservative government policy.

Look at the usually-excellent Simon Wren-Lewis’s latest Mainly Macro piece, in which he takes issue with left-wing opinions about his current diagnosis of the inflation problem.

He reckons the answer is for private sector wage rises to come down, probably by way of reducing economic demand which will lead to a reduction in the workforce – and, thereby, a recession. This opinion appears to be shared with the Bank of England, whose continual interest rate hikes seem to be an attempt to force the UK’s economy to go backwards.

The problem with that is simple: ordinary working- and even some middle-class people are struggling to make ends meet. Many simply can’t and are going into debt. His solution to the inflation problem will bake that inability to afford the cost of living into the UK economy.

With the Tory government lying to us that workers’ wages are the cause of high inflation and the Bank of England doing as described above, there seems to be only one logical conclusion to draw:

High inflation is a Conservative government policy. It is intended to drive the UK’s lower-paid citizens deep into poverty so you cannot afford the necessities of life.

Just roll that around your mind for a moment.

Think about the real causes of inflation: huge increases in the prices of energy and food, and huge increases in the salaries of FTSE100 executives.

The government could, in theory, neutralise these inflationary pressures through taxation – but the theory fails in practice: as Professor Wren-Lewis notes, the energy firms are multi-national corporations whose profits are received overseas, so there is nothing the government can do about them.

Looking back through history, we see that the reason overseas shareholders have been able to take control of our formerly-nationalised utility firms (energy isn’t the only subject area to have been treated this way, of course; water springs instantly to mind) is privatisation.

The answer should be re-nationalisation – but the Tory government (and also Keir Starmer’s STP – Substitute Tory Party) won’t countenance that; it is against their ideology. This indicates, again, that high inflation that drives you into poverty is a political choice. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer want you to starve.

In the private sector, we see that the salaries of FTSE100 executives have risen by an average of 16 per cent in the last year alone, despite the fact that there has been no real growth in production in the last 15 years since the Great Recession. The money for their pay rise has to come from somewhere and the logical source is the pay packets of employees; they are taking the rises that should go to you.

That’s if they haven’t increased the prices of their goods or services, of course. If they have then they are still taking the rises that should go to you, while also increasing prices so you can’t afford what your employer sells.

The answer – the way to stop this irresponsible upward drain of corporate funds into executive bank accounts – is to tax executive pay at a rate high enough to make this practice unviable. Again, both Rishi Sunak’s Tories and Keir Starmer’s Tories have refused to do this so – again – we must conclude that the executive wage inflation that puts us all into poverty is a political choice.

Professor Wren-Lewis rightly points out that, where employees have won wage increases intended to match inflation caused mainly by high energy prices, their employers have put prices up; this indicates that shifting the real-terms wage cut onto the profits of other firms won’t work and just generates more inflation.

Professor Wren-Lewis goes on to discuss the reason real wages in the UK have not grown in the last 15 years. As already mentioned above, besides the energy and food price hikes, it is the fact that productivity growth has been extremely weak. There have also been two large devaluations of the Pound.

The low productivity – and one of the depreciations – were caused by Brexit. This is another political policy of the Conservative government that is also supported by Keir Starmer’s STP and may therefore be seen as further proof that the party of government (and that of Opposition) intends to impoverish you as a matter of policy.

Brexit also makes causing a recession more attractive to the government and the party that wants to form a government. Neither of them want inflation to continue running rampant forever; it would eventually wipe out the gains they have made for their very rich friends, so they’ll want to bring it down.

The way to do that, according to Prof Wren-Lewis, is to reduce the demand for goods produced by most firms, as this will lead to a reduced demand for labour; firms then lay off workers, meaning more people are seeking employment, meaning in turn that jobseekers will be more likely to accept a job that pays lower wages.

Before Brexit, politicians could always rely on an influx of cheap labour from Europe. That isn’t available now, so they consider recession to be the only alternative. Remember: their future is safe.

Demand is already coming down because people simply can’t afford to buy as much as they used to, due to the real-terms wage cuts they have suffered. The Bank of England’s interest rate rises are hammering that change home.

