The depth of corruption in the Conservative Party’s new, privatised health system
You can’t call it a National Health Service any more, can you?
The corruption imposed on the system by the Conservative-led Coalition government has reached new depths with the award of huge contracts to companies that donate to the Conservative Party, and plans to stop the corrupt re-hiring of executives who had already received large payoffs – after this has already happened.
Especially to blame are the Liberal Tory Democrats who made sure that this desecration could take place by supporting it in Parliament.
Did anybody else find it laughable when the Telegraph reported plans for the Queen’s Speech this year to include stopping highly-paid civil servants and NHS executives from receiving large redundancy pay-offs and then being re-hired only a few months later?
The plan, apparently part of the legislative programme to be announced by Her Majesty tomorrow (Wednesday), is effectively fixing the barn door after the chickens have come home to roost; already thousands of NHS executives who were sacked from their jobs in the pre-Health and Social Care Act service have been re-hired – at great cost to the taxpayer – into the new one.
The new law won’t be able to stop any of them from doing what they have already done, and Treasury Financial Secretary Nicky Morgan’s claim that “We must make sure hard-earned taxpayers’ money is not being squandered” is meaningless.
Meanwhile, health companies have been rewarded with ‘NHS’ contracts worth almost 1,000 times as much as the money they have donated to the Conservative Party.
According to the Daily Mirror, Circle Health has been given £1.36 billion of health work after investors gave £1.5 million to the Tories; and Care UK – who bankrolled former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley with £21,000 during the seven years he was secretly working on the Health and Social Care Act while Tory leaders were denying any plans for the top-down reorganisation it would authorise – has won £102.6 million in contracts and its chairman John Nash has been made a lord, in return for a £247,250 donation to the Tories.
Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham was right to say, “Nobody gave David Cameron permission to sell the NHS to his friends.”
Nobody did – Cameron lied about his plans for the NHS throughout his 2010 general election campaign, and then failed to win a mandate from the electorate.
But this is what David Cameron’s NHS was always going to be – a gravy train for rich asset-strippers.
The only losers are the sick – and Tories couldn’t care less about them.
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog.
but it started with Unum who adviced governments now we see the process Unum waiting to sell you that policy to protect against hospitalisation o they our peers have sold every one down the line nhs most is broken and needs a vast amount of monies to put it right who will labour talk just like the tories stating theyl cost the firms first isn’t no one listening no privitisation of our nhs jeff3
But Jeff, Labour has promised to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and reverse the creeping privatisation of the NHS!
I seem to recall unum/et. al. had a room at the last Labour conference and one of the Labour party (a woman whos name escapes me) was a sponsor.
Looking at google, you also posted an article on a previous/the latest? labour conference about it.
So even if Labour do repeal the H&SCA it looks like they will still be doing deals with the devil.
This article: //voxpoliticalonline.com/2013/09/22/heres-why-labour-needs-to-go-a-lot-further-to-win-back-our-trust/
Anne McGuire.
Yes; the aim of the article – and what Labour supporters need to do – is to get Labour away from private insurance companies that only have their own profits in mind, and back onto state-run benefits for those who need them.
Is that one of those promises such as “Safe In Our Hands” Mike?
I cant blame anybody for possesing a healthy level of cynicism…
I can.
Labour now knows that the level of disaffection among voters is now so great that they will support a far-right protest party rather than give another chance to a party of liars.
This means that Labour knows it has to follow through on its promises.
Thanks Mike, yes that was the article (and the conference I was talking about).
And yes I agree, if Labour want to really shake things up then they need to stop kowtowing to the likes of unum… to do so alienates its core voters, while they chase the center right who will never vote for them anyways.
Another problem they seem to have is when the likes a Mandleson/Blier open their mouths. Even if what they say is valid and correct, they are so badly tainted that the mere act of speaking means yet another member of the Labour party walks away.
Twice I tried to post to this http://labourlist.org/2014/05/mandelsons-advice-for-victory-fewer-promises-more-policies/ and both were rejected because my comment went along the lines of “he needs to just shut the hell up, and **** off. He is so badly tainted and ridiculed that every time he opens his mouth another Labour supporter walks away no matter how valid his argument is” The second one was not “sweary” but was still rejected.
Labour just don’t want to listen to us plebs (heck none of them do, hence the disconnect… and I include ukip who are no different) nearly everyone in parliment seems to be some rich public schooled ****hole with a PPE in mindspeak.
There are notable exceptions within Labour, some who also have high qualifications in the right schools, who genuinely seem to try to have our interests at heart… but Labours current “meme” is ‘I something, come stand with us’ which is annoying as hell, how about Labour standing with us instead of demanding we stand with them.
Labour has been carrying out a HUGE consultation project with members and the public over the last few years, so they have been listening to us plebs, in fact.
I do agree that Labour needs to come to us, rather than us to them (as I’ve mentioned before).
Posted yesterday evening, so over-looked in the headlines
“Frank Field: a 1p increase in national insurance, together with changes to raise the NICs ‘floor’ and remove the ‘ceiling’, would result in more money for the NHS and present Labour as a tax-cutting party. ……..The initial 1p increase in employee and employer NICs would be followed by a raising of the NICs “floor” to ensure that greater numbers of less well-paid workers would be exempt from paying national insurance…………This change would be accompanied by removing the “ceiling” on NHS contributions so that higher earners would pay more in NICs. ”
The policies are now being announced, just buried in the “news”.
Reblogged this on sdbast.
Thanks for writing this article Mike !
I don’t trust ANY of them anymore, they all make promises during election campaigns, they can say/lie what they want to win votes and once in power there is nothing we can do when they don’t keep those promises.
I provided an answer to that earlier today.
[…] via The depth of corruption in the Conservative Party's new, privatised health system. […]
Under Cameron’s Tories and Clegg’s Fib Dems (or Fibbing Dims) we’ll shortly not have a National Health Service any more….
We;ll just have a purely NOTIONAL Health Service.
Reblogged this on Samara4baghad's Blog.