We may therefore conclude that recession, job losses, further deprivation and misery are all policy points of the Conservative government, and of Keir Starmer’s STP.

Professor Wren-Lewis ends his piece by quoting Bertrand Russell: “Ask yourself only what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed.”

Sadly, he fails to follow his own (and Russell’s) advice.

The truth that the facts bear out is that privatisation, executive pay rises, Brexit, austerity (the other driver of the Pound’s depreciation) and interest rate rises are all intended to push the majority of UK citizens into poverty.

Other solutions besides reducing demand by causing a recession and mass unemployment are available – but the low-quality politicians with whom we have accepted that Parliament should be filled are not interested in them; their only concern is filling their own bank accounts.

Our concern must now be to put a stop to this.


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The rhyming guide to NHS privatisation (from the social media) [VIDEO]


This is terrific:

Of course, if you watch it and just click on to something else – even if you enjoy it, then you’re supporting the destruction of the NHS, the ruination of your health and everybody else’s and ultimately, the early ending of your life.

I’m just mentioning that in passing, to encourage you to share this, at the very least.


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The news in tweets: Thursday, July 20, 2023

The puppets: in fact, with today’s information, this image needs to be updated to show a Saudi politician or a private health boss with his hand up Blair.

Labour sinks its candidates’ chances in today’s three by-elections

The UK’s main parties seem to have given their candidates in the three by-elections taking place today (Thursday, July 20, 2023) a shot… in the foot. An entire volley, in the case of the STP (Substitute Tory Party – formerly Labour). In fact, metaphorically-speaking, it would probably be accurate to say that those candidates no longer have any legs to stand on.

Here’s former party leader candidate Liz Kendall showing why members made the right choice by avoiding her like a nasty disease. In defending her leader’s decision to condemn 55 per cent of families with three children and a massive 80 per cent of those with four to poverty, she resorted to the “fiscal responsibility” argument that simply doesn’t ring true:

The simple fact is that fiscal rules may sound good to the public but all they really do is straitjacket political parties into courses that can harm us all in the long term. There’s no need for them.

Nor is there any justification in saying that (Labour) can’t make promises about where the money for a change will be sourced. The simple fact is that the Conservatives have spent 13 years cutting taxes for the richest people in the UK. The opposition party should be looking at the amount of money these policies have denied to the treasury and making its plans accordingly. Instead, the plan is to leave these tax breaks in place – boosting the rich still further while punishing the poor yet again.

The claim that parents should get better jobs is risible. Even if such employment was available in an economy where pay has been pushed through the floor, how are parents supposed to take them when the massive cost of childcare ties them to their home, looking after their children?

(And please, let’s not engage in the tired old argument that people should not have had more than two children in the first place: you don’t know the circumstances behind those situations, and in any case the UK’s economy requires a larger indigenous population, now that so many workers from abroad have been scared away.)

Elsewhere, Tony Blair has demanded that a future ‘Labour’ government should inflict austerity on the UK:

We know from the nauseating spectacle of Blair discussing policy with Keir Stürmer in public that the opposition party leader is a Blairite and wants to follow the desires of his ideological leader as much as possible.

Blair is saying he wants austerity, and he wants increased privatisation in the NHS. Only “basic” healthcare should be free at the point of use, he said. Other services would cost money. These are not Labour Party policies, of course – and nobody claiming to represent Labour who supports them, and/or the leaders who spout them, should be allowed into Parliament.

What we’re looking at is “policy capture” – and the organisation behind Tony Blair should be avoided at all costs because it is owned by foreign governments, it seems:

So candidates in today’s by-elections – by the words of leading party members – are not going to help working and working-class people but may well be following the demands of foreign governments instead, with plans including making us pay for anything more than “basic” healthcare.

Would you vote for that?

Grant Shapps shows why Tories should not be allowed near power

While leading members of the STP (Substitute Tory Party – formerly Labour) have been hobbling their by-election candidates, Grant Shapps has been doing the same for the real Tory Party’s credibility.

He has written to Keir Stürmer, demanding that the STP pay for damage caused by Just Stop Oil protests, on the grounds that the STP is the political wing of Just Stop Oil:

This is boneheaded stupidity. In doing so, Shapps is publicly acknowledging that any politician or political organisation that takes money from a donor will do what that donor demands in the future.

If Stürmer’s STP had said that, we could point to the donations its members receive from Trevor Chinn and say this is an admission that that party is now a sockpuppet of the so-called Israel Lobby (amongst others).

But because a Conservative has said it, we can rifle through all the donations that party and its MPs receive instead. Obviously Shapps is admitting that the Tories are all in thrall to private health firms (for example), and that’s why the NHS is being increasingly privatised.

He has opened the door for us to tell the world that the Conservative Party – and more importantly the Conservative government – does not work for the people of the United Kingdom, despite taking huge amounts of our cash.

Instead, it works for those shadowy donors, despite all the claims over the years that it did not, which we are now free to conclude are lies.

And that means any Tories elected in today’s (Thursday, July 20, 2023) by-elections will do the same and should therefore be blocked from ever entering Parliament.

Nice one, Shapps!

Rishi Sunak blames striking junior doctors for his own government’s health service blunders

Here’s another Tory failure that should cut into that party’s vote in today’s by-elections: Rishi Sunak’s attempts to blame striking junior doctors for weaknesses in the National Health Service.

I’ll let Peter Stefanovic explain:

A couple of points that should be emphasised:

As a result of Tory pay cuts since 2010, you are £11,000 a year worse-off than you would otherwise have been, and Sunak wants you to take further pay cuts (not just just junior doctors). Meanwhile, average pay for MPs, once their multiple other jobs are taking into account, is more than £200 per hour.

The “Independent” Pay Review Body is nothing of the sort. Its members are all employed by the government and are told how much money the government is willing to pay public sector workers before making any decisions. Those decisions are then made to fit in with what the government tells them to do, rather than with what public sector employees need.

Daily Express fails at basic maths. Just because inflation has fallen, that doesn’t mean prices are dropping

Carol Vorderman explains basic mathematics to the writers of a national newspaper.

It seems the Daily Express and its employees don’t understand that a fall in the rate of inflation does not mean that prices have dropped – despite the fact that it has been drilled into all of us over many months that such a fall really means the rate at which prices increase is slowing down.

So the following headline betrays a lack of economic credibility:

Still… when the price cuts demanded by the paper don’t happen, perhaps we can all enjoy a public backlash against the Tories.

That’ll be fun to watch.

Tory government paid almost as much for each ‘migrant barge’ as it costs to hire the most luxurious cabin cruise ships

This is self-explanatory:

This Writer understands that we still don’t know who won the contract to provide these barges, that have been modified to accommodate 500 people rather than 240, meaning less space is available for each of them.

And we don’t know whether there was a proper tendering process, with multiple interested parties invited to bid for the contract, or if it was just handed over to a Tory crony via the illegal “VIP lane” or any successor route.

It’s another point for voters in today’s three by-elections to consider.


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The news in tweets: Monday, July 17, 2023

Ruling-class privilege: there’s no ‘class ceiling’ for grotesqueries like Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer – they are laughing at you when they say they can’t do anything to help you. Remember: it is political choice that has dumped the UK in its current crisis.

Backlash against Starmer’s Substitute Tory Party grows as he insists he’ll do nothing for ordinary people

It’s a good question. Jeremy Corbyn promised to provide dentistry on the National Health Service but Keir Stürmer is promising to deny it to more people (although he hasn’t said it in as many words).

He’s also planning to inject much more privatisation into the NHS, probably to complete the transformation of the service into nothing more than a banner under which public money may be passed to private companies that perpetuate illness and refuse to provide cover where it is not profitable, making healthcare a postcode lottery:

More privatisation?

Read this:

There’s the problem with more privatisation in a nutshell. Once these private health bloodsuckers get a monopoly on the provision of care, they’ll push prices through the roof – knowing that you and I will have to pay for it, no matter what.

By supporting increased private involvement in healthcare, Starmer supports this plan to drain the public purse of its funds and effectively put you into debt to grotesquely rich corporate fatcats – forever.

He’s being nicknamed #SirKidStarver because he won’t end the two-child limit on child benefit and is therefore continuing to impose poverty on millions of children, nor will he provide free school meals for everybody who needs them.

Stürmer’s ‘Right-hand Liar’, Yvette Cooper, was pressed to justify the policy that will deliberately keep a quarter of a million children in poverty and 850,000 more in increased poverty, on the morning media round. Judge her failure by this clip:

Labour’s answer to criticism is apparently to say we should vote for the Substitute Tory Party because its members have ancestors who were working class:

It seems Stürmer and all his little stürmtroopers need a lesson on how a Labour Party governs a nation. Here’s one:

The consensus opinion is increasingly that Stürmer is lying:

Thankfully not everyone, even in the Parliamentary Labour Party, supports the wholesale betrayal of Labour Party values that Stürmer is preparing:

And outside the party, some of us are already agitating for direct action:

The article states that Stürmer is actively planning to fail the nation on many levels:

– Climate change
– Renewables
– Transport reform
– The economy
– Public sector pay
– The NHS
– Social care
– Education
– Law and order
– Housing
– Trade unions
– Reversing Tory policy
– Support for local government
– Electoral reform
– Europe
– Interest rates
– Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
– Defence
– Inequality
– Taxing the rich

It calls for us to make Stürmer as uncomfortable as possible, for as long as possible, on all those issues until the pressure on him to reform becomes unsurmountable and he is forced to change.

How to do this?

– Inform yourself
– Join groups
– Talk to people
– Write to MPs, councillors and anyone else
– Phone in to the radio (you are likely to get on)
– Consider peaceful protest
– Join a union if it is appropriate for you
– Write a blog
– Comment here
– Tweet, Thread, use Mastodon, create a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram post.

But just don’t suffer in silence. Starmer has to know he is failing, already. Only then might he change, or be forced to. Things are far too serious to accept the dire policy options as those Starmer is now proposing. We all have to demand better.

And in the short term there is only one option: anyone who understands how bad the situation is at the moment must vote for anybody but Labour or the Conservatives. Who the other party to support may be will only be apparent locally.

The best places to start are at Somerton and Frome, Selby and Ainsty, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Thursday (July 20, 2023).

Where is the evidence that the Tories are ‘transforming’ the economy?

It seems that the only evidence of any such action by the Conservatives is a plan to close down what Rishi Sunak calls “rip-off” degrees that don’t guarantee a job to graduates.

It seems a strange demand – that degree courses guarantee a job to the people taking them. By that standard, shouldn’t they all be shut down and a multi-billion pound education industry destroyed overnight?

You see, the point of most degrees isn’t to fit people into a job; it is to teach people how to think. That way, they can work out how to get, for themselves, the job that best suits them. This policy reveals Tory ideology: they don’t want people who can think – they just want livestock who can be slotted into jobs that will make money for their friends and funders:

But it’s hard to tell, because it seems the Tories are doing their utmost to hide what they are doing – probably because the only people they are helping are themselves.

Example:

How about the way government departments under the Tories have been blacklisting media organisations that publish information that is critical of them? Here’s Defence Secretary Ben Wallace apologising for such treatment of Declassified UK:

What else do they not want us to know?

Perhaps the fact that yet another Tory MP has been arrested – for sexual impropriety and misconduct in public office?

Perhaps the fact that 2022 was the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century since the early 1970s, meaning their fairy story that increases in your wages are fuelling inflation is a lie?

Perhaps the fact that they spent more than one-and-a-half times as much money on duff Covid-related contracts through their illegal “VIP lane” as they have allocated to the building of new NHS hospitals?

People are being stopped from renting homes because they have children. Sign the petition to stop this


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